# Lyndon B. Johnson — "equal before God shall now also be equal" before the law > [!quote] "We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. … It does say that those who are equal before God shall now also be equal in the polling booths, in the classrooms, in the factories, and in hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, and other places that provide service to the public." > — Lyndon B. Johnson, Radio and Television Remarks Upon Signing the Civil Rights Bill, July 2, 1964 ## Context Johnson signed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] hours after the House cleared it, in a nationally televised East Room ceremony. The Act outlawed segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in employment — translating the abstract promise of "equal before the law" into enforceable federal statute for the first time since Reconstruction. ## Why this matters The receipt that converts equality before the law from principle into machinery. Johnson names the gap between the founding creed ("all men are created equal") and lived reality, and frames the law as closing it — making those "equal before God" finally "equal" in the concrete venues of daily life. It is the equal-justice strand of the rule-of-law tradition at its most consequential: a president using federal law to make legal equality real for millions to whom it had been denied. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [LBJ Presidential Library, Remarks Upon Signing the Civil Rights Bill, July 2, 1964](https://www.lbjlibrary.org/object/text/remarks-upon-signing-civil-rights-bill-07-02-1964); [The American Presidency Project](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/radio-and-television-remarks-upon-signing-the-civil-rights-bill). - **Status:** Verbatim from the official text (spoken phrasing preserved). Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Thomas Jefferson - equal and exact justice to all men]] — the founding promise LBJ says the Act finally honors. - [[Theodore Roosevelt - no man is above the law]] — the complementary half: the powerful bound, the powerless protected. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Rule of Law]].