It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and here is what it needs as a birthday present: a big push to strengthen unions—the institutions best positioned to help African American and Latino workers more fully enjoy the American Dream.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a monumental advancement in human freedom that helped forever change American culture. But a half-century after its passage, black median income, wealth and employment remain depressingly low.

One important explanation is that just as outright racial discrimination began to decline, African Americans were disproportionately hurt by a new rising tide of discrimination based on union organizing. As Lyndon Johnson was imploring Congress to outlaw discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion and national origin, the nation was already beginning to experience a dramatic decline in union density, from approximately one third of all private sector workers in 1964 to less than 7% today.

Organized labor’s collapse is usually attributed to technological changes and the rise of globalization, but those explanations are incomplete. Freedom House has found that the United States is an outlier among industrial democracies in failing to protect labor rights. Other advanced nations, also subject to the forces of globalization, have significantly higher unionization rates because their laws and culture honor worker rights.

Those protections used to be embedded in the American social contract. In the 1950s, when labor was strong, there was a cultural norm of not firing people simply for trying to join a union. There was a bipartisan acceptance of labor. Republican President Eisenhower recognized that "Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society."