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The Kentucky General Assembly passes the Kentucky Civil Rights Act and Governor Edward T. Breahitt signs it into law on January 27, 1966. The Act prohibits discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on race, national origin, color, and religion. Kentucky becomes the first state in the South pass a civil rights law. It becomes the first in the south to establish enforcement powers over civil rights violations on a state level. The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights becomes the state enforcement authority of the Act.    The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights publishes "Negro Employment in Kentucky State Agencies" in February 1966, tracking for the first time African American employment statistics of the state government workforce. On August 26, 1966, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights opens an office in Louisville, Ky., to “increase field service activities in the western half of the state, where some 70 percent of Kentucky’s Negroes live,” say state officials.

The second wave of feminism <script src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1371336/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;grp=550;key=false;kvqsegs=D:T:2886:1362:1359:1357:1346:1341;kvtopicid=724633;kvchannel=HISTORY;misc=1291082559495"></script> The women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s, the so-called “second wave” of feminism, represented a seemingly abrupt break with the tranquil suburban life pictured in American popular culture. Yet the roots of the new rebellion were buried in the frustrations of college-educated mothers whose discontent impelled their daughters in a new direction. If first-wave feminists were inspired by the abolition movement, their great-granddaughters were swept into feminism by the civil rights movement, the attendant discussion of principles such as equality and justice, and the revolutionary ferment caused by protests against the Vietnam War. Women’s concerns were on Pres. John F. Kennedy’s agenda even before this public discussion began. In 1961 he created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and<script src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1388674/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;grp=550;key=false;kvqsegs=D:T:2886:1362:1359:1357:1346:1341;kvtopicid=724633;kvchannel=HISTORY;misc=1291082559533"></script> appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to lead it. Its report, issued in 1963, firmly supported the nuclear family and preparing women for motherhood. But it also documented a national pattern of employment discrimination, unequal pay, legal inequality, and meagre support services for working women that needed to be corrected through legislative guarantees of equal pay for equal work, equal job opportunities, and expanded child-care services. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 offered the first guarantee, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended to bar employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. Some deemed these measures insufficient in a country where classified advertisements still segregated job openings by sex, where state laws restricted women’s access to contraception, and where incidences of rape and domestic violence remained undisclosed. In the late 1960s, then, the notion of a women’s rights movement took root at the same time as the civil rights movement, and women of all ages and circumstances were swept up in debates about gender, discrimination, and the nature of equality.