Written by  Anthony Siracusa , University of Colorado Boulder ____ On July 2, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. stood behind President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Texan signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . Although not the first civil rights bill passed by Congress, it was the most comprehensive. King called the law’s passage “a great moment … something like the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.” Johnson recognized King’s contributions to the law by gifting him a pen used to sign the historic legislation. A year later, as Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, King again joined the president for the occasion . But by the start of 1967, the two most famous men in America were no longer on speaking terms . In fact, they would not meet again before King fell to an assassin’s bullet on April 4, 1968. King was foremost a minister who pastored to a local church throughout his career, even while he was doing national civil rights work. And...