I am a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I first joined after the summer of 1964. Or I should say because of the summer of 1964.

I was 22. In September I would start a jam-packed nine-month masters program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. To get my feet wet, the school fathers got me a job as a weekly neighborhood newspaper editor in a section of New York city. After six weeks on the job, my feet weren’t just wet, they were also burning, so I quit.

I was outraged working for a bigoted publisher. What was bubbling below the surface burst into flames on July 16. A building superintendent in Manhattan’s Upper East Side decided to hose kids off his stoops and shouted the ‘N’ word. African-American boys from the Bronx retaliated, throwing bottles. James Powell, 15, pursued the superintendent when off-duty police Lieut. Thomas Gilligan rushed across the street. The white officer fired the first shot in the air and the next two into the teenager. Witnesses claim there was no immediate attempt to call an ambulance. Witnesses were sketchy about the actual sequence of events. There is no debate what happened after Powell died.

Harlem erupted into six nights of protests and violence. Anger spread not only through Harlem, which sits between the shooting site and the victim’s home, but all across New York city neighborhoods. At the end of the conflict, reports counted one dead, 118 injured, 465 arrested. The African-American community was incensed. The NYPD was demoralized. Ironically the ‘Harlem Riot’ happened two weeks after President Johnson signed into law the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Outlawing discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion and nationality, it was the most sweeping measure ever adopted by the U.S. to guarantee racial justice — allegedly.

The following week that hot July, the publisher informed me that Lieutenant Gilligan lived across the street from the paper.

“Go see if you can interview him,” he said.

I swallowed hard and made the call. The officer diplomatically refused. But that didn’t stop the publisher from making up a front page glorifying Gilligan and the NYPD.

“They should give this guy a parade,” said the publisher. “These people need to be taught a lesson; they’re wreaking havoc with our history.”

A few minutes later, my summer job was history.

During the fall and winter of 1964 and into the spring of 1965, my time at Columbia continued to be a battleground of racial injustice, rent strikes, anti-discrimination protests, and the murder of Malcolm X. At the same time, front pages burned with brutality in the South along the bloody path to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, recently dismantled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Because of what happened in Harlem, Project Uplift was created for the following summer, 1965. A well-meaning but one-sided attempt to prevent the recurrence of riots, this short-term program did not include police training. This plan to benefit Harlem youth was hatched as an anti-poverty experiment by social welfare officials in the Johnson administration under the umbrella of the ‘Great Society’.

Toward the end of 1964, my school assignment was to go to the office of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited to report on this initiative. This was one of the program’s administering organizations and was started by respected psychologists Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark. Its director was Cyril deGrasse Tyson, father of astrophysicist Neil. What he explained to me was impressive.

The long-term intent was to give skills and opportunities to break out of poverty. Thousands of young people went to work running summer camps, planting gardens and trees, repairing damaged buildings, learning construction and printing a newspaper. There were also jobs in the arts, from a theatre program run by playwright Amiri Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones) to dance workshops. All this was paid work.

Although Project Uplift was successful in the short-term, it was short-lived. After one summer, it was defunded. What could have served as a pilot for the whole country became a mere footnote. There were no riots in Harlem that summer, but their youth had been seduced and abandoned. Lack of preparation, a rush to implementation, internal power struggles doomed the continuation of the project — a chance for impact scuttled on a quick-fix speed bump.

But why not benefit from the mistakes and make bigger and wiser plans? The Great Society had a better chance to live up to its name if it hadn’t dropped the ball. That ball has been bouncing ever since, untouched.

We throw bandages at poverty. We use cosmetics to cover the institutional wound. We show no commitment to do something long-term. Change is too arduous. With each breach of the human condition we offer thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers might as well translate as “See you later” or “Until next time.”

There is no facing the music. No changing the dance. Just thoughts and prayers. Just turn the page with the hope some “author” will descend from a cloud of conscience to rewrite the ending.

A whole population of humanity should not have to make demands for respect, dignity, equality. What we need is compassion and education in our schools, houses of worship, corporate offices, law enforcement and military services, and our governments.

While waiting for a climate change among Americans, I support the ACLU as it protects rights, defends the Constitution and fights racism in courtrooms across the country. In the past three years its membership quadrupled, soaring toward two million. Closer to home, I’ve joined the Martha’s Vineyard Social Justice Leadership Foundation, a non-membership group whose mission is to empower Island groups and individuals to transform racial and social injustices through grant-making, education and advocacy.

When will we live up to our ideals? When will the Golden Rule be more than a slogan? We have to do more than hope.

Arnie Reisman and his wife, Paula Lyons, regularly appear on the weekly NPR comedy quiz show, Says You! He also writes for the Huffington Post.