Delaware National Guard at Johnson’s 1965 inauguration

This photograph from the Delaware Economic Development Office archives shows members of Delaware’s National Guard passing in review before President Lyndon Johnson during his inauguration parade in January of 1965. Congress passed, and Johnson signed into law, the nation’s first civil rights act during the Johnson administration. That act came during the period of great social unrest and violence in the mid to late 1960s which included the Vietnam War, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and President Kennedy’s brother and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, as well as destructive race riots following the King assassination, such as we are seeing now.

Members of the Delaware National Guard were called out to Wilmington during those riots to help restore order, as they were called out in other cities across the nation.

Units of this domestic division of the U.S. Army are again being called out across the land in response to violent protests, property destruction and looting in the wake of the recent death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. The Delaware National Guard maintains 15 armories in 12 communities including Georgetown, Dagsboro and Laurel in Sussex County as well as a summer training facility in Bethany Beach.