October 9, 1990: Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, in a ceremony at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, presents the first payments to Japanese Americans under the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1988. “Your struggle for Redress and the events that led to today,” the Attorney General said, “are the finest examples of what our country is about, and of what I have pledged to protect and defend, for your efforts have strengthened the nation’s Constitution by reaffirming the inalienability of our civil rights.”