I want to tell you two stories.

In the early 1920s, gripped by a fierce wave of hatred, Congress created an immigration law that prevented people from most countries outside of Western Europe from immigrating to the United States. One of the strongest opponents of this law was a new congressman from Brooklyn, a guy named Manny Celler. He talked about how he felt quote “bitter shock” when his fellow members endorsed white supremacy to wide applause.

Celler spent years trying to change our immigration laws. Here and there he made some progress, but he faced plenty of setbacks and a nation that hadn’t accepted a simple position: that racism was wrong.

In 1965, with the support of Lyndon Johnson and a broad coalition of interest groups, he led the passage of a law to finally end this racial exclusion. It took him 42 years to get the job done, but he did. After all his effort, he finally succeeded in eliminating explicit discrimination from our immigration laws.

Here’s the second story. In 1931, Nathan Margold, a young lawyer working for the NAACP, wrote a legal strategy to end segregation in schools. In 1938, attorney Charles Houston first argued against the “separate but equal” doctrine that was used to defend segregation. The Supreme Court didn’t fully buy it, but Houston and his protege Thurgood Marshall kept going after segregation in the courts.

In 1954, Marshall delivered the argument in Brown v. Board, which finally ruled against segregation in public schools. There was huge resistance to ending segregation and Jim Crow for the next decade. In 1963, George Wallace made his infamous declaration: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. Finally, after another wave of massive mobilization, Congress enacted a set of laws to fully ban racial discrimination in everything from schools to public accommodations to housing. End to end, it took from 1931 to 1968 — 37 years — for that strategy to bring a full legal end to segregation.

Here’s my point: change is slow. Those are extreme examples, but they’re important ones. The democratic process sometimes takes a long time to respond to the needs of the people, to protect their civil rights, and create positive change. It’s both a feature and a failure of our system.

Don’t get me wrong — it shouldn’t have to be that way; nobody should have to endure the suffering of the interim. But these processes work out. Sometimes they take tireless fighters and massive demand for change. We get setbacks, but we get there. It’s like that MLK quote — the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Meaningful positive change happens. It may take a while — longer than it should — but if we keep fighting for it, if we keep pushing for a better tomorrow — it’ll come.

This is a setback. There’s no denying that. It’s ok to be worried or angry, I sure am. But don’t get complacent, don’t give up the fight, and dawn will come.