Black Americans, 1963–1973

Report Outline
Racial Assessment of Past Decade
Changing Tenor of the Negro Protest
Expansion of the Black Middle Class
Special Focus

Racial Assessment of Past Decade

Tenth Anniversary of the March on Washington

Ten years ago, on Aug. 28, 1963, a quarter of a million petitioners marched on the nation's capital to demand equity and justice for black Americans. It was a day of national unity, when persons of all races, faiths and ethnic origins stood together at the Lincoln Memorial and heard Martin Luther King Jr. proclaim his dream “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’ “It was possible at the time to believe that fulfillment of the dream would not be long in coming. But the peak of hope and unity achieved at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was not destined to become a permanent plateau for the civil rights movement.

Today the country seems eons removed—not merely a decade—from the euphoria, harmony and sense of common purpose which made the March on Washington possible. The advancement of black civil rights is no longer considered the national priority it was in the early and mid-1960s. Black leaders have compared the present atmosphere to the post-Reconstruction era when the splendid promises and soaring expectations of emancipation were terminated by the terror and repression that followed the departure of federal troops from the South. “Once again the nation seems weary of the struggle,” said Vernon Jordan Jr., executive director of the National Urban League. “There is pervasive evidence that the Second Reconstruction is coming to an end.”

The new Reconstruction, begun in the 1950s and accelerated during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, had a remarkable record of legislative and legal achievement. Three major civil rights laws were enacted within five years: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The legal structure of racial discrimination in the South was destroyed and a new framework of legal protections against discrimination erected in its place. The Voting Rights Act led to the enfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of new black voters and helped elect blacks to public office in the South and throughout the nation. Expanding economic opportunities nourished the development of a large and increasingly visible black middle class.