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7. Making Civil Rights Gains Real
- The University Press of Kentucky
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217 7 Making Civil Rights Gains Real In 1969 the Louisville Courier-Journal and Louisville Times enlisted Roper Research Associates to conduct an in-depth study of the living conditions and attitudes about race relations of white and black residents of Louisville. The resulting report documented the stark differences in whites’ and blacks’ living conditions, the “dismal” state of the latter, and the “frightening” lack of awareness and concern of the white community about both. The divergence on particular points was striking . Close to half of African Americans reported a shortage of housing or problems with landlords, while only 3 percent of whites considered access to good housing a problem at all. When asked whether blacks had equal opportunity when applying for employment, 72 percent of blacks said no. But only 25 percent of whites agreed that those of their race would have a better chance at a job than an equally qualified African American. When asked if policemen disrespected or treated blacks unequally, 68 percent of blacks said yes, but only 30 percent of whites did so. More generally, the researchers found that African American residents felt alienated from and underserved by their local government. And, perhaps most troubling to a community that had long prided itself on its racial progress, white Louisvillians overwhelmingly believed blacks were better off in the city than elsewhere and that government was doing enough to guarantee equality, while blacks disagreed on both scores. The authors’ stark conclusion was that in 1969, despite purported gains in civil rights over the last decade, in Louisville whites and blacks continued to live in two separate and unequal worlds.1 Most narratives of the fight for racial equality begin to wind down 218 Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South after 1968, describing movement forces dissipating or collapsing from internal differences, or tales of government repression forcing activists into quiescence. Yet the Roper study’s findings and the persistence of racial tension around the country revealed that, as the new decade began, the work of the movement was far from over. Moreover, in the experience of civil rights activists, the freedom struggle stretched on into succeeding decades as they continued to fight to realize the equality that was promised in the legislation of the 1960s. The question in the 1970s for activists around the country was how to translate that promise into real social, economic, and political change. In Louisville, the answer was to combine the enforcement of existing laws by human relations agencies with persistent pressure by African Americans and their white allies working both inside and outside government. Although other issues arose, civil rights advocates focused on campaigns for African Americans’ rights to equal treatment by and within law enforcement, economic opportunity, and the just rewards of black political participation. The primacy of these issues, which call to mind places like Oakland, Philadelphia, and Gary, in a border city and selfproclaimed leader of the South, demonstrates the blurring of differences between racial problems and the action to overcome them in northern and southern urban areas by the later years of the civil rights era.2 The story of these three at times overlapping issues in the early 1970s highlights the ongoing interconnectedness of the struggle for racial equality as it moved into a time when it was considered to be dead or dying. In the post-King and, at least locally, post–black power era, the work of equal rights advocates became more sporadic, with less mass mobilizing and much more of the action confined to bureaucratic channels and negotiating chambers. Civil rights activists at this time operated in a changing political context, with an emboldened resistance reinforced by a conservative turn in state and national politics. This made the efforts of those who continued to press for further change appear less like a movement. But the connections that had undergirded activism for racial equality in the city did not go away. Activists continued to identify the links between issues such as jobs and police behavior , and political strength and antipoverty funding. And people of varying philosophies, races, and classes continued to find themselves working together, at times in coalitions of strange bedfellows. Moreover , they persisted in combining tactics, including attempted revivals of nonviolent direct action, enforcement through new human relations [44.201.59.20] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 17:00 GMT) Making Civil Rights Gains Real 219 agencies, and political pressure. Just as racial inequality persisted in the city, as demonstrated by...