The Late 1960s

In the South

Political Power is being won in the South. The movement is succeeding in eliminating the legal barriers to the vote. The movement is winning political power, however, only to the extent that it can organize blacks to vote. Blacks are even beginning to control some localities where they have a majority or a large number of voters.
Economic Success was mixed. Access to consumption had opened. Public services were gradually being accessed. But full economic participation still had plenty of non-legal barriers. The movement had sought little beyond consumption.
Social equality was mixed. The movement succeeded in giving moral recognition to the concept of equality. That still did not mean that social institutions and the people in them accepted the notion, but the consensus power of segregation had been broken. Formal barriers were down, but many barriers remained.
The movement was developing strategies that worked. Confrontation with the power structure could be counted on to produce the pictures of oppression that fueled the invokation of the federal government. The movement had learned how to organize and confront the governments of the South to change laws.

Political Power of the black communities of the North was growing. The barrier in the North was less legal than organizational. Increased registration and growth of black ghettos was opening up increasing political power. Black mayors were beginning to appear in large cities of the North.
Economic power was limited. Escape from the ghettos of the cities was still exceedingly difficult. Barriers of access to jobs which were increasingly leaving the cities included skill, transportation, and simple prejudice. Statistically, every measure of economic power showed the failure to improve conditions.
Social Power was untouched. Concentrations of blacks in the northern cities created ghettos in the true sense: geographical areas in which those living controlled social power. But move beyond the boundaries of the ghetto and into the institutions of society and power was minimal. Because these were not overt direct legal barriers, the problem was intractable.
Movement sought to move north. During this period the movement moved north. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference attempted to take its program to Chicago, but indiginous movements in the North were already working in the ghettos.

The Moral Battle. The triumph of the Southern movement had been to raise the moral conscience of the nation against inequality. But the riots of the Northern Cities threatened to rob the movement of that moral victory. In the late 1960s, the power that the movement could claim from a moral base was conflicted.
The Nature of Racism. Racism is not fundamentally a governmental or legally imposed condition. The laws tend to follow from a racism in the culture. As the governmental and legal framework had been peeled back, the movement was facing increasing difficulty in confronting the non-governmental racism. The tactics that had succeeded were tactics that address the governmental barriers. The movement had less surity in confronting the more rooted problem.