The Civil Rights Movement Of The 1960's: An Analysis

Abstract: The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s has been widely viewed as the set of events that finally improved the quality of living for African Americans. The question to be asked, is that in the last half century since the movements, how has quality of life improved and in what ways must it still improve? In general, blacks have experience decreased poverty rates, better income, and increased education in recent years. However, the still very high statistics of all these areas in comparison to other races is very alarming and reason for debate.

Severely low income, unwarranted racial discrimination, rampant violence, and lacking education were all components of African American life before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s.
In Dr. Martin Luther King’s highly acclaimed and credible “I Have a Dream” speech, he envisioned a future lacking racial segregation, police brutality, and systemic violence towards blacks, and ultimately desired everyone to get along regardless of creed (1963). For the most part, this wish has been fulfilled; black voter turnout is much higher, there are more black elected officials, school and public segregation has declined, and black high school education has increased (Wolf, 2014). Additionally, since the march for fair voting rights in Selma, Alabama in 1965, black household income has climbed, life expectancy has increased, and there are more black college students and college graduation (Workneh & Scheller, 2015). Part of King’s speech also entailed a new respect between whites and blacks and a relationship based on character instead of skin. Racism has sharply declined and people have gotten together better than during the times of the Ku Klux Klan, but still today, racist stereotypes and insults still make up a large part of all speech. With the election of Barack H. Obama, however, it is evident that black life has become much better. Years ago a black president would be shunned and racially discriminated against, but today, Obama is loved by many. Thus, quality of life for blacks has indeed come a long way, but it does still lack in certain
For example, though black poverty has declined, the wealth gap has only stayed bad at nearly 5-1 when comparing overall wealth between whites and blacks, and though workplace discrimination has decreased, African American neighborhoods are still segregated from others and often make very little money (Wolf, 2014). This may be the product of systemic racism, as the city planning of someone like Robert Moses who designed NYC and a large part of Long Island purposely hit African Americans harder than whites. Robert Moses focused more on car transportation that mass transportation, and often kept useful resources and playgrounds out of reach of low income neighborhoods, which very often were black (Kolitz, 2015). Furthermore, the African American community has suffered from a constant violence problem, especially so in heated cities like Los Angeles or Chicago. In 2014, blacks, although only representing 12.3% to 13% of the population, made up 27.8% of all arrests (FBI, 2014). This statistic is completely unproportioned and shows an obvious problem with poverty and violence that has persisted since the days of the Civil Rights Movement. But, though these problems may be large, it is undeniable that the new personal freedoms given to the blacks greatly outweigh these problems. Thus, overall, black