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The struggle of African-Americans for true equality in the US continued throughout the 20th century in different shapes and strands. In the late 1940s and 1950s many protest movements and leaders were suppressed under the excuse of combating Communism in the US. Many people were imprisoned, harassed, black listed or exiled including African-American activists such as actor and activist Paul Robeson. But at the same time, resistance was building against Jim Crow segregation in all spheres of life. Some took the struggle to the courts, as was the case in the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Some took it to the streets like in the 382 days long bus boycotts in the South led by the young Martin Luther King. The boycotts led to sit-ins, marches, more boycotts, and voter registration drives.
By the 1960s, the civil rights movement (a movement for human rights) was in full swing. One of its highlights was the great march on Washington in 1963. In 1964, President Johnson was forced to sign the Civil Rights Act, which ended segregation in all areas of public life. This was a victory for the movement but it was a limited victory. It only gave nominal political equality to black Americans. But extreme economic and cultural inequality still existed. At this time the world was becoming more radicalized. Revolutions and anti-colonial movements were occurring all over Africa, Latin America, Asia, and even in Europe. This influenced a more radical strand in the civil rights movement that was symbolized by Malcolm X and later by the Black Panthers Party. They called for more fundamental solutions to the problems than just political equality and integration. That is why groups such as the Black Panthers Party were subject to severe government repression. Many of its leaders and members were jailed or murdered. The assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and Dr. King in 1968 happened when both of these men were able to articulate the connection between racism, economic inequality, and militarism and war abroad. They were eliminated because they became a threat to the “system.” There is a tendency to freeze Dr. King in “I have a dream,” or Malcolm X in his early anti-white statements. But both of these men went beyond these points and became true democratic leaders not only for the black community, but for all Americans.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s, in addition to the peace, and women’s movement, produced important results in the 1970s. Affirmative Action reforms were implemented and ethnic studies, such as black studies, were established in many universities and colleges across the country. But repression continued. There was a drive to imprison Angela Davis in the early 1970s on false charges. By the 1980s and 1990s attacks on the gains of the civil rights movement increased tremendously. This mainly occurred due to the ascendancy of extreme right wing forces to the position of power, symbolized by the presidency of Reagan and George H.W. Bush. These forces attacked the Affirmative Action reforms (calling them "quotas"), civil rights legislations, and the like. Drugs, with the help of the CIA, flooded the African-American communities (as it was exposed by San Jose Mercury News’ articles in 1996 and subsequent hearings). Incarceration of black youth, especially males, increased many fold. The attacks on the welfare system that helped the poor, especially many in the black community, continued and culminated with President Clinton signing the so-called welfare reform legislation and claming to “end welfare as we know it.” With good paying jobs fleeing the country, de-industrialization of many areas, lack of affordable housing, higher education, and health care, racist practices in giving loans for homes and
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