Decline in an Era of Triumph: Black workers in 1960s New York City

Over several decades, African Americans built a robust national civil rights movement that culminated in the mid-1960s. Activists secured fundamental legal and voting rights, but their opponents, as well as many of their allies, defeated attempts at making economic rights part of the movement. Economic rights were paramount to Black people throughout the nation, especially so in the Northeast, where many national victories had little practical impact. New York City, home to a number of the country's civil rights organizations and leading theorists, as well as the strongest labor movement in the nation, demonstrates the limits of what activists were able to achieve. During these years of profound legal and legislative victories, Black workers saw their status decline and futures narrow. Racial income inequality grew, and economic changes impacted Black workers much more so than their white counterparts. The city's administration in the fifties and sixties made many promises to its Black residents but little concrete progress. In disregarding demands for economic justice nationwide, white politicians and officials, liberal, moderate and conservative, perpetuated a growing crisis in employment, with impacts in education, mental and physical health and quality of life, the legacies of which endure very much through today.