A lot of reasons caused the failure, but the main reason was that white people didn’t follow them. They still lived in their old ways, threatening blacks with violence so that they lived a lifestyle only suiting the white population. Laws were passed but they couldn’t force whites to change their attitudes, especially those who felt whites were supreme. The corruption within law enforcers prevented a lot of equality when police officers and judges were part of the belief of whites above all. The armed forces were used to prevent acknowledgement of laws, as state guards stood outside of schools, intimidating students and preventing their entrance. Conditions were not changing they were temporarily fixed. For example in 1957, the National Guard escorted black children to a High School in Little Rock, Arkansas showing fear of violence by state guards, proving blacks still needed to be protected by the government, not allowing blacks to live a normal life.
The Ku Klux Klan were one of the main opposition to black people having equality because their aims were ‘white supremacy.’ After the Supreme Court’s act, in 1969, a worker from Ohio gave his opinion of blacks at work. He referred to them as ‘niggers’ and admitted if the “good ol’ biarhopper Ku Kluxers had got a hold of Martin Luther King, he wouldn’t have lived as long as he did.”
Laws were not bringing blacks equality but still making them the minority whereas whites were still living supreme. Four years before the Voting Act, a poll was taken and 1 out of 11 states just had over 50% of the black people voting, and a year after the Voting Act, it had only risen to four states. Some may call that improvement but those living in Louisiana, where it only rose by 12%, would call that irrational or tedious. In 1960 only 2% of the 42% of black people in the South could vote and therefore Martin Luther King tried to help organize a voter’s registration. After 5 years, the Voters Act was made but statistics show within a year improvements were not a great success.
The legal side of life was not improving for blacks as successfully as hoped. Black people on the force were about 5% in Detroit and the highest was only 21% in 1970. The black lawyers were also very limited because a source proved that out of 300,000 lawyers, only 3,000 were black. Only one out of a hundred lawyers were black. This proves that blacks didn’t achieve equal rights or the percentages would be closer to one another. Also, the March on Washington didn’t bring achievements because Congress refused legislation. Until the assassination of JFK, nothing changed and it took the death of a white leader to introduce a plan he had to help black Americans.
The equality wasn’t achieved because the black population only covered 10% of America’s population as they were seen as the minority. One third of all black families were beneath the poverty levels, whereas less than one tenth of the white population was below the poverty line. This clearly states that the blacks were treated unfairly and not truly given an equal chance to reach their economical potential. A census shows that in the 1960s, black riots improved their income from $5,921 to $7,603 in 5 years whereas white people were given $10,903 rising up to $12,668 by 1968. After about 30 years, the population of black people only rose 1.6%, unemployment rose from 10.8% to 13.8% and the discrimination complaints went over six times more from 8,854 to 49,000.
The government was continuously in favor of blacks becoming equal but that through physical enforcement was microscopic, compared to the laws. Black people’s employment success didn’t even reach 50% just like good education and housing was much lower at only 35%. The only matter surpassing 50% was the financial help because it was directly from the government. This survey was taken in 1969 and as it was done by white opinion, it was a national government so obviously it had to be more in favor of blacks so that it pleased the government.
The blacks were also in denial of the manner in which they were treated. They felt the remarks, threats, abuses, and forms of violence were unnecessary and so they retaliated. The black population felt their lifestyles should be lived without fear and with respect. The blacks carried a large amount of pent up hate towards blacks and so they began riots against police officers. A cleaning lady from Harlem explained that she worked long hours for a white man and one night during the trouble she went on the roof. She heard guns and it changed her and she picked up a bottle and started attacking a police officer. Also the famous Rodney King case where he was stopped in the street and beaten by 4 policemen, and was caught on video. The policemen got off without being charged causing a riot in L.A and eventually, there were 215 riots between 1964 – 1968.
All in all, the failure was split three ways – between the white’s supremacy, the faults in laws, and the black’s attitudes towards adjusting in hard lifestyles and yes sometimes taking matters into their own hands. The failure was proved evidently due to the various acts being broken, blacks still living in fear, blacks continuously being harassed by white people, black people only being supported by the government but not as much from the other white citizens. The improvements were borderline but couldn’t be said that there was an actual achievement of equal rights.
