50 years on, civil rights movement has changed with the times

[mimi85]

Sandy Banks
LA Times
August 27, 2013

Social, economic and political progress today rests on grass-roots efforts rather than from big-name leaders.

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and if you've missed all the hoopla surrounding it in the past week, you must have been making a conscious effort to avoid it.

I think anniversary commemorations are often predictable and forced: an obligatory look back and an assessment of how far we have — or haven't — traveled since whatever seminal moment.

But this has special resonance because the march changed our country's course. There's no question we've made progress in our long and tortured national slog toward racial and economic equality.

The percentage of blacks who graduate from college has risen dramatically. More than half of blacks lived in poverty back then, now it's one in four. But unemployment for blacks is still twice as high as for whites, and black families overall are less stable than before.

My family is an example of how far this country has come. My parents grew up in southern towns where schools for colored children went only as far as eighth grade. They were able to send four children to college; among them a newspaper columnist and a law professor at Stanford.

So when will I stop wondering whether the content of my character really matters more to strangers than the color of my skin?

Read the rest here:

LINK