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Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed by James Earl Ray—an escaped convict who supported Klan efforts—as he stood on Lorraine Motel's balcony on April 4, 1968. King tried to help several people, and all of these people felt that King's death left a significant impact on their lives. Liberal hopes for racial healing went on a decline after the said event and after presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy was also assassinated. Blacks and whites were further polarized as a result of the riots that followed the assassinations. Richard Nixon's new administration, however, did not foster good relations with the civil rights groups, and they found themselves at ends with NAACP leaders who accused them of pandering. King's death particularly left a mark for the civil rights movement in terms of the fact that the media no longer had a charismatic figurehead to focus on. As such, it became difficult to initiate action protests that would draw national attention.

Among other disappointments during Carter's administration one of the most apparent was the country's economic situation. Since African Americans were often susceptible to being laid off, they often felt the devastating impact of economic problems throughout the presidency. Civil rights groups drew much attention to economic issues and asserted that they would be needing help in addressing such issues. Carter was more responsive in terms of achieving full employment compared to Ford, but his various efforts proved to be unsuccessful. According to a SRC report, the blacks were still experiencing the same segregated conditions they had to face during the 1950s. Aside from this, the blacks earned significantly smaller incomes and were experiencing higher unemployment compared to in the 1950s. As such, black leaders expressed that the gains brought about during the civil rights era should not be overemphasized.

This chapter discusses the role of various civil rights groups in building bridges, fighting poverty and empowering citizens. It notes that the West End Community Council organized residents of public housing projects to demand garbage pickup and a traffic signal; hosting weekend-long arts festivals where blacks and whites could have fellowship while enjoying music, theater, and dance; and coordinating the fight against poverty in one of the poorest sections of the city. It notes that the Louisville Area Council on Religion and Race, while sponsoring vigils of laypeople and clergy for open housing, also attempted to bridge the gap between whites and blacks by hosting discussion sessions on race relations. It further adds that young men who came to town with the Southern Conference Educational Fund to work for open housing legislation joined Volunteers in Service to America and worked with WECC to organize for the empowerment of the black community.

This chapter focuses on the National Negro Congress and how it built a coalition of labor organizations and civil rights groups. While the NNC has typically been viewed as a strictly political organization typical of the Popular Front era, it also included a vital cultural component. The NNC’s cultural wing exposed the lack of black artists in the culture industries and worked to place more of them in various fields. At their national conferences, they held special cultural sessions to bring together black writers and artists on the Left and sponsored talent contests to encourage amateur black artists. Before the NNC, other groups were promoted by the Communist Left to organize cultural workers.

This chapter uses a lynching in South Point, Ohio, in 1932 as an example of the changing nature of this type of violence during its twilight in the Midwest, a change described as “underground lynching” in the late lynching period. It sketches the contours of the lynching, white motivations, the initial black campaign for justice, and the trial. It then explores the black political and legal struggles for justice, including the roles of local and national civil rights groups like the NAACP. Next, it addresses the characteristics of underground lynching, as exemplified by the Murray lynching and similar lynchings elsewhere. Last, it considers its substantive and historiographical implications for Midwestern mob violence and the black freedom struggle.