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This chapter reflects on how Americans can achieve further progress in their long national struggle to reduce enduring material race inequalities. It first returns to the structure of American racial politics as analyzed in previous chapters, before discussing its present state. The chapter then suggests that the effects of the clash of the modern racial alliances have been debilitating on many fronts, illustrating through charts and graphs the effects of these racial alliances, and offers projections on how Americans can tackle current incarnations of racial inequalities, and why progress in that regard seems so slow. Finally, this chapter makes some recommendations for breaking out of the “stalemate” on race that Barack Obama perceived in 2008.

This chapter explores the institutional efforts of North Carolina's leading black men to promote racial pride, progress, and a dignified manhood within the black race while fostering interracial dialogue with whites. Though black men dominated the public events as spokespersons, black women played critical roles in these communal enterprises. Interracial gatherings at Emancipation Day and state fair events spoke simultaneously to black and white audiences, often producing multiple and conflicting messages about the meaning of racial progress and equality. Over time, strategies for racial progress within these institutions evolved from a philosophy that emphasized good feelings between the races to one that endorsed more militant and uncompromising approaches. The self-help leadership preferred by men such as Charles Hunter thus fell into disfavor after World War I and the rise of New Negro ideology in the 1920s.

This chapter considers the 1940 American Negro Exposition in Chicago, the first black-organized world's fair that sought to showcase African American artists on a national stage. It delineates the diversity of voices and competing visions of racial progress that defined the character of the Black Chicago Renaissance. Historians have described the exposition as a failure; the event did not attract mass audiences, and it did not create a broader public debate about the meanings of black identity, legacies of slavery, or contemporary discrimination in the United States. Yet, by examining the exposition as presented, rather than what it failed to be, the chapter uncovers important and sometimes surprising influences on the fair's messages.

This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain intellectual development and social progress and frequently included Shakespeare as part of their educational programs, but they usually read Shakespeare in ways very different from those employed by the white women's clubs already discussed. First, few black clubs read only Shakespeare. Rather, the most common practice was to read Shakespeare as part of a wider curriculum that included other classic authors, African American writers, women authors, and usually a substantial component of civic work, more so than for most white women's clubs. In this context, reading Shakespeare was not the only goal for most black women readers, but it was a significant step in their commitment to education as a component of racial progress.

This chapter examines the emergence of the “Memphis Sound” during the mid-1960s. Heralded as the era's “blackest” pop music, the sub-genre became an internationally recognized symbol for racial progress and reconciliation. Musicians claimed that the Memphis Sound owed its distinctiveness to the interracial group of musicians who blended the South's musical traditions into a unique and transformative mixture. Despite its black roots, the larger appreciation of the Memphis sound as both sound and ideology was increasingly framed around its redemptive effect on white people. This erasure of African Americans paralleled a broader distortion in which southern recording studios became known as colorless utopias that were free from racial conflict. This notion remains central to the historical presentation of southern soul and denies a more complex history that can only be revealed by understanding how the Memphis Sound developed as both music and mythology.

This chapter argues that Manderlay (2005) challenges the interpretation of emancipation as the founding moment that propelled US racial progress from slavery to freedom. The film asks an important question: what if that very history about emancipation, as it is told now, thwarts ongoing quests for black freedom? In Manderlay, a black community chooses to remain enslaved on a plantation seventy years after emancipation. There are many ways to read the film, but most critics argue that von Trier makes slavery seem preferable to emancipation. However, the film can also be seen to emphasize how the United States simultaneously proclaims loudly that slavery is past and remains a racially hierarchical society that delimits the possibilities for black freedom. In Manderlay, black freedom seems so threatening to the US social order that blacks can be killed simply for presuming that emancipation actually confers freedom.

This introductory chapter discusses events that mark three periods of racial progress in U.S. history. These are: the period following the Revolutionary War, the period that began with the Civil War and ended with the compromise of 1877, and the period following World War II. Obama's election as president is believed to mark the beginning of a fourth. The analysis undertaken in this work along with some lessons from periods past enables us to speculate on how long the current period might last and what direction it might take. Unfortunately, these periods of racial progress come on the heels of national crises—wars—that destabilize the status quo and allow for the emergence of new ideas and leaders. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter focuses on the Harlem Globetrotters as Cold Warriors between 1947 and 1954. This is an important moment because prior to the passage of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the State Department was in the unenviable position of trying to defend segregation while stressing racial progress. Moreover, the politics of symbolism associated with the Globetrotters' tours was designed to give legitimacy to existing racial inequalities in American society by stressing “progress” during the early Cold War era, despite the social, political, and legal barriers that hindered African American advancement. The symbol of the successful yet segregated athlete allowed the government to argue that segregation was not an impediment to the advancement of individual African Americans.

This epilogue considers the developments in racial progress since the decades covered in this volume. It shows how millions of African Americans find themselves mired in poverty and trapped in a world shaped by post-industrial urban decline and the retrenchment of the welfare state, their chances for a better future severely constrained by the failure of public education and the persistence of discriminatory practices in employment, housing, credit and insurance markets, the criminal justice system, and a range of public institutions. Having more African Americans holding elected office, working in corporate management positions, owning their own businesses, or working and studying on college campuses over the past few decades has not substantially undermined structural inequality or cyclical black poverty.

This chapter debunks the idealistic notion that white Kansans were in favor of racial progress during the Civil War, when slaves took advantage of the turmoil to flee from Missouri and seek refuge in Kansas. It argues that most white Kansans tolerated the black influx owing to naked self-interest: blacks were indispensable to the war effort. By encouraging slaves to flee Missouri, Unionists, “even negrophobic ones,” recognized that “depriving enemies of their labor force would injure them economically and psychologically.” Moreover, white Kansans understood that by employing the “contraband” denied to the enemy, they could offset their own war-related labor shortages.

This chapter examines plays that share a common theme—embracing progress through education—in which the writers depict both conservative, southern Christianity and African conjuring traditions as harmful to racial progress, with education providing the remedy to flawed spiritual thinking. These plays imply that black religiosity becomes more traditionalistic the farther one travels south of the Mason-Dixon line, despite Washington's own position on the wrong side of that line and its established segregation. Religion, superstition, education, and regional bias intersect in the plays of two Washington-based authors, May Miller and Willis Richardson. Education was seen as liberating not only to agnostics (like Richardson) but also to theologically liberal Christians (like Miller), as it aligns faith with reason and the scientific progress of the age.

In this chapter, Community Market emerges as a hopeful symbol of racial progress and self-reliance. Placed within the historical and contemporary contexts outlined in the previous two chapters, this chapter examines the paradox of residents exhibiting pride in the store while at the same time not shopping there on a regular basis. It also explores the role the second generation owner, Mr. Jones, plays in the community at large, making the argument that the position of authority that many residents claim he has is in part due to the longevity of the store, even in the face of impending gentrification.

This concluding chapter summarizes the major themes explored throughout this book. It argues that Black Power was a flexible and ambiguous concept, and the goals it broadly encompassed—black political, economic, and cultural empowerment—had wide appeal among African Americans. Defining no single path for achieving those goals, Black Power was open to interpretation. In the tumultuous, highly charged urban political landscapes of mid-1960s America, Black Power's meaning was constantly being contested and was always evolving and being adapted to suit different needs and contexts. Moreover, mainstream white politicians, institutions, and organizations played a vital yet understudied role in that process.

This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain intellectual development and social progress and frequently included Shakespeare as part of their educational programs, but they usually read Shakespeare in ways very different from those employed by the white women's clubs already discussed. First, few black clubs read only Shakespeare. Rather, the most common practice was to read Shakespeare as part of a wider curriculum that included other classic authors, African American writers, women authors, and usually a substantial component of civic work, more so than for most white women's clubs. In this context, reading Shakespeare was not the only goal for most black women readers, but it was a significant step in their commitment to education as a component of racial progress.