You could take the floor of Congress for a year and the South where I live was not going to surrender their slaves. It took a war and countless deaths to free the slaves.
In the early 60's Blacks were growing into the middle class, had nuclear families but segregation and democrat Jim Crow laws still held sway and despite LBJ's "Great Society" actually because of it - put Blacks back on the plantation and all the subsequent social legislation kept them there permanently with few exceptions to this day.
For the timid of heart please avert your eyes: