The progression has been a mixture of good and bad. And Alabama 1969 was not representative of the USA. If we projected the sexuality of a 1960 microcosm of the isolated valleys in W. Virginia one could project that “America is an incestuous country” or that Utah is a Polygamous state because they tolerate isolated sects of original Mormonism.
Photography can be quite revealing. Try and find the contrast photos of Ferguson, Mo. 1954 vs. 2014 - same street corner.
1954= Well dressed black FAMILIES with men in suits with hats and women wearing pretty modest dresses holding the hands of THEIR children going about their daily business. Clean streets and tidy businesses in the background. These children had moms AND dads and they behaved much differently because of that structure.
2014= Feral savage looking 3rd world ruffians attempting to loot or destroy the family businesses their fathers, grandfathers or great-grand dads had built. Women looking shameful in attention seeking clothing, or the lack thereof. Kids running amok. Disintegration and chaos every where. And nearly everyone is humongous. Double the size of their grandparents, not due to no free-lunch milk, food stamps, etc.
Tragically, the Black family unit has nearly completely disintegrated in every major US city with stats as high as 90% of fatherless children in some cities. That is a terrible harmful regression, not progression.
Progression and upward mobility has resonated for a few and chaos for all the rest.
“Progression and upward mobility has resonated for a few and chaos for all the rest.”
Hating and despising blacks is not what made the 50s better for many. Look to The Great Society, the rejection of God, welfare, public support for illegitimacy, The Sexual Revolution, the damned hippies of the 60s growing old but not up, taking discipline out of schools and a media that hates whites, particularly God-fearing whites.
The Civil Rights movement wasn’t wrong. A lot of what was introduced along with it - with some support from MLK - was evil. Place the blame where it belongs.
And no, Selma Alabama in 1965-66 was not the entire South.
You couldn’t pay me to live east of the Mississippi, but if I had to, Alabama & Georgia would top my list. Not anywhere north of Tennessee.
And FWIW, in Indiana, my Mom’s Dad was in the KKK and hated blacks. He had 10 kids and all of them grew up despising him for a lot of reasons, but they all say he hated blacks. Indiana. The North has always had plenty of racists.