Page 305 - Essencials of Sociology

278 CHAPTER 9 Race and Ethnicity

for blacks. Whites used this ruling to strip blacks of the political power they had gained
rising expectations the sense
that better conditions are soon after the Civil War. Declaring political primaries to be “white,” they prohibited blacks
to follow, which, if unfulfilled, from voting in them. Not until 1944 did the Supreme Court rule that political primaries
increases frustration were not “white” and were open to all voters. White politicians then passed laws that
restricted voting only to people who could read—and they determined that most African
Americans were illiterate. Not until 1954 did African Americans gain the legal right to
attend the same public schools as whites, and, as recounted in the vignette, even later to
sit where they wanted on a bus.
Rising Expectations and Civil Strife. The barriers came down, but they came down
slowly. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, making it illegal to discriminate
on the basis of race. African Americans were finally allowed in “white” restaurants,
Until the 1960s, the South’s public
facilities were segregated. Some hotels, theaters, and other public places. Then in 1965, Congress passed the Voting
were reserved for whites, others for Rights Act, banning the fraudulent literacy tests that the Southern states had used to
blacks. This apartheid was broken keep African Americans from voting.
by blacks and whites who worked African Americans then experienced what sociologists call rising expectations. They
together and risked their lives to
bring about a fairer society. Shown expected that these sweeping legal changes would usher in better conditions in life.
here is a 1963 sit-in at a Woolworth’s However, the lives of the poor among them changed little, if at all. Frustrations built
lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. up, exploding in Watts in 1965, when people living in that ghetto of central Los Ange-
Sugar, ketchup, and mustard are les took to the streets in the first of what were termed the urban revolts. When a white
being poured over the heads of the supremacist assassinated King on April 4, 1968, inner cities across the nation erupted in
demonstrators.
fiery violence. Under threat of the destruction of U.S. cities, Congress passed the sweep-
ing Civil Rights Act of 1968.