As long as you are south of the Canadian border, you are South. – Malcolm X
1950: The 1950 Internal Security Act gives the President emergency powers to use preventive detention against anyone suspected of espionage or sabotage. Some immigrants are surveilled and put into deportation proceedings based on evidence of “subversive activity” that dated back decades. Of over 200 people arrested for deportation on political grounds between 1944 and 1952, nearly all have lived in the U.S. for at least 20 years; two out of three for over 30 years. A large majority are over 65 years old. Nearly half came from Eastern Europe or the Balkans and are parents of children who are U.S. citizens. Ten percent had been officers of trade unions. Attorney General Tom Clark tells Congress that “91.4%” of the Communist Party’s leadership are “either foreign stock or married to persons of foreign stock.” Amend-ments to the 1948 Displaced Persons law eliminate the preference for farmers and extend the total visa allotment to 400,000, including 80,000 Jews.
Congress bars further immigration by fascists (by now, the Nazi scientists and collaborators have been naturalized). It requires communist organizations to register and have their literature stamped as propaganda, bans communists from holding passports or government jobs and establishes a board to investigate persons suspected of joining such groups, members of which cannot become citizens. Immigrants found in violation can have their citizenship revoked. The State Department allows war criminals to remain U.S. citizens. When Soviet bloc countries request their extradition, it refuses. A 1954 revision of the law will eliminate the prohibition that had made suspected war criminals ineligible for U.S. visas.
A report of communist influence in radio and television destroys hundreds of careers. Many other writers and performers are pressured to appear before HUAC to clear their names. Six concentration camps are built to hold anyone deemed a threat during a state of emergency. Senator Joe McCarthy gives his “Communists in Government Service” speech.
California requires state employees to subscribe to a loyalty oath that specifically disavows radical beliefs. The University of California fires 31 faculty members who refuse to sign it; they sue and are rehired. Louisiana erects a historical marker near the site of the 1873 Colfax Massacre. Its inscription claims that the white mob violence that killed 150 Blacks “ended carpetbag misrule” in the state. The U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Francisco and Norfolk, Virginia. Truman appoints a former head of the Japanese internment camps as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
1950-Present: The median household in public housing earns 57% of the national median income. That number will fall to 41% by 1960, 29% by 1970 and 17% by1990, when, relatively speaking, residents will be three times as poor as they had been in the 1950s. The G.I. Bill finances 90% of the 13 million houses constructed in the 1950s, but southern politicians ensure that 98% of those homes go to whites, even in the North. Only one Black family can buy a home between 1950 and 1960 in white neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley. Of 350,000 federally subsidized homes built in Northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 go to blacks, as do none of the 82,000 homes in Levittown, New York. The median price of a single-family house will rise from 2.2 times the median family income in 1950 to over ten times in 2024. People of color will remain locked in the inner cities, their dwellings and businesses often torn down to make room for the interstate freeways used mainly by whites.
Over 100 Black churches will be bombed or burned across the South. The Human Betterment League of North Carolina is a testing ground for programs of forced sterilization. It targets Blacks who it deems “unintelligent,” “promiscuous,” or a “public charge” to justify that their reproduction is undesirable for the nation’s “gene pool.” It will continue until 1977. The state will apologize in 2002 and offer financial compensation to victims in 2013.
1951: Pope Pius XII first uses the phrase “right to life”, launching the modern anti-abortion movement. State restrictions grow tighter, leading to a black market in abortions. Truman establishes a committee to ensure that employers working for the federal government comply with all previous non-discrimination laws. The Martinsville Seven, a group of young black men, are accused of raping a white woman. When the Supreme Court twice refuses to hear the cases, they are executed. They will be pardoned 70 years later. The State Department begins sending moderate blacks on speaking tours to promote the idea that racism has been overcome. Nine states still won’t permit women jurors. When Massachusetts first seats women as jurors, it allows them to seek exemptions based on their gender and to be excused from certain cases if the testimony might prove embarrassing to them.
1952: The Immigration Act ends Asian exclusion and eliminates race as a basis for naturalization, making Japanese and other foreign-born Asians eligible to become citizens for the first time. However, these countries still receive tiny annual quotas. It defines three types of immigrants: those with special skills or relatives of U.S. citizens who are exempt from quotas; average immigrants; and refugees. It again bars suspected subversives, even those who had not been active for decades. The Supreme Court rules that alien land laws in over a dozen states are unconstitutional. The Air Force is the first branch of the military to fully integrate.
1953: The Refugee Relief Act admits more Southern Europeans, including 60,000 Italians, 17,000 Greeks and 45,000 from communist countries, after security screening and proof of guaranteed homes and jobs. President Eisenhower fires 5,000 federal employees and dis-continues Truman’s civil rights doctrine. The State Department reports having fired 425 employees for allegations of homosexuality. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Jews convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, are executed.
Congress begins disbanding Native tribes, selling their lands and ending all federal aid, protections, and services (including health care) to over a hundred Native groups. Conditions on reservations quickly worsen. Over 2,500,000 acres of trust land are removed from protected status, much being sold by individuals to non-Natives. The disastrous policy will not officially end until 1970.
Illegal abortions are not reported, but the Kinsey Report asserts that 90% of premarital and 24% of married pregnancies are aborted. Vice President Nixon imposes on government contractors the primary responsibility for desegregating their own companies, thus ensuring minimal outcomes. The Chemical Corps stages mock anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Winnipeg and Minneapolis. When South Pacific plays in Atlanta, Georgia legislators attempt to ban works that have “an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow” and argue that the song “You’ve got to be carefully taught” justifies interracial marriage.
1953-1973: The CIA, working with the Bureau of Prisons and the Public Health Service, begins Project MK-Ultra, an illegal human experimentation program that administers hallucinogenic drugs to hundreds of unsuspecting men, generally African Americans.
1954: Ellis Island closes. Operation Wetback deports over 250,000 Mexicans annually. The Border Patrol changes its language from “policing unsanctioned laborers” to “policing criminal aliens.” Agribusiness, however, continues to recruit cheap Mexican labor. The continuation of illegal immigration, along with public outcry over many U.S. citizens removed, dooms the program. Republicans eliminate the occupational exclusions by which Southern Democrats had kept most Blacks out the Social Security system. Blacks still cannot catch up, since SSA requires five years of contributions before benefits can be received.
The Supreme Court declares racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine. White students in Washington D.C. walk out in protest. The first White Citizens’ Councils form. Within three years they will operate in 30 states with 250,000 members, using social pressure and economic retaliation to intimidate liberals and prevent integration. Parents will transfer over 500,000 children to private schools (“segregation academies”). In the five Deep South states, all 1.4 million Black schoolchildren will continue to attend segregated schools until 1960. By 1964 fewer than 3% of southern Black children will attend school with white students (fewer than 1% in the Deep South).
Houston organizes public burnings of comic books. The industry responds by forming the Comics Code Authority and bans glamorous criminals, excessive violence, seduction, nudity, vulgarity, homosexuality, vampires, zombies and any main characters who are not white. The code will last into the 2000s. Eisenhower signs the Communist Control Act as 78% of Americans agree that it is a good idea to report any neighbors they suspect of being Communists. Congress renames Armistice Day as Veterans Day.
1955: Emmett Till is murdered. Lamar Smith is murdered at a Mississippi courthouse for attempting to register black voters, and the suspects go free. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Southern states begin to phase out the use of chain gangs. Congress designates all Border Patrol officers as customs inspectors and gives them primary authority over drug interdiction between official ports of entry. The INS strip-searches all immigrant detainees. Testing the first birth control drug, doctors conduct unethical experiments on Puerto Rican women without consent or full disclosure of risk. Many get sick; three die. Ella Fitzgerald is jailed for singing to an integrated audience in Houston.
1956: King’s home is bombed. A white mob blocks school integration in Mansfield, Texas. The original GI Bill ends, having supported nearly 8 million World War II veterans with education and 4.3 million home loans worth $33 billion. As employment, college attendance and wealth surges for whites, disparities with their Black counterparts widen. The first Mexican American in 36 years is elected to the Texas legislature. The Indian Relocation Act forces many Native Americans living on or near reservations to relocate to urban areas and assimilate into the general population. By the 1980s, 750,000 of them will do so. But not all who accept these offers will receive the promised benefits, leading to increases in poverty and homelessness.
Construction of the Interstate Highway System begins, frequently through minority neighbor-hoods, allowing more whites to retreat to the suburbs. Detroit will lose 60% of its population. A Los Angeles freeway cutting through a mixed-race area will destroy 2,000 homes, while Beverly Hills blocks construction of another freeway. Land values in areas bisected by free-ways plummet, adding to generational wealth disparities, while communities suffer from air pollution. Those (mostly minorities) who lose their houses receive no government relocation assistance. The government will not require new housing construction for those forced to relocate by interstate highway construction until 1965. But by then the system will be nearly complete. The Border Patrol rebrands immigration control as crime control, instructing officers to substitute the term “wetback” with “criminal alien”. The Narcotics Control Act imposes life imprisonment and even the death penalty for certain offenses and makes drug conviction a trigger for deportation. Police departments across the South begin to employ dogs to control civil rights activists. Wilhelm Reich is sent to die in prison, and in the only federal government-sanctioned action of this kind in U.S. history, six tons of his writings are burned.
1956-1958: Long-term FHA policies that guaranteed loans to builders of working-class suburb-an subdivisions – with explicit requirements that blacks be excluded – result in a situation in which housing projects for whites have many unoccupied units, while those for blacks have long waiting lists. Eventually, as whites leave the inner cities, almost all public housing will be opened to blacks. But industries such as automakers close downtown assembly plants and relocate to rural and suburban areas to which black workers have less access. Good urban jobs become scarcer and public housing residents become poorer. Every metropolitan area in the nation suburbanizes, with all-white subdivisions surrounding black urban cores.
1957: Utah becomes the last state to permit Native Americans to vote. However, many states continue to suppress their votes through discriminatory practices like literacy tests. A white mob attacks blacks picnicking in a Chicago park that had previously been white-only. Congress establishes a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department and passes a civil rights bill but opponents remove or weaken several provisions. The Cuban Raphael Cruz (Ted Cruz’s father) obtains political asylum in the U.S. The Chemical Corps disperses microorganisms from South Dakota to Minnesota. Further tests cover areas from Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas. The FDA approves the contraception pill for married women, but it remains illegal in some states. The numbers of homes with TV sets surpasses those receiving daily news-papers. Construction of the Kinzua Dam floods Seneca lands protected by treaty.
1958: A Virginia court sentences Mildred and Richard Loving to a year in jail for their interracial marriage. Over 90% of whites disapprove of inter-racial marriage. Residents of Little Rock, Arkansas vote to close their public schools rather than desegregate. Eisenhower sends federal troops to escort the black students. The Supreme Court stops Alabama’s attempt to prevent the NAACP from conducting further business in the state. Eight of the top ten TV shows are westerns, comprising a quarter of all prime-time network hours. Five Hundred Lumbee Indians of North Carolina disrupt a Klan rally in the Battle of Hayes Pond.
1959: Congress bars members of the Communist Party from holding union office. Idaho repeals its ban on interracial marriage, but it remains illegal in 31 states. Twenty-one black teenagers burn to death in an Arkansas reform school. Organizers of an American fashion show in Russia remove scenes that feature black and white models together after forty fashion editors protest the representation of racial integration. For the first time, a group of Southern white men are prosecuted and imprisoned for raping a Black woman.
1960: Student-led lunch-counter sit-ins occur across the South, beginning in Greensboro, followed by Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, Fayetteville and many others. White mobs riot against integration in New Orleans and Jacksonville (“Ax Handle Saturday”). White landowners in Greene County, Alabama, evict 75 black families attempting to register to vote. In Fayette County, Tennessee, 700 blacks who register are evicted. Yale ends its unwritten policy of limiting its Jewish student population to 10%. Nashville is the first major city in the South to desegregate its downtown. The top tax rate on the wealthiest Americans is 91%.
1960-1971: A government doctor performs radiation experiments on over 90 poor, black Americans. He forges consent forms and exposes their chests to the equivalent of about 7,500 x-rays. Eight die. SWAT teams first appear in California. By 1980 the U.S. will see 3,000 SWAT team-style raids/year and 80,000 by 2014. Koch Industries steals Osage crude oil. Over the decade the company will illegally skim off $2.4 billion ($6 billion in today’s money) in profits and create one of America’s greatest fortunes. The Kochs will go on to spend over $200 million on campaigns to attack climate science.
1960-1980: The 1960s will see 160 riots. Of a million persons displaced from their homes by the Interstate Highway Program, 3/4 will be black. A fifth of all black housing in the nation will be destroyed for highways while the government expands housing for whites. As federal courts order public schools in the Deep South to desegregate, private school enrollment will increase by over 200,000 and the South’s 11% share of the nation’s private school enrollment will increase to 24%.
1961: Residents of largely black Washington, D.C. receive the right to vote in presidential elections but can only elect a non-voting delegate to Congress. Whites riot when the University of Georgia integrates. Mobs attack the freedom riders in Alabama. Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of the Freedom Riders, while 92% of blacks say the movement and Dr. King are either moving at the right speed or too slowly in pushing for change. A Virginia judge upholds racial segregation in courtrooms. Birmingham closes its parks rather than permit integration. President Kennedy establishes another committee to force companies to comply with anti-discrimination orders, and a Commission on the Status of Women.
1962: Chicago has over 100 “blockbusting” real estate companies actively changing the racial status of the city. Readers Digest and Look publish sensational stories about welfare cheaters. New Orleans buses Blacks to New York (the “Reverse Freedom Riders”). Eight years after Brown v. Board and despite the fact that most school systems still have not integrated, 85% of whites say that black children have just as good a chance to get a good education as white kids. Alabama segregationist George Wallace’s gubernatorial speech mentions “freedom” 25 times. New Mexico Indians win the right to vote in state elections. The Supreme Court strikes down a Florida loyalty oath. Illinois is the first state to decriminalize sodomy
1963: Nearly two-thirds of whites believe that blacks are treated equally in their communities. Over 700 black children protest segregation in Birmingham, beginning a movement that sparks extensive police brutality. All the white students withdraw from the newly integrated Tuskegee High School. Five days later, terrorists bomb a Birmingham church, killing four black girls.
With 50 bombings in 18 years, blacks nickname the city “Bombingham.” The next month, hundreds of blacks attempting to register to vote are attacked by Selma police. Louisiana merchants protest-ing integration deny service to all members of the military. King comments on church attendance: “The most segregated hour in this nation is Sunday at 11:00 AM”. The March on Washington is the decades-long culmination of a mass movement against racial and economic injustice. Just prior to it, only 23% of Americans have favorable opinions of the proposed rally. Six weeks later (and six weeks before JFK’s assassination), Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy grants the FBI permission to wiretap King. Berkeley passes a pioneering anti-segregation law, but residents oppose it and it is quickly repealed. Assessments on residential properties in Boston’s poor neighborhoods are nearly 50% greater than their actual values, while assessments in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods are 40% of market value.
1964: As Lyndon Johnson easily wins the Presidency, Californians approve a referendum prohibiting the state government from promoting housing integration. The 24th Amendment bans poll taxes in federal elections but ignores state elections. Over 1,000 out-of-state volunteers, half of them Jewish, participate in Freedom Summer alongside thousands of black Mississippians, to register blacks to vote. Integrated groups of pastors attempting to enter segregated churches on Easter Sunday in Mississippi are beaten and jailed. Three civil rights workers are murdered in Mississippi as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party attempts to unseat the whites-only state delegation at the national convention.
White activists led by Carl and Anne Braden purchase a home in Louisville on behalf of a black family. When the family moves in, the house is blown up. The Bradens and other whites are charged with sedition. Carl Braden is convicted and spends eight months in prison.
Seven thousand whites protest New York City school integration. Johnson pressures defense contractors to sign voluntary affirmative action agreements. Southern businesses largely ignore him. The Civil Rights Act bans discrimination on the basis of gender and race (but it will not be enforced until the National Organization of Women exerts pressure on politicians) and aims to end discrimination in all firms with 25 or more employees, as well as public schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. It has 70% public approval, although J. Edgar Hoover (who says, “Dr. Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar in the country”) is more popular in polls than King. Johnson’s War on Poverty funds welfare and employment programs, food stamps, Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid but does not raise taxes to pay for it. The Supreme Court strikes down two state loyalty oath requirements. Three in four Americans say blacks should stop protesting for their rights. Two-thirds of California voters support Proposition 14, which allows property sellers and landlords to openly discriminate. Patsy Mink is the first woman of color elected to Congress.
1965-1982: More Americans will go to prison than between 1865 and 1964.
1965- 2000: The ratio of CEO pay to that of a typical worker will rise from 24:1 to 300:1.
1965: A century after the end of the Civil War, the Voting Rights Act enfranchises racial minorities. Seventy percent of whites say that blacks are treated equally, while 85% of them say that civil rights demonstrations have done more harm than good for blacks. Half believe that King is hurting the cause of civil rights. Blacks make up only about 5 percent of college students between 18 and 24 years old. That number will rise to 14% by 2008, due to affirmative action.
The Immigration and Nationality Act abolishes “national origins” as the basis for quotas and welcomes immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It gives priority to relatives of U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and professionals with specialized skills, but for the first time it limits immigration from Mexico to 20,000/year. This results in the beginning of large-scale illegal immigration. The INS continues to deny entry to homosexuals on the grounds that they have a “constitutional psychopathic inferiority.” Malcolm X is assassinated. Blacks riot in Watts. Alabama State Troopers and the KKK attack 300 nonviolent protesters on a bridge in Selma. The government lists 235 deaths from abortion attempts. In the last major literary censorship battle, Boston bans W.F. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. The Chemical Corps spreads bacteria throughout Washington’s National Airport. The Moynihan Report argues that most problems in black communities stem from family breakdown rather than from a history of segregation and discrimination. The Supreme Court declares sex a private affair. Cezar Chavez and Dolores Huerta lead the United Farm Workers in their first agricultural strike.
Mid-1960s: At its peak, urban renewal displaces 50,000 families annually. No longer needing to appear to have Anglo-Saxon names, film actors begin to use their real, ethnic names.
1966: Twenty urban rebellions occur. Congress allows Cubans to become permanent resi-dents in one year while other immigrants must wait five years to apply. “White Supremacy” is the motto of the Alabama Democratic Party. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party in Oakland. When armed Panthers march in Sacramento, California quickly passes strict gun control. Alabama forbids school desegregation.
Blacks are assigned to combat units in Vietnam at higher rates than their percentages in the population. Making up 11% of the forces, their casualties are over 20%. Black leaders convince Johnson to order that Black participation be cut back. By 1969, Black casualties will drop to 11.5%. Medicare functions as an effective integration tool; within a year of its passage, hospitals and doctors’ offices will desegregate. Army experimenters drop bacteria-filled lightbulbs into ventilation grates throughout the New York City subway system. The Supreme Court bans poll taxes and wealth requirements in state elections. Robert Weaver is the first African American appointed to a Cabinet post.
1966 – Present: Well over 1,000 people will be killed in over 150 public mass shootings.
1967: The Supreme Court rules that Virginia’s interracial marriage ban violates the 14th Amendment, but interracial marriage is still illegal in 16 States. The Court justifies qualified immunity for police officers from being sued for civil rights violations. The Detroit uprising is the worst of 16 major race riots and 130 rebellions. Police arrest 7,000 people. Thousands of sundown towns still exist.
American soldiers in Viet Nam commonly refer to “Indian Country” and search-and-destroy missions as “cowboys and Indians”. The National Student Association has been receiving funding from the CIA. The Bracero Program ends.
1967-1973: Twelve states liberalize their abortion laws. The FBI spends years monitoring Aretha Franklin. Nearly 1,000 colleges introduce Black Studies courses and programs.
1968: Dr. King is assassinated; 125 riots follow across the country. Two days later, Oakland police murder Black Panther Bobby Hutton. The racially tinged film Planet of the Apes will inspire ten sequels, TV series and video games. The Young Lords model themselves after the Panthers as a civil rights organization for Latinos. After spreading to thirty cities, they will be repressed by the COINTELPRO program. Congress increases the FBI’s budget by 10% to fund police training, mostly for riot control. The FBI then orders field offices to gather inform-ation illustrating the “scurrilous and depraved nature of…New Left adherents.” Over a third of Puerto Rican women have been sterilized, often without their knowledge or consent. Forty-three black soldiers stage a peaceful sit-in, protesting plans to deploy them to Chicago for riot-control duty at the Democratic National Convention, where police will brutalize and arrest 2,000 protesters. In the Orangeburg massacre, police fire on black students at South Carolina State College, killing three. The Delaware National Guard occupies Wilmington (roughly 40% Black) for nine months. It is the longest military occupation of a U.S. city since the Civil War.
Black students lead a 133-day strike at San Francisco State University which results in the establishment of the nation’s first Black Studies department. William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols perform American TV’s first interracial kiss on “Star Trek”. Tommie Smith and John Carlos protest American racism after winning medals at the Mexico City Olympics. The Supreme Court prohibits racial discrimination, including blockbusting, in private housing markets. The Fair Housing Act declares housing covenants illegal and permits blacks to access previously white neighborhoods. But it prohibits only future discrimination, without undoing the previous 35 years of government-imposed segregation. The first Special Olympics World Games are held in Chicago.
1969: President Nixon’s Operation Intercept requires customs agents to search every vehicle entering the U.S. for drugs. It throws border crossings into chaos and ends after three weeks. HUAC becomes the House Committee on Internal Security. Nixon directs agencies to spy on citizens. The CIA’s Operation CHAOS violates its charter to focus its counterintelligence on overseas targets only. It infiltrates New Left organizations in universities, creates an index of 300,000 names and opens more thorough files on 7,000 citizens. It reports “very little evidence of communist funding and training of such movements.” However, the operation will continue until the Watergate scandal becomes public in 1974.
FBI Director Hoover describes the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and covertly sabotages them with surveillance, harassment and the assassination of Fred Hampton. By 1982 at least 20 Panthers will be dead. Nixon opposes expanding wel-fare and requires all welfare recipients except mothers with young children to find work, while 44% of whites say that blacks have a better chance than they did to get good paying jobs, and 80% say that blacks have an equal or better chance for a good education than whites do.
The percentage of Southern black students attending integrated schools rises to 23%, from zero in 1954. It will continue rising to 44% in 1989 before falling to 23% in 2011. Yale and Princeton admit women students. Five states enact maternity leave laws. No fault divorce becomes legal. Previously, spouses had to prove who was at fault for the breakdown of the marriage and the burden of proof had been too difficult for women who didn’t have sufficient resources. The Stonewall riots in New York begin the modern fight for LGBT rights.
1970-1980: Newark, Dayton, Tallahassee, Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington and New Orleans will elect their first black mayors.
1970: Congress passes the Equal Rights Amendment and sends it to the states with a seven-year deadline to acquire ratification. The Family Planning Services Act attempts to assist poor people with limiting family size. Over the next six years the Indian Health Service will single out over 25% of Indian women of childbearing age, sterilizing 3,400 of them, often without their knowledge.
Mississippi police open fire on students at Jackson State College, killing two black students and injuring dozens. The murders receive far less attention that the killings of white students at Kent State.
The 1970s will see 16 riots. In Augusta, Georgia, police kill six Black men, all of them shot in the back.
Los Angeles police riot against the Chicano Moratorium, killing four. The IRS removes tax-exempt status from segregated private schools. To retain that status, schools must publish non-discrimination policies and not practice overt discrimination. Many refuse to comply. Two-thirds of the states have policies of giving welfare recipients grants smaller than the states’ own definitions of minimum basic needs. One fourth pay less than 60%. The top tax rate on the wealthiest Americans drops to 72%. Hawaii is the first state to legalize abortion. Massachu-setts Indians establish the first National Day of Mourning as a counter to Thanksgiving.
1971: Nixon declares a “War on Drugs,” which will shape crime policy and (through the loss of voting rights for ex-offenders) every presidential election for the next half century. The prison population will increase from 200,000 to 2.2 million, 60% people of color. Blacks will be incarcerated in state prisons at five times the rate of whites. With only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. will have 25% of the world’s prisoners, nearly half for nonviolent drug offenses. Massacre at Attica prison.
The Supreme Court rules that courts can integrate schools, sometimes requiring the racial composition of individual schools to reflect the composition of their districts. This is generally achieved by busing. White families respond by increasing their move to the suburbs or transferring their children to private schools, thus further increasing the non-white percentages in many urban schools. Congress passes an act to implement a national child day care system, but Nixon vetoes it. A study indicates that 25% of Native American women had been sterilized without their consent.
Japanese American Hibakusha form the Committee of Atomic Bomb Survivors (CABS) — now the American Society of Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors. In 1974 they will ask Califor-nia to create medical programs for all residents suffering from radiation. A similar proposal in 1978 will fail in Congress. Alaska violates native rights by leasing their lands to oil companies. Congress will ultimately grant them 44 million acres and $962 million in compensation for giving up claims to 90% of the state. For the first time since 1902, the Oklahoma tribes win the right to elect their own leaders. The 26th Amendment lowers the voting age to 18.
1971-1980: The KKK will triple its membership.
1971-2023: The share of Americans who are in the middle class will fall from 61% to 51%.
1972- 2017: At least 521 U.S. towns and cities will disband their police forces.
1972 – Present: Prosecutorial misconduct is implicated in over 550 death penalty reversals or exonerations.
1972: The U.S. experiences over 2,500 domestic bombings in 18 months. Police arrest the Abortion Seven. Nixon integrates the construction workforce on federally regulated projects. Construction unions protest. In the last major loyalty oath case, the Supreme Court upholds a requirement that Massachusetts employees swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. It decides that capital punishment violates the Constitution. Instead of marking the death penalty’s end, however, this decision spurs its resurgence. States will craft new systems, and executions will resume and trend upward and reach a peak – nearly a hundred executions – in 1999. A third of the 1,500 executions since the 1970s will be in Texas.
1973: Enrollment at Indian boarding schools reaches its highest point, 60,000. American Indian Movement (AIM) activists occupy the Wounded Knee massacre site. Over 2,000 Indians resist a siege by the FBI, Marshals and eventually the army, which fires half a million rounds of ammunition. The 10-week standoff ends with 185 Native people indicted.
Los Angeles County first acknowledges the existence of a gang with 47 members within the Sheriff’s Department. In magazine articles depicting welfare, 75% of pictures feature African Americans even though they comprise 35% of recipients. Louisiana changes its life-in-prison sentences from “10/6” to a 20-year minimum. Nixon creates the Drug Enforcement Administration. He blames the anti-Vietnam War movement and leaking of the Pentagon Papers on Jews.
The Supreme Court legalizes abortion and bans federal agencies from discriminating against disabled candidates. But it agrees that a Texas school district’s financing system, based on local property taxes, does not violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Urging that this system creates wealth-based discrimination, the plaintiffs argue that the Constitution supports the principle that education is a fundamental right. The court disagrees. This right will not be recognized until 2020.
Congress abolishes the draft, and the military becomes all-volunteer. By the early 1980s, the term “poverty draft” will acknowledge that the enlisted ranks are made up of young people with limited economic or educational opportunities. By 1990, the percentage of Blacks (12% of the population) in the army will be 30%. Puerto Rico will become its number one recruiting territory. The Pentagon will spend over $2.5 billion/year targeting low-income youth with TV commercials and video games. Miami, home to over 350,000 Cuban Americans, elects its first Hispanic mayor. The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. An arsonist destroys a gay nightclub in New Orleans, killing 32.
1973-1976: The Indian Health Service forcibly sterilizes 3,406 Native American women. A court prohibits sterilization of women under 21, but 36 such women are forcibly sterilized.
1973-2005: 413 women will be arrested for self-induced abortions and other claims of fetal harm.
1974: In the largest Indian removal since the 1830s, Congress forcibly relocates 12,000 Dine’ who are blocking strip-mining. The Supreme Court first addresses the issue of school busing, confirming that segregation is allowed if it is not considered an explicit policy of each school district. The Boston School Committee refuses to develop a busing plan. Boycotts and over 40 riots ensue. Senator Joe Biden introduces the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights.
D.C. residents regain the right to vote for mayor but still lack voting representation in Congress. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act allows women to apply for credit without male co-signers and to have credit cards in their own names. The government compensates survivors of the Tuskegee experiment and prohibits individual scientists and their financial backers from deciding for themselves what constitutes ethical research. The Relf v. Weinberger case marks the first time a federal court acknowledges and condemns involuntary sterilization. North Carolina is the last state to end its sterilization policy. The CIA’s operations against antiwar activists become public.
1975: The Pine Ridge shootout occurs. Congress ends the House Committee on Internal Security and calls for decentralizing students from Indian boarding schools to community schools, but many large boarding schools will remain open until the early 1990s. Congress restores full citizenship rights to Robert E. Lee. Latina women initiate a federal class action lawsuit involving large-scale sterilization that occurred without informed consent or through coercion. The Church Committee reveals extensive abuses against U.S. citizens by the FBI and CIA, but no one is prosecuted. California allows prison inmates to marry, bring lawsuits and create powers of attorney. Congress extends the Voting Rights Act of 1965, mandating that bilingual ballots be provided in certain areas and banning literacy tests. Frank Robinson is the first African American to manage a major league baseball team. The Civil Services Commission announces that it will consider applications by gay people.
1976: Ronald Reagan speaks of “welfare queens” to stereotype black, single mothers. Con-gress bars the use of federal funds to pay for most abortions. The Supreme Court rules that political money is free speech and that plaintiffs must prove discriminatory intent behind challenged actions, thus reducing constitutional protections due people of color. The Senate reports that the FBI’s COINTELPRO program involved thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, get people fired, portray innocent people as government informants, destroy activists’ marriages and cripple or destroy black, women’s liberation and anti-war organizations. It had also set up a Ghetto Informant Program with over 7,000 informants to monitor black bookstores, stockpiling reports in a “Racial Intelligence Unit”. The IRS used COINTELPRO to audit thousands of Nixon’s political enemies. The Army’s own surveillance program created files on 100,000 Americans. North Carolina has sterilized 7,600 people, 40% of them minorities.
The Supreme Court prohibits racial discrimination in private schools and holds that states do not have authority to tax or regulate Native activities on their reservations. Tribes soon open bingo operations. Latinas sue Los Angeles County for its use of involuntary sterilization. They lose, but the case will convince the California Health Department to annul the law that had allowed over 20,000 unauthorized sterilizations to occur. President Gerald Ford terminates Roosevelt’s 1942 internment order and apologizes to Japanese Americans. Women are first admitted to military academies. They will be allowed in combat in 2013. Kentucky ratifies the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.
1977: The Equal Rights Amendment receives 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications, but Phyllis Schlafly mobilizes conservative women to stall further votes. Five states revoke their ratification. Two-thirds of blacks, compared with a third of whites, favor unions. A federal appeals court rules in favor of a woman fired for refusing her boss’s sexual advances. In 1980 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will define sexual harassment. Racists attack a synagogue in St. Louis.
1978: President Jimmy Carter approves $4.3 million to build a fence on the Mexican border. White supremacist groups establish camps and train hundreds of vigilantes. Federal author-ities ignore them, accost migrants in the desert and investigate the Sanctuary Movement instead. The militia camps will expand well into the 21st century. The National Socialist Party of America seeks a parade permit in Skokie, Illinois because of the many Holocaust survivors residing there. Skokie refuses to allow it, but the American Civil Liberties Union intercedes on behalf of the Nazis, who march in Chicago. The Supreme Court allows corporations to contribute to ballot initiative campaigns.
Congress restores citizenship to Jefferson Davis, 30 years before apologizing to African Americans for slavery. It restores basic civil liberties to Native Americans, Inuit, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians, allowing them to practice traditional religious rites and cultural practices. The Mormon Church allows blacks to be priests. The Supreme Court upholds affirmative action in college admission policy but rules that specific racial quotas are impermissible. The disparity between white and black students enrolling in elite colleges quickly increases. Congress finally facilitates the prosecution and deportation of Nazi war criminals and collaborators hiding in America. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act bans employers from laying off pregnant women.
1979: Klansmen and neo-Nazis murder five members of the Communist Workers Party in North Carolina. Local police do not intercede. The killers will all be found innocent. In 2015, the city will unveil a marker to memorialize the Greensboro Massacre and in 2017 it will formally apologize. Boston attempts to ban the film Caligula. Louisiana removes parole eligibility for anyone with a life sentence. The Church Rock uranium spill on Navajo land is the single largest accidental release of radioactivity in U.S. history, worse in terms of total radiation than that of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island and second in world history only to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. The contaminated river groundwater spreads through the Rio Puerco alluvium. The FBI begins to surveil the General Union of Palestinian Students. It will gather 10,000 pages of information for nine years without finding any evidence of violence. The Senate again tries to eliminate the Electoral College, losing 51-49. Carter requires government agencies to take affirmative action in support of women’s business enterprises. Job growth peaks and begins to decline. The Justice Department creates an Office of Special Investigations to identify Nazi war criminals. It will investigate 1,700 persons, prosecute over 300, strip 100 of their U.S. citizenship and deport 70, most recently in 2021.
1980: The government ends 35 years of nuclear weapons tests that may have caused 11,000 deaths. Over 125,000 people flee Cuba in the Mariel Boatlift, solidifying Republican control in Florida. The New England Journal of Medicine publishes a one-paragraph letter claiming that addiction risk is low when opioids are prescribed for chronic pain, even though the authors provide no evidence. It will be cited over 600 times, with a large increase after OxyContin is marketed. Over 250,000 will die from overdoses. An Illinois court holds that a defendant’s right to confrontation doesn’t include a right to present irrelevant evidence such as the victim’s reputation and sexual acts with other people, leading to the introduction of Rape Shield Laws.
1980-1990: The Supreme Court employs the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to support white claims of reverse discrimination from affirmative action programs while demanding proof of intent to discriminate before supporting black plaintiffs. A federal court forces Mississippi to stop using “Lost Cause” history textbooks.
1980-2000: Successive administrations will allow massive immigration of Cubans while turning back those escaping fascism in El Salvador and Guatemala. Defining the Haitian boat people (as opposed to Vietnamese boat people) as economic rather than political refugees allows the government to refuse asylum to thousands. Israelis are another special case, with unlimited immigration privileges, unique among Middle Eastern countries. The prison population will quadruple, due entirely to stiffer sentencing policies, not more crime, which will continue to decrease into the 2020s.
1980: Calling affirmative action reverse discrimination, President Reagan reduces funding for equal employment opportunities. However, courts continue to reaffirm hiring quotas. A commission concludes that the interment of the Japanese Americans occurred because of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” and that the military had lied to the Supreme Court. The Government offers compensation to the Sioux nation for taking the Black Hills. The Sioux refuse the award, valued at over $1 billion in 2011, because acceptance would legally terminate their demand for the return of the Hills.
1981-2003: Thirty million American workers will lose their jobs in corporate downsizings.
1981: Reagan cuts welfare (AFDC) spending and allows states to require recipients to participate in workfare programs. The median income of black families declines by 5% and the number of poor Americans increases by 2.2 million. Sandra Day O’Connor is the first female Supreme Court Justice. In 2000, however, she will be among the majority that throws the presidential election to George W. Bush.
1982: Reagan expands the war on Drugs, further fueling mass incarceration, particularly in Black communities, at a time when drug use is actually declining and only 2% of Americans view drugs as the nation’s most pressing problem. He triples the federal drug enforcement budget, hires 4,000 additional prosecutors, triples the number of drug cases and doubles the conviction rate. Albert Sabo, the judge in the Mumia Abu-Jamal trial, says, “I’m gonna help ’em fry the nigger.” Congress enacts a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court makes voting easier for people with disabilities.
1982-1992: The crack cocaine epidemic begins, resulting in a doubling of the homicide rate for young Black males. Southern states will enroll 675,000-750,000 white students in 3,500 segregated private schools, with 65-75% of them attending schools in which 90% or more of the student body is white.
1982-2000: California will build 23 prisons, compared to twelve built between1852 and 1964.
1983: Corrections Corporation of America becomes the first for-profit prison company, running 65 correctional and detention facilities. The Centers for Disease Control deems Haitian immigrants one of the “4 H’s” — alongside homosexuals, heroin users and hemophiliacs — at risk for AIDS. Four years later, when Haitians are removed from the list, one CDC physician will admit that they were “the only risk group that were identified because of who they were rather than what they did.” Louisiana repeals its “Negro” definition of “one thirty-second Negro blood”.
1984: Geraldine Ferraro is the first woman to be nominated for Vice President. Most G.I. Bill mortgages mature, leaving the median white household with a net worth of $39,000 and the median black household (most of whom couldn’t get the mortgages) worth under $3,500. This gap will expand greatly in the 1990s with the increase in value of real estate and stocks.
1985: Reagan attempts a partial border closure with Operation Intercept II. Philadelphia police fire 10,000 rounds of ammunition into a house occupied by MOVE, a black liberation group, before dropping a bomb from a helicopter, igniting a fire that destroys an entire black neighborhood, killing eleven and destroying 61 homes. The unemployment rate for black youths is four times what it had been in 1955. The phrase “grooming” is first used as a pejorative.
1985-present: The war on drugs will disenfranchise over six million people, a third of them black. The more blacks a state contains, the more likely it is to ban felons from voting. The average state will disenfranchise 2.4 % of its voting-age population but 8.4 % of its blacks. In 14 states, the share of blacks stripped of the vote will exceed 10%, and in five states it will exceed 20%. While 75% of whites will register to vote, only 60% of blacks can. Over the next 35 years over a dozen Republican Senators will owe their election to these laws.
1986: The Supreme Court upholds Georgia’s sodomy law. It also decides that challenges to remove jurors from jury pools based on race violates the 14th Amendment. The following year, however, a black male, is convicted and sentenced to death by an all white jury for murdering a white woman in Georgia. Prosecutors had used four of their nine peremptory strikes to dismiss four potential black jurors. Congress gives amnesty to three million undocumented immigrants already in the country but bans hiring or recruiting illegal immigrants. Thousands of businesses and individuals will ignore the law. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act creates a significant disparity in the sentences imposed for crimes involving powder cocaine (used primarily by whites) versus crimes involving crack cocaine (used by minorities), with mandatory minimum sentences set at a 100:1 ratio. Black prison populations swell, while white numbers remain stable. Blacks receive drug sentences 11% longer than whites, a disparity that soon increases to 49%. Congress establishes the National Indian Gaming Commission. The Firearm Owners’ Protection Act prohibits the federal government from keeping a registry. Only six states will maintain gun registries.
1987: A court rules that Boston’s school district has successfully implemented its desegre-gation plan even though 80% of the student population in 13 schools is either white or black. Reagan abolishes the fairness doctrine, enabling the rise of right-wing talk radio. No Demo-cratic president will reinstate it. The Supreme Court rejects a Black man’s death penalty appeal grounded in claims of racial inequality and instead accepts racial sentencing disparities as “an inevitable part of our criminal justice system.” The FBI arrests seven Palestinians and a Kenyan known as the “Los Angeles 8.” The government will drop the case in 2007. Arizona Governor Evan Mecham rescinds an earlier order establishing MLK Day as a state holiday.
1988: California criminalizes membership in street gangs and imposes greater punishments for crimes committed by members. Gang enhancements can add 10 years to a sentence. The process for identifying members is notoriously subjective and can include “frequenting gang areas”. Over 85% of people validated as gang members in California are Black or Latinx. The Fair Housing Act allows landlords to refuse to rent to anyone with a single drug dealing conviction, directs public housing authorities to evict any tenant who allows drug-related activity to occur in or near their apartments and eliminates many federal benefits, including student loans, for anyone convicted.
Presidential candidate George Bush uses the Willie Horton case as coded racialized language. An Anti-Drug act establishes a long list of retroactively applied “aggravated” felonies that trigger deportation for immigrants, including lawful permanent residents, and establishes new sentencing guidelines, including a mandatory five-year-minimum for simple possession of cocaine with no evidence of intent to sell. The Washington Post prints 1,565 racially tinged articles on the drug scourge. Activists demand that the FDA speed up the research, develop-ment and approval of drugs for AIDS. Congress passes the Civil Rights Restoration Act over Reagan’s veto and pays $20,000/person to tens of thousands of Japanese American survivors of the internment camps but refuses to compensate Japanese Latin Americans.
1989: A white mob murders a black teen in Brooklyn. New York City racially profiles and convicts five Black and Latino youths (the Central Park Five) of raping a white woman jogger in Central Park. Trumpus pays for full-page newspaper ads demanding their execution. They will be exonerated in 2000 and receive $41 million in compensation. Boston police scour Black communities searching for anyone who fits the description provided by a white man who had falsely claimed that a Black man had shot his pregnant wife. Young black males engage in more criminal behavior than young white males, but when researchers compare only employed young males of both races, the differences vanish. Another study finds that 64% of the public (up from 2% in 1982) now consider drugs to be the nation’s most significant problem. South Dakota replaces Columbus Day with Native American Day.
1990: Over 1,500 Black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an unlicensed measles vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were never informed that it was experimental. Congress revises all grounds for immigration exclusion, including homosexuality. It increases total immigration to 700,000/year for 1992–94, and 675,000/year afterwards. It provides family- and employment-based visas and a lottery for immigrants from “low admittance” countries. This benefits Salvadorans by also creating temporary protected status for those unable to return home because of ongoing violence. The Border Patrol erects barriers south of San Diego, ultimately fourteen miles of fencing. Congress declares that Native Americans are entitled to use their own languages and mandates collection of data on crimes committed because of the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or ethnicity. This is the first statute to recognize LGBTQ people. Twelve percent of young people now call themselves multiracial. Lake Forest, Illinois ends its anti-Jewish and anti-Black housing covenants. The top tax rate on the wealthiest Americans drops to 28% before eventually stabilizing at 37% in 2018. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act pays $50-100,000 for nuclear workers and downwinders who lived and worked near the Nevada nuclear test site, but the Trinity down-winders of New Mexico remain ineligible. Congress prohibits discrimination based on disability.
1990-2019: Fifty black churches will be bombed or burned across the South. Courts will relax supervision of school districts, calling for voluntary efforts to achieve racial balance. Twenty-two states will ban increasing welfare payments to mothers after they have more children. In order to receive additional funds, women will be required to prove that their pregnancies were the result of contraceptive failure, rape, or incest. Seven states will later repeal these laws.
1991: The Supreme Court lifts a desegregation decree, authorizing one-race schools in Oklahoma City. The Los Angeles Times reports on L.A. Sheriff gangs. President Bush prevents an attempt to revive the Fairness Doctrine. A general refers to Iraq as “Indian Country”. After repeated revelations of illegal (and deadly) government experiments on unknowing citizens, Congress regulates human-subject research. However, it states, “Unless otherwise required by law, department or agency heads may waive the applicability of some or all of the provisions of this policy.” In 2006 the Navy will establish a directive that includes guidelines for waiving consent and praises the potential for research involving “severe or unusual intrusion, either physical or psychological, on human subjects (such as conscious-ness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques).” Even though most blacks eligible for welfare do not utilize it, 78% of whites think that blacks prefer to live on welfare. Eufaula, Alabama’s high school holds its first integrated prom.
1991-1995: The number of unauthorized immigrants sentenced in federal courts will increase by 167%, compared with 13% for citizens.
1991 to 2000: The U.S. will admit more legal immigrants, (10-11 million) than in any previous decade. Criminologists speak of black youth “superpredators” and “crack babies”.
1992-2000: President Bill Clinton will slash funding for public housing by $17 billion and increase prison funding by $19 billion.
1992: Los Angeles experiences over 1,000 gang-related homicides. A white jury acquits three of the four police officers who beat Rodney King, provoking the Los Angeles uprising. Gangs in Watts establish a peace treaty to challenge police brutality and end the mass violence. After two years, gang violence will drop 44%. Peace treaties will spread to 15 cities, despite repeated attempts by police to undermine them. Candidate Clinton promises to “end welfare as we have come to know it.” Berkeley changes Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. One in five Americans believe that Jews are more willing than others to use ‘shady’ practices to get what they want.
1993: Clinton begins Operations Hold the Line and Gatekeeper, which focus on intercepting illegal entries at the border. With the “Prevention Through Deterrence” strategy, the Border Patrol attempts to control immigrant movement by rerouting it away from urban ports of entry into wilderness areas, thus heightening the risks. These programs will cause over 7,000 deaths without halting the mass movement of people. Washington State passes the first “three-strikes” law mandating life imprisonment, followed eventually by 25 other states. Under these laws, blacks will grow from under 10% of mandatory minimum drug offenders in 1984 to 28% by 1990. Congressional acknowledgement of federal involvement in the 1893 overthrow of Hawaii’s government gives impetus to the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement. The National Holocaust Museum opens in Washington, years before America’s own historical crimes of genocide and slavery will be similarly addressed.
Congress requires state motor vehicle agencies to offer voter registration opportunities. States must offer mail-in voter registration applications and opportunities to register to vote at certain offices and maintain accurate voter registration lists. In its first year, over 30 million people update or complete their registration. By 2023, 23 states plus D.C. will have some form of automatic voter registration.
1993-2017: Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, oversees what the Justice Department will call the worst pattern of racial profiling in U.S. history, including the re-introduction of chain gangs, until he himself is convicted of crimes and removed.
1994: The North American Trade Agreement floods rural Mexico with subsidized American corn, bankrupting two million Mexican farmers and provoking a massive increase in migration northward. California’s Proposition 187 denies health and social services and education to undocumented immigrants. Returning Gulf War veterans are infected with a microbe used in biological weapons and tested on prisoners in Texas prisons. A study finds a strong asso-ciation between exposure to certain chemicals and Gulf War illness. Clinton bans assault weapons. Mass shooting deaths drop by 43%, but Congress provides for 100,000 new police officers, creates 50 new federal capital offenses, eliminates grants for higher education for convicts and allows 13-year-olds to be tried as adults. This quickly leads to a huge increase in the prison population.
1995: The U.S. and Cuba agree on a lottery that will allow 20,000 Cubans/year into the country. Clinton institutes the “wet foot, dry foot policy.” For the next two decades, any Cuban caught on the waters between the two nations (with “wet feet”) is returned to Cuba, while one who makes it to shore (“dry feet”) can qualify for expedited residency status. Mississippi ratifies the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery, while Alabama and Arizona re-introduce chain gangs. White flight reverses as affluent suburbanites gentrify decayed urban neighborhoods, raise property values and displace minorities. Fifty-seven percent of child murderers are their parents or caregivers. When asked to visualize a drug user, 95% picture a black face, even though blacks constitute only 15% of drug users. The government admits that in the late 1940s it had offered immunity from prosecution to Japanese war criminals and scientists who had performed human medical experiments in exchange for data on biological warfare research. Some of the victims had been tortured to death.
1996: Clinton authorizes mandatory detention of illegal immigrants. Detention numbers in-crease dramatically. He authorizes further border fencing, but environmental concerns slow construction. Congress prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections and defines a single conviction of “moral turpitude” or any conviction that carries a minimum sentence of one year as a deportable offense.
The Supreme Court supports racial disparities in conviction rates. Nine states will ban affirmative action, leading to a 23% drop in the chance of college admission for minority students relative to nonminority students, compared with a 1% drop in other states. Congress replaces AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), signifying that no one can make a claim for assistance simply because they are poor. “Work first” programs impact Black women in racialized and gendered ways, emphasizing the need to find a job to qualify for support. It allows states to spend funds as they choose, rather than direct aid to those in need, and it denies assistance to immigrants living in the U.S. for under five years. Clinton declares that public housing agencies should exercise no discretion when a tenant or guest engages in criminal activity and proposes a “One Strike and You’re Out” rule. Two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or brown, but 85% of those convicted of possession are black.
The Telecommunications Act allows radio and TV stations to eliminate public interest programs. Enabling media consolidation, it results in rural America becoming saturated by right-wing media. By 2007, 91% of programming on news/talk stations will be conservative. Both the juvenile arrest rate for all offenses and the nation’s overall crime rate reach their peak and begin to decline, although both public perception of the crime rate and state crime-fighting expenditures will continue to rise for the next two decades. Congress criminalizes online discussion of abortion. Attorney General Janet Reno refuses to enforce the provision, but it remains on the books. The Oakland School Board acknowledges Ebonics and recognizes Black people as bilingual.
1996-2012: When the home college football teams of juvenile court judges lose unexpectedly, their sentence lengths increase, with black defendants receiving the brunt of these decisions.
1997: A study finds that three-strikes laws have not decreased serious crime. Congress mandates that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the CDC may be used to promote gun control.
1998: Japanese Latin Americans who had sued for reparations in 1988 receive $5,000. Clinton’s final crime legislation allows housing agencies to bar or evict applicants believed to be using drugs, even if they have not been convicted. National unemployment rates plummet, but jobless rates among noncollege black men in their twenties rise to their highest levels ever.
1999: A Memphis jury finds that the MLK assassination was the result of a conspiracy that included “governmental agencies.” The media ignore the case.
1999- 2015: Over 183,000 deaths from prescription opioids will be reported in the U.S.