Income by race converged at the greatest rate between 1940 and 1970.

However, as of 2018, Black/white income disparities were almost exactly the same as they were in 1968, 50 years

Although clear majorities supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a national poll conducted shortly after its passage showed that 68% of Americans wanted moderation in its enforcement.

In fact, many felt that LBJ was moving too fast in implementing integration.

On the heels of Reconstruction came a period that Southerners called “redemption,” a violent project to restore white hegemony.

Redemption coincided with the vast upheaval of industrialization and urbanization, when the United States more broadly plunged into the Gilded Age.

But as the century turned and the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era, a diverse group of reformers grabbed the reins of history and set a course toward greater economic equality, political bipartisanship, social cohesion and cultural communitarianism.

Some six decades later all of those upward trends reversed, setting the United States on a downward course that has brought us to the multifaceted national crisis in which we find ourselves today, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the Gilded Age.