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COPYRIGHT 1991 by Julian Bond

'60s SUCCESSES AND '90s FAILURES

From the first sit-ins, in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, to the election of black mayors in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Fayette, Mississippi, in November 1966, the ten years of the 1960s saw black Americans win access to public accomodations, legal protection from discrimination, and the right to vote.

In many ways, the 60's decade was a second Reconstruction. Like the first, almost exactly 100 years before, it focused on winning and securing Federal protections for America's half-citizens. Like the first, it saw gains for blacks extended to protection for others. Like the first, it gave new life to movements of other disadvantaged Americans, and like the first Reconstruction, the second ended when the national purpose wavered and reaction swept the land.

Before it ended, however, this Second Reconstruction produced American democracy's finest hout. The Civil Rights Acts