Hi Bultana,
It was a great movie.
A lot of what can be said of the mid-60s environment faced by Reuben Carter can best be summed up in the following extracts from LBJ's Equality of Outcomes speech of 4th June 1965, at Howard University.
Amongst much of what LBJ had to say, was the following:
".....Our earth is the home of revolution. In every corner of every continent men charged with hope contend with ancient ways in the pursuit of justice......They reach for the newest of weapons to realize the oldest of dreams, that each may walk in freedom and pride, stretching his talents, enjoying the fruits of the earth.....But nothing in any country touches us more profoundly, and nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny than the revolution of the Negro American.....Here are some of the facts of this American failure.
Thirty-five years ago the rate of unemployment for Negroes and whites was about the same. Tonight the Negro rate is twice as high.
In 1948 the 8 percent unemployment rate for Negro teenage boys was actually less than that of whites. By last year that rate had grown to 23 percent, as against 13 percent for whites unemployed.
Between 1949 and 1959, the income of Negro men relative to white men declined in every section of this country. From 1952 to 1963 the median income of Negro families compared to white actually dropped from 57 percent to 53 percent.
In the years 1955 through 1957, 22 percent of experienced Negro workers were out of work at some time during the year. In 1961 through 1963 that proportion had soared to 29 percent.
Since 1947 the number of white families living in poverty has decreased 27 percent while the number of poorer nonwhite families decreased only 3 percent.
The infant mortality of nonwhites in 1940 was 70 percent greater than whites. Twenty-two years later it was 90 percent greater.
Moreover, the isolation of Negro from white communities is increasing, rather than decreasing as Negroes crowd into the central cities and become a city within a city.
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Simply put, the times, they were a'changing, but for the likes of Reuben Carter and many others, change was neither benevolent, nor embracing. Indeed, for this to occur, another generation in time still had to pass tehm by.
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