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The National Urban League assesses 1984 in their eleventh annual State of Black America report.
1985 (Jan 23)
The National Urban League (NUL) said that 1984 was a year of “survival and hope" for Black Americans, despite attempts by the administration of President Ronald Reagan “to be a Rambo-like destroyer of civil rights gains.” In 1984, the NUL reported that most Black children lived in poverty, Black unemployment had declined to 15 percent but was still three points above the Black average since 1975 and more than double the White rate; and although Black family incomes rose, the gap between Black and White incomes had “grown wider for every type of family except those with two earners.” The statistics and observations were included in the NUL's eleventh annual “State of Black America” report. In commenting on the report, John Jacob, president of the NUL, said that President Ronald Reagan's citation of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, call for “a colorblind society” in 1963 was “obscene” and used “as a justification for trimming 'measures like affirmative action [that] move us toward a racially neutral society by opening opportunities that help Black people enter the mainstream.'"
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.