The unfinished work of the Civil Rights Movement

Sixty years ago, the Civil Rights Movement accomplished something that many thought impossible. It dismantled Jim Crow—the legal architecture of racial domination that had constrained Black life in America for nearly a century. The 1964 Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in employment, housing, and public life. The 1965 Voting Rights Act restored a brief period of voting for Black Americans that transpired during the Reconstruction era following the abolishment of slavery. Affirmative action created pathways into institutions that had been explicitly designed to exclude certain groups of people. These were not symbolic victories. They were structural ones. 

And yet there have been substantial structural rollbacks across the board. Affirmative action, which simply allowed people to more equally access education, has been struck down by the Supreme Court, while separate executive action has rolled back affirmative action in jobs and federal contracting. The Voting Rights Act has been systematically gutted through one Supreme Court case after another. Gerrymandering is erasing Black political representation across the South. The gains that defined the movement’s triumph are being methodically reversed, and the rollbacks are accelerating. 

How progress is sustained  

Social movement scholars spent decades analyzing how the civil rights movement won. They studied strategy, mobilization, and the political openings that made landmark legislation possible. What they failed to study was what came after. Most movement theory simply assumed that significant legislative victories were durable—meaning, once Jim Crow was dismantled, it stayed dismantled. 

That assumption was wrong. What scholars missed was the long game: the sustained capacity of white supremacy ideology to adapt, regroup, and reclaim what it lost. White supremacy encompasses the belief that white people are inherently superior to people of other races—a belief system which can harden into a “political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical, and institutional” superiority of the white race. The Civil Rights Movement cracked open opportunity structures that had been sealed for a century. It did not, however, destroy the economic and cultural foundations on which those structures, deeply embedded in this ideology, rested. Opportunity continued to be precarious for many Black Americans, who slowly but surely watched a half century of racial progress wither away through SCOTUS decisions, presidential executive orders, and state legislative votes. William A. Gamson captures this precarious space well: 

Racism is embedded in culture 

W.E.B. Du Bois understood something that too many analysts still resist—racism is not simply a set of laws to be repealed or policies to be changed. It is a cultural and psychological inheritance, transmitted across generations through child-rearing, institutions, and a dominant narrative that assigns the disproportionate share of American wealth and power to white Americans as something natural and deserved. 

Du Bois warned that liberationist movements must contend not only with conscious, rational policy but with these unconscious habits, conditioned reflexes, and deeply embedded cultural assumptions that treat Black subordination as the default state of the world. These forces do not disappear when legislation passes. They go underground, reorganize, and wait for the political moment to resurface. 

The ideology of white supremacy—fueled by fear, resentment, and the perception that demographic change threatens white dominance—has been revitalized by the rise of the far-right and alt-right, emerging from the ideological dregs that institutional forces were never able to uproot. Fringe radicals who adhere to the ideal of cementing white culture over all others broadened their umbrella to welcome those with anti-establishment sentiments and shared views on ethno-nationalist and authoritarian ideologies, making the movement more appealing to a new generation. Shifting demographics and cultural grievances have enabled what sociologists call the “radicalized mainstream,” pushing once-extreme beliefs to the center of political and cultural discourse. The 2016 presidential election capitalized on this ideology moving out of obscurity and into the spotlight, and the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville confirmed that it had fully resurfaced.    

The shift in political lines means some conservatives are now labeled alt-right, some independents are now considered left of center, and some progressives are called radical leftists. The attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion; the assault on voting rights through Louisiana v. Callais (2026); the executive orders terminating DEI-related policies in government; the effort to rewrite how American history is taught in schools—these are not isolated culture-war skirmishes. They are a strategy to re-institutionalize the conditions of racial domination that the Civil Rights Movement fought to destroy. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 presidential transition initiative is the playbook for this strategy—a detailed policy agenda to reverse progressive actions, expand executive power, and restrict rights across the board. In the first year of Trump’s second term, multiple policies from this playbook were enacted, in contrast to the president’s prior statements. 

The politicization of government is widespread—all branches have been impacted. Yet, there are initiatives like the Project 2025 Tracker helping to keep the public informed on the evolving landscape and create pathways for action. In opposition to the Project 2025 agenda, Democracy 2025 was established with more than 700 partner organizations made up of advocates, policy groups, and litigators to serve as the strategic hub for advancing pro-democracy values. These groups are actively combatting legislative policies they consider an attack on basic freedoms. While this coalition work aims to lay a foundation for the long fight ahead, it remains to be seen whether it will prove impactful for those most vulnerable.  

Progress is not linear 

American racial history follows a dialectical pattern: hard-won progress followed by fierce, organized regression. When there are significant legislative and legal wins for civil and human rights, a wave of opposition typically follows to curtail those gains. It happened with Reconstruction being followed by convict leasing and Jim Crow. After the initial gains of the 1950s and ’60s—Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Act (1964)—the backlash came through increased law-and-order rhetoric to discredit Black activism, the expansion of civil asset forfeiture laws enabling widespread racial profiling and financial devastation for those suspected of drug offenses, and mass incarceration driven by the war on drugs in the 1970s and ’80s. In 1997, President Bill Clinton launched the “One America Initiative,” a campaign to promote racial dialogue and equity, but two decades later, after the Obama presidency, there was an explicit reassertion of white nationalist politics at the highest levels of government.  

Understanding this pattern is not pessimism. It is the prerequisite for effective strategy. The Civil Rights Movement succeeded because leaders recognized that dismantling legal segregation was necessary but insufficient. The movement that comes next must be built on the same clarity: that ending formal discrimination was the beginning of the work, not the end of it. The deeper project—confronting the economic foundations of racial exploitation and the cultural machinery that sustains them—remains unfinished. 

Du Bois counseled that overturning centuries of embedded racial ideology would require a long struggle, possibly lasting generations. He was right. The question is whether today’s movements, advocates, and policymakers are prepared to fight on that timeline. 

Given these historical and current dynamics and academic literature on social movements and civic engagement, four recommendations are suggested.  

Policy recommendations 

1. Restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act: The pre-clearance requirements diminished by the Supreme Court should be reinstated and new, enforceable protections against racially discriminatory redistricting should be established.  
2. Invest in long-term civic infrastructure in Black communities: Voter registration is not enough. Federal and philanthropic investment must support sustained civic engagement organizations embedded in Black communities. These organizations should have the resources and staying power to operate between election cycles, build political power, and hold elected officials accountable over time. 
3. Counter the cultural rollback through education policy: The attacks on how American history is taught are not incidental to the project of racial regression—they are central to it. The administration’s attacks on education have been instituted through an executive order to “end radical indoctrination” in schools, such as banning critical race theory. Federal education policy should protect the right of students to learn evidence-based history, including the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, and condition federal funding on compliance with those standards. 
4. Build economic power as a foundation for political power: The Civil Rights Movement’s legislative victories were never matched by structural economic transformation. Federal policy must directly address the racial wealth gap through targeted investment in Black-owned businesses, homeownership, and community development—recognizing that political rights without economic resources remain fragile. 

To reverse the current dismantling of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, the Black community and its allies must regroup and rekindle a powerful resistance movement to restore the democratic rights of Black people and other marginalized populations.