" from whites. Although these solutions ultimately proved unworkable for solving economic problems, they tried, while the Civil Rights movement did not attempt solutions. The failure of the Civil Rights Movement in articulating and pursuing a plan of economic justice for lower-class Blacks doomed the movement's goal of integration, furthering de facto segregation in housing and schools. The end of Jim Crow did not end the income difference between Whites and Blacks. In 1954, Blacks earned approximately 53% of what whites earned, and in 1980 they earned 57% what an average White earns. At this rate racial equality in average income would come in 250 years.46 This racial inequality in income left unaddressed by the Civil Rights Movement, forces poor Blacks to remain in deteriorating slums in cities, while whites flee to the suburbs. The de facto segregation that has emerged has shifted the good jobs to suburbs and relegated lower-class Blacks in cities to diminishing job prospects. This has caused rising rates of unemployment, economic desperation, and jobs predominantly in the low-wage sector. This poverty cycle among lower-class Blacks remains after vestiges of legal Jim Crow have disappeared.47 White flight to suburbs and the poverty trap of the inner city for Blacks has been so great that in 1980 the number of segregated schools surpassed the number of segregated schools before 1954.48 Both the First and Second Reconstructions left Blacks with no economic base, dependent on others for their social and political power. And as in the First Reconstruction, when those political alliances did not serve the needs of the whites in power, Blacks were abandoned and their political and social goals wiped out. In the 1990's most political leaders have long given up on the plight of the Black urban poor. Mandatory busing is fast being eliminated in major cities, and Black leaders cry out for help to a President and Congress more i...
