PART I Introduction

When the civil rights revolution came to pass in the 1960s, African American progress surged upward in many areas. Public accommodations—like hotels, department stores, and restaurants—rapidly desegregated. Black voting surged, and so did the number of black elected officials. Whole spectra of skilled and professional jobs opened up, and the number of African-American households with what could be considered upper-middle-class incomes quadrupled in the course of a decade. But housing segregation in much of America remained pervasive and intense and, as we suggested in our Introduction, where segregation has persisted, it has held back black progress in a