One could say and claim that racism has certainly not vanished from America. The KKK still exists as do many supremacists groups. There is also a great book Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in America. It documents events to the present, unfortunately it does not cover the event in Flint Michigan. The difference is that today racism is not institutionalized as it was in past. And today we have laws that guard against someone's racist or biased views from being implemented.

What changed? Or rather what was the impetus for this change? The Civil Rights Movement. It was not sudden at all. African American disaffection with how they were treated had been going on for years. Ronald Schaffer in his book America in the Great War details how African Americans viewed the war. He speculates on pages 80-81 that either patriotism or a hope of turning the war into a campaign for racial equality at home was a reason why they overwhelming supported the war. However, their treatment within the armed forces dashed those hopes quickly. Schaffer points out that 1% of the officer corp of the Army were black, and blacks made up 13% of the Army at the time. Also, African Americans were shocked on how the French treated blacks compared to how Americans treated them. This experienced profoundly changed their outlook. Now this is not to say that the movement for racial equality began with WWI. There are many examples prior to WWI even stemming back into the Antebellum era. In addition I would claim that the growth of black business in the late 19th Century and the founding of the NAACP are examples of the movement prior to WWI. However, I just wanted to demonstrate that the generation before the Civil Rights Movement already held these views.

The Civil Rights Movement (CRM) however is what radically changed perceptions of race or how people of different races were legally treated. It was the institutional breakdown of racism as a result of the CRM. You have the first civil rights act in 1957, (the first one since the Civil Rights Act of 1875), and the subsequent Civil Rights Act of 1960, 1964 and 1968 and each took down institutionalized racism. The CR Act of '64 has 11 titles that breaks down racism, from discrimination in voting, education and in public places among other provisions like Title 9 which makes it easier for people to bring civil rights suits to federal courts. There are other pieces of legislation and court cases as well that helped break it down.

We must remember too that the Civil Rights Movement took place over decades. Brown v Board of ED took place in '54 and the March on Washington where King's "I have a Dream" speech was held, occurred nine years later in '63. And was not even the end of the movement which some historians claim to be in 1968. It was overall not a quick process.

We also cannot forget the role Lyndon Johnson played in passage of the Civil Rights Acts. Johnson was after all a southern(Texas) democrat. Although JFK got the '64 CR Act going Johnson was determined to see JFK's vision through. I could get into a lot more here like the vote count in the senate (only 1 southern Senator voted in favor of the '64 CR Act). But suffice it to say key figures from Johnson, King, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, groups such as SNCC and CORE, certain events like the world wars, Jackie Robinson, Brown v Board of Ed and legislation all combined over decades culminated into the legal society we have today. However, all of that did not eliminate racism from society but it eliminated it from our legal system. That isn't to say that we aren't much better today than 70 years ago. I would argue that yes we are much better and certainly all of that has helped us evolve in our thinking. But racism is still present in American society.