This testimony, before a public hearing of the New York City Commission on Human Rights in May 1974, has the expressed purposes of briefly discussing and evaluating some of the gains that have been made in the 10 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 20 years after the historic decision that ended legal school segregation.…

The stated purpose of this testimony, before a public hearing of the New York City Commission on Human Rights in May 1974, is to evaluate the political and legal progress--or lack of it--that has been made toward achieving racial equality in the decade since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law. (Author/JM)

By the early 1970's, political and scholarly tides had shifted away from the confidence and optimism of the 1960's. The initial broad consensus on the nation's problems and their solutions declined. An evolution is apparent in the attitudes and pronouncements by popular scholars on the role of federal government and its capacity to bring about…