The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America

This examination of the era after the civil rights movement can best be described by the old saying "one step forward, two steps back." Klinkner and Smith attack the widely held view that greater racial equality in the United States is preordained by the characteristics and principles of the founding fathers or the tides of history. The authors look at the circumstances that fostered black civil rights, including wars and political instability; when those factors are reduced, they argue, antiblack backlash sets in, from the Reconstruction era up to post-Reagan Republicanism. The Unsteady March is an alarmist book, but not without hope. The authors offer solutions that include increased commitment to enforcing civil rights legislation, economic parity, and reform of the criminal justice system--as well as bringing back the draft and introducing a universal national service program. --Eugene Holley Jr.