Black Americans

President Obama today plans to commemorate the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law 50 years ago this summer, at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Tex. The historic legislation sought equal access to employment opportunity, public accommodations, public education and voting rights. A poll conducted six years after the landmark […]

A half century after passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, a wide disparity persists between blacks and whites over how much progress has been made.

Although household-income growth for African-Americans has outpaced that of whites since the 1960s, those gains haven't led to any narrowing of the wealth gap between the races.

Most blacks, whites and Hispanics say they get along reasonably well with each other -- and at modestly higher levels than in the recent past.

Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality and about the same share (49%) say that “a lot more” remains to be done.

Much has changed for African-Americans since the 1963 March on Washington (which, recall, was a march for "Jobs and Freedom"), but one thing hasn't: The unemployment rate among blacks is still about double that among whites, as it has been for most of the past six decades.

In a new study, researchers found nearly a three-fold increase in the share of integrated New York City neighborhoods with a mix of whites, Hispanics and Asians but few, if any, blacks.

America’s struggles with race and racism are never completely out of the news. But it is hard to remember when a series of stories have given this issue such resonance, whether in the rulings of the Supreme Court on affirmative action and voting rights, a tense trial in a Florida courtroom and even the racially insensitive comments of a celebrity chef.

The Census Bureau made big news last week when it reported that the black voter turnout rate (66.2%) exceeded the white voter turnout rate (64.1%) for the first time ever in 2012. But a closer look at the numbers raises some intriguing questions. It’s possible that the lines may have first crossed in 2008. But […]