Influence: Science and Practice

by Robert B. Cialdini

It didn’t seem to make sense that within their 300-year history, most of which had been spent in servitude and much of the rest in privation, American blacks would choose the socially progressive sixties as the time to revolt. Indeed, as Davies points out, the two decades after the start of World War II had brought dramatic political and economic gains to the black population. In 1940, blacks faced stringent legal restrictions in such areas as housing, transportation and education; moreover, even when the amount of education was the same, the average black family earned only a bit more than half the amount its counterpart white family earned. Fifteen years later, much had changed. Federal legislation had struck down as unacceptable formal and informal attempts to segregate blacks in schools, public places, housing, and employment settings. Economic advances had been made, too; black family income had risen from 56 to 80 percent of that of a comparably educated white family.