When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era

by Donovan X. Ramsey

The percentage of Black people earning at least ten thousand dollars a year more than doubled, from 13 to 30 percent between 1961 and 1971. Along the same timeline, the number of Black people in professional and technical jobs rose 128 percent. The number of Black people in college almost doubled from 370,000 to 727,000 between 1967 and 1971. But even as the Black middle class was expanding, deindustrialization and an economic recession were doing away with meaningful opportunities for work. Ultimately, despite the success of a select few, too many Black people still lived in poverty—nearly a third. After a decade of struggle, riots, and death, those folks had nothing to show for it. The tension between this beleaguered group and their upwardly mobile counterparts was captured in the Time magazine write-up. “Probably the crudest dilemma facing the new middle class is their relationship with Blacks left behind in the ghetto,” the article notes. “It is natural enough for the middle class to pull out of the slums once they can afford to—just as other ethnic groups have done. But by leaving, they abandon those who cannot escape the ghetto to its more rapacious elements, aggravating the spread of crime and decay. Small wonder that middle-class Blacks feel some guilt and ambivalence about fleeing to better neighborhoods.”