Robert Leon Woodson describes the advances of African-Americans over the course of their first century of freedom:
The core of the black community in the hundred years between the end of the Civil War and the War on Poverty was the family, a belief in God and business formation. Up until 1965, the marriage rate for blacks was over 80 percent. In fact, during the Great Depression, the black marriage rate was higher than that of whites. In the first 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, black Americans accumulated a personal wealth of $700 million. They owned over 40,000 businesses, 40,000 churches and 937,000 farms. The literacy rate climbed from five to 70 percent.
Woodson focuses on the connection between family structures, education, and economic success. In 2005 he wrote:
Out-of-wedlock births dramatically increased, particularly in the black community. In 1962, 85 percent of all black families had a man and a woman raising a family. Today, about only 47 percent of homes have a married man and woman raising children.
Since Woodson wrote those words in 2005, the situation has not improved.
Children born to unmarried parents are more likely to underperform educationally, be unemployed or underemployed as adults, abuse substances, and commit crimes than children born to intact families. Woodson points out that anti-poverty policies have unwittingly incentivized unmarried parents, and disincentivized marriage.
In the 1950s, when civil rights were finally being realized on a large scale, Blacks in the United States had statistics which compared favorably with Whites in terms of unemployment, literacy, and intact nuclear families. In some cases, Blacks even outperformed Whites by these measures. Yet within a few decades, these advances would be undone.
The improvements were on a large scale. Robert Leon Woodson notes the 57% decline in poverty rates among Blacks:
From 1940 to 1970 the poverty rate dropped from 87 to 30 percent — a reduction of two-thirds.
Yet since 1970, the poverty rate has stagnated. Federal anti-poverty policies have unintentionally undermined the stability of the family and undermined Black entrepreneurship. The programs collectively known as the “War on Poverty” became a “War for Poverty.”
