Only twelve years separated the Fair Housing Act from Reagan’s election

Evidence

Just twelve years after the last major legislation of the Great Society—the Fair Housing Act of 1968—aimed, however clumsily, at addressing inequalities produced by generations of racist policies, the country elected a president whose charge was to dismantle it all. It would do us good to remember both how remarkably little time passed and to recall the way Reagan drew on racial resentment to usher in this new age. Reagan’s campaign was clear about his loyalties. One of his first events after his nomination was at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, just a few miles away from the place where civil rights workers Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were murdered. (Ben Chaney was still in prison.) Some fifteen thousand people turned out to hear Reagan declare, among other things, his commitment to “states’ rights” and his promise “to restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 487

Categorization

• XREF: This is the concrete temporal spine of the reader’s ‘after times’ thesis — the shockingly short interval between reform and its dismantling.
• SEED: Angle: the twelve-year interregnum as a measure of how fast a reckoning can be reversed — a comparative look at failed reckonings’ shelf lives.