The civil rights era is conventionally narrated as an unbroken chain of racial progress

Evidence

The racial-progress story becomes quite familiar from there. In 1954, with Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. Racial progress. The Montgomery bus boycott began a movement for desegregation across the South in 1955. Racial progress. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine in 1957. Racial progress. The lunch-counter sit-ins by Black college students in 1960 led to the desegregation of Southern businesses. Racial progress. Freedom Riders helped desegregate bus terminals in 1961. Racial progress. The March on Washington and the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., made nationwide news in 1963. Racial progress. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Racial progress. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1279

Categorization

• SEED: The repetition of ‘Racial progress’ after each landmark is a rhythmic satirical technique an essay could analyze as a rhetorical device for deflating triumphalist narratives.