White Americans in 1946-50 overwhelmingly opposed equal job and school opportunities for Black Americans.

Evidence

While The Negro in American Life did not want decolonizing nations to see the racist present, Black Americans lived it. Around this time, the majority of white Americans seemed to favor laws and policies that promoted segregated housing. In 1946, only 28 percent of Southerners and 54 percent of Northerners with a high school diploma believed that Black Americans should be entitled to equal job opportunities. Degrees of support correlated to education level, with just 20 percent of Southerners and 46 percent of Northerners with a grade school education in support. In a 1950 Roper Center survey on public school integration, only 41 percent of respondents said that “children of all races and color[s] should be allowed to go to the same schools together everywhere in the country.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1277

Categorization

• SHARE: The specific polling numbers — 28/54% for equal jobs among diploma-holders, 41% for integration — are sharp, quotable statistics for anyone doing historical demography or civil-rights writing.