How Did The Fourth Wave Affect The Civil Rights Movement

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In August 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech to a racially mixed crowd of over 250,000 people (NY Times). In his speech, one line articulated the theme of the fourth wave especially for the African American elite. Dr. King stated, "We refuse to believe there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation." This quote embodied two of the most significant forces behind the shift between the third and fourth wave of the black elite: the Civil Rights Movement and dignity restored. After World War II, many blacks reached the tipping point of the inhumane rules of Jim Crow and began mobilizing to reject systemic oppression. As a result, the fourth wave was born out of drastic changes in legislation and a fanatical need for the government to curb social upheaval. There was a small percentage of elite blacks that attended white, Ivy League due to old family wealth, but many that were apart of this new class were still regulated to historical black colleges and universities. By 1954, this changed with the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that desegregated schools. Although many whites were resistant of this legislation, it allowed blacks access to better …show more content…

Some blacks were able to make enough wages from blue-collar jobs to not only establish their position as a part of the new elite in economic terms, but also earn enough money to continue the tradition of investing in education for the next generation. This kept education at the top of the attributes needed to be in the black elite. And though blue-collar work in contemporary times is not necessarily associated with black elite status, it was a pathway towards economic prosperity that would allow entry into the black bourgeoisie as it increasingly became connected to