What Happed to the Revolution?: A Comparative Analysis of Civil Rights Era African American Communities and African American Communities of Today Utilizing the Value Added Model Theory

Abstract

Over the past several years after the civil rights movement, there has been an increase in Black-on-Black violence. The former sense of community, unity and Black power from the civil rights era has faded away. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, African Americans were united for one purpose: to overcome injustice and segregation across America. However, this is not true for African Americans today. If the Value Added Model Theory is tenable, then a comparison of the African American community during the civil rights era with that of the modern African American community would reveal that the strains on today’s society along with the “violence for profit” promoting media have caused this increase in violence and decrease in the movement perpetuating “Black Power.” This paper features a triangulative comparative analysis of both African Americans from 1960 to 1980 and African Americans between the years of 1990 and 2010. The data collected were analyzed by using a multi-lag time series analysis technique to view salary, population density, incarceration rates, graduation rates, welfare status, and social economic status provided by the United States Census Bureau. The data for this paper were collected by using the document analysis technique, and the synchronic approach was employed to analyze the data from both primary and secondary sources utilizing document analysis. This paper hypothesizes that using the Value Added Model Theory, one observes the similarities not only in the social strains from society but also in various other areas which would be basis for a revolutionary change.