In practice the Civil Rights Act didn’t accomplish all that much, as I’d say the de facto racial segregation in the US is now even larger compared to the 1950s. The progressive white component of the US population decided that the fight had been won by the late ‘60s and they moved on to other endeavors.
The racial riots from the early ‘90s should/could have been a new sign to re-open the fight but nothing of the sorts happened, by now most of the black population is resigned with the horrendous status-quo while most of the white population doesn’t find the current status-quo at all horrendous, at most they protest against some punctual anti-black population actions which they only see as individual abuses (the Ferguson case, the helpless Florida kid case etc).
The mistake is thinking in terms of linear social progress, which is trivially perverted for rhetoric. People are certainly more civil and aware of acute racism and racial discrimination. But in material terms, being black makes you acutely more vulnerable to all of society’s problems: poverty, prison, poor healthcare, poor access to jobs, poor education, low wages. The civil rights movement—and MLK’s life—ended before addressing this. More relevantly to now, only 1 in 5 black Americans are able to work from home.
Segregation still exists, it just largely uses other mechanisms today other than red lining and direct racial discrimination in businesses and government. I recognize claims similar to “we”re doing better now than we were in the 50s” as one technique of many to focus on social, not material or systemic, gains, though I suspect in many cases this does not come from an intent to do so.
The racial riots from the early ‘90s should/could have been a new sign to re-open the fight but nothing of the sorts happened, by now most of the black population is resigned with the horrendous status-quo while most of the white population doesn’t find the current status-quo at all horrendous, at most they protest against some punctual anti-black population actions which they only see as individual abuses (the Ferguson case, the helpless Florida kid case etc).