Headline Dec 29, 2014/

''' WE ALL HAVE A DREAM : !WOW! '''

GO BLOW YOUR TRUMPETS............. and then.. Go sieve your silt.

go mourn your world, your  losses,.............and this grave  global  tilt.

Go check your conscience......then go check  your  heart

go check your worth........................... all up for a nought

Go check your Presidents,...... dictators, Kings and.....  thy  kink

And then come and tell me. why then the world  Hoover's     brink?

SO, Go then,....and ask the  Captain,.....why doth he sits  so  still?

For all he knows,  this vacuum so,. only YOU and !WOW! can  fill.

'' Anon ''

THAT YEAR  -2013, America marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous speech, in which he sang out to a crowd of  250,000: ''I have a dream''.

King's speech, it is often forgotten, was delivered at the-

*March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom*.

Gavin Wright, an economic historian at the American South at Stanford University, argues in his new book, ''Sharing the Prize'',  that although much was indeed achieved by the  civil-rights  movement,  those gains fall short of King's dreams.

The economic context of the civil rights movement is still often ignored.

Like slavery,  disenfranchisement and segregation were part of an economic order that was designed to protect the supply of unskilled labourers for southern agriculture.

The civil-rights movement helped force through groundbreaking  legislation: the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination on the bases of race, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which used federal supervision to secure blacks' right to vote.

These measures broke what Mr Wright describes as a sort of market failure.

Blacks, seeing limited economic opportunity, underinvested in education and learning.

White companies and workers clung to to the myth of black inferiority and feared economic harm from desegregation. These beliefs persisted, even in the face of contrary evidence.

Mr Wright describes a southern mill manager who was used to hearing black people being excoriated for their  ''shiftless, lazy''   behaviour that he was shocked to see a textile executive praising black-worker productivity in a newspaper.

Conducting a formal review in his own mill, the manger discovered that black absentee rates and productivity were indistinguishable from those of whites.

Against many expectations, the civil-rights era brought prosperity. Black employment in skilled positions soared. Black income in the South converged with the levels black workers enjoyed elsewhere in the country.

The typical black income in the South also rose from  40%  of a white worker's to as much as  75%  in the  1990s.

As the South prospered, white wage and employment also rose. Mr Wright argues that government action spurred by the civil-rights movement corrected a misfiring market, generating large economic gains that private companies had been unable to seize on their own.

Yet as Mr Wright acknowledges,  civil-rights achievements fell short of hopes. Desegregation may have been extraordinarily successful, but true racial integration remains distant.

Since the late  1970s many school systems have drifted towards de facto resegregation.

President Barack Obama is one of the just eight black leaders to serve in the Senate.

The political reactions to the civil-rights movement maybe partly to blame. Mr Wright quotes President Lyndon Johnson's remark that the  Voting Rights Act would hand the South to the Republicans for a generation.

Southern Whites became the bulwark of the Republican Party. The Republicans also enjoy strong support in suburbs that are populated by newcomers with less appreciation for region's troubled past.

Some of the changes that emerged as a result of civil-rights activism, have slipped back. Protection of equal employment rules faded under the Reagan administration, while school system integration faced growing opposition and anti-poverty programmes were cut back.

In other places the momentum of the  civil-rights movement has persisted. Centres of black prosperity, such as Atlanta, attract talented black individuals from elsewhere in America, contributing to continued economic success.

And the South  outperforms other parts of the country on some measures, like school integration and the share of blacks in white collar jobs. A southern black class may prove a potent political force.

Although Mr Wright suggests that the civil-tights movement  ''extends our sense of what is possible in economic life'' the durability of its gains may yet depend on the outcome of regional political battles.

Protecting the movement's gains will require continued political vigilance.

With respectful dedication to the Students of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Rising Honours '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless