The psychological success of the Civil Rights Era

The Civil Rights Era changed many material, social, and political circumstances for the better in the lives of Black Americans, but how did it influence the psychology of Black Americans? We report a major mindset change over the period of the Civil Rights Era: increased personal agency. Personal agency is the belief: ‘I can achieve my goals’, and it drives action, innovation, persistence, and well-being. We created three different lexicons for measuring agency and we scanned more than 200 billion words from Black-owned and White-owned newspapers across the last hundred years. Black agency, as well as optimism and imagination, began to exceed White agency in the early 1960s and it remains above White agency up to the present. The mindset of personal agency for Black Americans likely increased during the Civil Rights Era.