ABSTRACT
It was suggested earlier that between the 1940s and 1960s there was a major shift in White attitudes towards Blacks. It seems that in 1942 only 35% of White Americans would have felt comfortable with a Negro neighbour, by 1963 it was 64% (the trend, I pointed out, was even more marked for Southern Whites, only 12% of whom would have found it acceptable in 1942 and by 1963 it was 51%). In terms of whether it was acceptable for a Negro to get onto a bus with you, in 1942 42% of American Whites found this acceptable but this had risen to 78% by December 1963. In the case of Southern Whites, only 4% would have found it acceptable in 1942 whereas this had risen to 51% by December 1963. As Sheatsley (1965: 308) succinctly writes: ‘By the end of 1963, both forms of integration had achieved majority approval.’
