ABSTRACT
Critics of the Reagan administration often said that it was naive to assume that an end to negative discrimination was all that blacks needed to succeed in the United States. Reagan developed a broad economic program, while Reynolds urged the courts to return to the sort of affirmative action that most Americans favored and that Congress had in mind when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The NAACP delegates gave Reagan what was probably the coolest reception of his presidency. There was no heckling, but Reagan was taken aback by the stony silence. Other blacks were not so circumspect. Many Reagan Republicans also criticized liberals for fostering a number of pernicious attitudes and opinions. Reagan said that the economic expansion and low inflation of the 1950s and early 1960s were destroyed because the federal government "began eating away at the underpinnings of the private enterprise system".
