1. The National Black Political Convention, or the Gary Convention, was held on March 10–12, 1972 in Gary, Indiana. The convention gathered around ten thousand African-Americans to discuss and advocate for black communities that undergo significant economic and social crisis.
2. The Great Recession refers to the economic downturn from 2007 to 2009 after the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and the global financial crisis.
3. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) - which President Obama signed into law on February 17th, 2009 - was an unprecedented action to stimulate the economy. It included measures to modernize our nation's energy and communication infrastructure and enhance energy independence.
4. The Congressional Black Caucus is a caucus made up of most African American members of the United States Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) uses the full Constitutional power, authority, and financial resources of the federal government to make sure that African Americans and other marginalized communities in the United States have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.
5. A national call to break a pipeline of poverty that results in the arrest, conviction, incarceration, and in some cases, death of thousands of predominantly racial-ethnic minority youth.
6. Racial economic inequality is a foundational feature of the United States, yet many Americans appear oblivious to it. Americans vastly underestimate racial economic inequality, especially the racial wealth gap. Although there has been some undoubtedly progress toward racial equality since the nation’s founding, the American racial-progress, we argue, overestimates the successes and underestimate the setbacks, resulting in an unfounded optimism about racial equality in both the present and its prospects for the future.
