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During World War II, many black Americans and other PoC fought and died in segregated units. Many of them were treated in a horrific manner by the dominant white American culture when they got home. Some were even lynched! 
Jim Crow was by no means over in the South, and wouldn't be over (officially) for at least 20 more years.
Yet, by the 1960s, the realities of poverty, unemployment, and de facto segregation in the urban North meant that white Northerners could no longer treat race (and racism) as merely a "Southern" problem. Not coincidentally, this is around the time that the "conservative political backlash" began in earnest. Nixon is elected, and he launches the War on Drugs...which has ravaged and devastated the black and Latino communities ever since. Many White people - white New Deal Democrats, in fact, North and South - voted for Nixon (and Reagan, then in California and later nationwide). That's a matter of historical record.
Despite all of the progress that has been made thanks to the efforts of ordinary people - first and foremost, black people and PoC in general - there has been a formidable resistance to progress by people, forces, and systems that would rather have things either remain the way they are, or worse, go back to the way they were. We see that all the time. And yes, most people outside of the struggle are unaware of all of the steps toward justice, big and small, that are made on a daily basis. I personally blame the 24-hour news cycle.
The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but that's not always apparent in the short-term.
