Race relations have been central in Americans’ pursuit of democracy and equality over time.

Rooted in post-slavery social reform, organized efforts to foster racial justice emerged during the twentieth century. Using litigation and protest, the NAACP challenged the Jim Crow system; the National Urban League battled economic injustice. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith fought anti-Semitism and racism while forging a Jewish–black alliance; fostering peace, the American Friends Service Committee created alternatives to military service for conscientious objectors. Fostering dialogue, the American Council on Race Relations funded “race relations committees,” “human relations councils,” and “civic unity councils,” even as the American Civil Liberties Union furnished legal help regardless of color. The southern Commission on Interracial Cooperation promoted white–black dialogue; reorganized as the Southern Regional Council, it also espoused desegregation (1951). However, from its founding (1938), the Southern Conference for Human Welfare renounced segregation; its successor, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, partnered in nonviolent demonstrations against segregated schools, public accommodations, and employment. Supported by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, such antiracist dissent sustained the national interracial coalition that helped win passage of post-1954 federal civil rights laws. Desegregation and affirmative action, for example, have seen both progress and polarization, including much violence, in racial-ethnic interactions since the 1960s. Accordingly, the Southern Poverty Law Center (1971) initiated projects to promote tolerance and monitor “hate groups” such as the Ku Klux Klan, which attacked Asians as well as blacks. Moreover, the President's Initiative on Race (1997) held town hall forums to advocate racial understanding.