From the Reagan Era to Trump’s First 100 Days: Lessons Learned From America’s Black Think Tank

When the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies was founded in 1970, we stood at the dawn of a new political era — one shaped by the victories of the Civil Rights Movement and the first wave of Black elected officials who emerged in its wake. But history rarely moves in a straight line, and by the time Ronald Reagan took office a decade later, it was clear we had entered a period of backlash — a reaction to progress that sought to erode the very gains we had worked so hard to secure.  Just as the gains of the 1960s met the backlash of the 1980s, the national reckoning of ongoing racial inequality following the 2020 murder of George Floyd quickly triggered its reactionary response — merging into the third Trump presidential campaign which brought in Trump’s second presidential term.

The rhetoric, the policies, the deliberate assault on racial equity programs and civil rights protections felt and heard in the first 100 days of the Trump Administration — are all too familiar. They were the echoes of the 1980s, repackaged for a new era. And for those of us who know the history of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and more broadly the slow ongoing struggle for Black political/economic progress, the parallels are not only clear — they are instructive.

The Ongoing Need for America’s Black Think Tank

In our earliest days, the Joint Center was a partnership between Howard University and the Metropolitan Applied Research Center, created to serve a simple yet revolutionary purpose: to train and support the newly elected Black officials who had emerged from the Civil Rights Movement. These men and women were entering school boards, city councils, and mayoral offices to an extent not seen before — and they were doing so without the institutional support networks their white counterparts took for granted.

As Juan Williams wrote in 1995, where white politicians had party machines, think tanks, and universities behind them, Black leaders often had little more than their community’s hope. The Joint Center sought to change that. We provided not only technical assistance but also a sense of connection — introducing leaders in far-flung cities to one another and fostering the kind of collective power that can only come from shared experience and solidarity.

By the end of the 1970s, the landscape was shifting. A new generation of Black leaders — equipped with greater policy expertise and supported by emerging institutions such as the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the National Organization of Black County Officials, and the National Conference of Black Mayors — was stepping into the political arena with renewed purpose and strategic coordination. Recognizing this evolution, the Joint Center expanded its focus, adding an economic and policy research arm and cementing our reputation as America’s Black think tank. This shift could not have come at a more critical moment.

Enter the Reagan Era: A New Wave of Resistance

Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 marked a distinct pivot in American political life. His administration ushered in a conservative revolution — one that prioritized deregulation, slashed taxes for the wealthy, and shrank the federal government’s role in addressing racial and economic disparities. Where the Great Society had sought to redress historical wrongs, Reaganomics embraced a myth of colorblind meritocracy, ignoring the persistent realities of structural racism.

At the Joint Center, we saw the danger early. In 1981, we launched a Voting Rights Project and began issuing studies on everything from voter suppression tactics to the economic fallout of federal disinvestment in urban communities. Our FOCUS magazine became a critical space for analysis and resistance, documenting how Reagan’s policies exacerbated inequalities and how Black America was responding.

In March 1982, FOCUS ran a cover story titled “The State of the Union: One Nation or Two?” It highlighted Gallup data showing that while Reagan enjoyed 74 percent support among white voters, only 25 percent of Black Americans approved of his leadership. A staggering 85 percent of Black respondents believed Reaganomics would harm them personally. They were right.

Reagan’s push for “new federalism” — shifting power back to states that had long resisted civil rights — threatened hard-won gains in education, voting rights, and workplace protections. The administration’s gutting of civil rights enforcement, its disinformation campaigns around welfare, and its failure to address disparities in asset accumulation laid the groundwork for today’s struggles addressing asset poverty, wealth inequality, and upward economic mobility.

Building Power in the Face of Adversity

Yet even as the Reagan administration sought to roll back progress, the Joint Center and our partners were building. In 1980, we helped convene over 1,000 Black leaders and intellectuals in Richmond, Virginia, where we drafted the Black Agenda for the 1980s — a bold, collaborative policy blueprint that emphasized economic empowerment, global solidarity, and youth engagement. It called for expanding Black business ownership, protecting the social safety net, and ending ties with apartheid South Africa.

We also became a force for political mobilization. We released annual rosters of Black elected officials, ensuring visibility and accountability. And we pushed back against disinformation and judicial attacks on affirmative action and minority set-asides, even as decisions like City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. threatened to derail decades of local economic progress. That 1989 Supreme Court ruling narrowed the ability of cities and states to create affirmative action programs unless they could provide direct evidence of specific, local discrimination — effectively ignoring the systemic and structural barriers that had long excluded Black businesses from public contracts. It was a stark reminder that while the law may recognize injustice in theory, it often demands an impossible burden of proof to address it in practice. The Court’s decision not only undermined the intent of minority business set-aside programs but also emboldened localities across the country to dismantle them altogether, turning back the clock on economic inclusion.

Yet throughout the 1980s, the Joint Center was not just documenting a movement — we were part of it. Our leader at the time, Eddie Williams, became a nationally recognized voice, appearing on the then-fledgling C-SPAN and testifying before Congress. We advised Black mayors and city council members, partnered with organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus and TransAfrica, and helped shape the policy infrastructure that would sustain future fights for justice. From 1980 to 1983, the Joint Center was at the center of Black political life in America, guiding new leadership, producing rigorous research, and building the connective tissue between national policy and grassroots advocacy.

In 1980, we launched our Voting Rights Project, deepening our commitment to safeguarding Black political participation in the face of redistricting battles and growing voter suppression. That same year, we supported Operation Big Vote, which aimed to increase Black voter registration and turnout on a national scale. We joined the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Black Enterprise magazine to elevate urban policy concerns and provided technical support to Public Housing Authorities on safety issues.

By 1982, we had become a central source of information and analysis. We published influential reports on demographic change and public policy, school desegregation, Black military service, and the Congressional election landscape. We also hosted a major symposium on low-income energy assistance, showcasing our commitment to addressing immediate material conditions while advancing long-term equity goals.

In 1983, we continued this momentum with national conferences focused on Race and Political Strategy and Immigration and Black America, topics that remain urgently relevant today. These efforts weren’t academic exercises — they were strategies for resilience in a decade marked by federal retrenchment and shifting public priorities.

In the latter half of the decade, as the Reagan Revolution rolled on, the Joint Center expanded its scope and sharpened its policy lens. We launched a nationally significant Gallup poll collaboration in 1986 to better understand Black political attitudes, a partnership that yielded some of the most robust race-based polling data of the era. We published timely special reports on welfare policy, tax reform and its impact on Black Americans, and the growing challenge of disinformation — particularly around public assistance and so-called “welfare dependency,” which the Reagan administration weaponized as part of its narrative war.

We also held our National Policy Institutes, including the fourth in 1984 and the fifth in 1987, which convened scholars, elected officials, and advocates to develop policy strategies around civil rights, economic development, and national security. We tackled emerging issues such as privatization, the definition of the “underclass,” and the role of ethnocentrism in U.S. foreign policy — laying the groundwork for debates that would continue into the 1990s and beyond.

By 1988, we released After the Zero Option, detailing U.S. defense policy through the lens of equity and inclusion. That same year, our Black economic progress task force released a landmark report analyzing long-term trends in wealth and employment, while we also published a documentary, A Tradition of Giving, highlighting Black philanthropy and community self-determination.

We closed out the decade by marking the 20th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report with the publication of The Metropolitan Area Fact Book, providing a clear-eyed statistical portrait of Black and white Americans in urban America. And in 1989, we gathered leaders for a daylong conference on the 1990 Census, understanding well that data would shape the next era of political representation and resource allocation.

All of this — our research, convenings, and advocacy — underscored the Joint Center’s role as more than a think tank. We were, and remain, a clearinghouse of Black political thought and a strategic hub for policy and power-building in communities that have been historically marginalized. The late 1980s were not a retreat; they were a retooling. And as the Reagan era came to a close, the foundation we helped lay would carry forward into the battles of the 1990s — and the renewed fights of today.

Trump’s First 100 Days: Echoes of the Past

When Donald Trump took office in 2017, many in the civil rights community recognized the contours of a familiar backlash. Like Reagan, Trump used racially coded language to stoke division. He targeted affirmative action and diversity programs, undermined civil rights enforcement, and rolled back protections for marginalized communities. His administration’s early actions sent a clear message: progress would not go unchallenged.

And yet, as before, we resisted.

The attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs we’ve seen in recent years mirror the legal and ideological assaults of the 1980s. Then, as now, the fight is not just about programs — it’s about narratives. Reagan popularized the myth of the “welfare queen”; Trump leaned into the lie of “reverse racism.” Both administrations used these distortions to justify policy shifts that harm Black and brown communities while consolidating power among the privileged.

But there’s a lesson here, too: the periods of greatest resistance often precede moments of transformation.

Just as the Joint Center’s work in the 1980s helped lay the groundwork for Jesse Jackson’s groundbreaking presidential campaigns and Ron Brown’s historic leadership of the Democratic National Committee, our work today will shape the politics of the decades to come. We may be in an underground period, but the roots we plant now will support the next era of growth.

Lessons from the Reagan Era

The history of the Joint Center during the Reagan era offers several key lessons for our current moment:

1. Backlash is predictable — and so is resistance. Every significant step toward ending racial inequality in America has been met with reactionary pushback. But history also shows that these moments of resistance can become catalysts for deeper, more resilient progress.
2. Data and research matter. During the 1980s, our studies on voting rights, economic disparities, and civil rights enforcement provided the foundation for counterarguments to harmful policies. Today, as we face new attacks on the civil rights infrastructure that has allowed for greater opportunity for African Americans than ever before, evidence-based advocacy is more essential than ever.
3. Coalition building is crucial. The Richmond conference in 1980, the partnerships with TransAfrica and the Congressional Black Caucus, and the leadership of figures like Dorothy Height and Vernon Jordan — all remind us that progress requires collaboration across sectors and generations.
4. We must grow and organize Black political power. Operation Big Vote was one response to voter suppression in the 1980s. Today, we must recognize that Black electoral power is at a record high with five Black senators, over 60 members of the House of Representatives, and over 140 Black mayors across the country.  The challenge today is to organize how to most effectively use this record-level political strength

Conclusion: The Work Ahead

At the end of the Reagan era, the Joint Center stood not diminished, but stronger. We had helped cultivate a generation of Black leaders, thinkers, and voters who were prepared to confront the challenges of a new century. That work must continue today.

As we navigate renewed attacks on racial equity, from boardrooms to courtrooms, we must remember: this is not the first time we’ve faced these battles — and it won’t be the last. But with the wisdom of our past and the strength of our communities, we are not adrift.

We are anchored in history, armed with data, and committed to advancement.

We’ve been here before. And we know how to win.