MONTGOMERY, Ala., Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Fifty years after the landmark Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, blacks and whites in the county remain far apart on issues as education, economics and crime.
Nearly 60 percent of 200 Montgomery County blacks and 200 whites said race relations in general have improved in a Montgomery Advertiser poll published Thursday.
However, 11 percent of respondents said they feel race relations have deteriorated, and 32 percent say things are the same as when Rosa Parks started what become the U.S. civil rights movement.
Among blacks, 68 percent said race relations have improved, compared with whites at 46 percent.
The percentage of whites who considered education the most pressing problem was more than double the number of blacks -- 39 percent to 16 percent. Twenty percent of blacks saw economic development as the No. 1 problem, compared with 11 percent of whites who said the same.
Almost two-thirds of black respondents believe the criminal justice system is harsher on blacks, while a quarter of whites thought blacks were dealt with more harshly.
