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TimS comments on [SEQ RERUN] Stop Voting For Nincompoops - Less Wrong Discussion
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As I noted in my later reply, the Civil Rights movement is older than the 1940-1960 period. Advocating federal anti-lynching laws predates the 20th Century. Yet Strauder v. WV is reasonably representative of elite opinion of the time. See also Shipp v. United States, where the Supreme Court held a sheriff in contempt and sentenced him to <sarcasm> a few months </sarcasm> for allowing a lynching.
So you basically interested what drives changes in ruling class opinion? And feel comfortable with more or less equating elite opinion change with social change?
I'm interested in what attempts to cause social change actually "work."
A theory that activism never works seems no more consistent with the evidence than a theory that activism without elite support is the primary cause of social change.
On the specific example we're discussing, the evidence seems to be that the NAACP was activist, not a "ruling institution" from its founding (1909) until some point in the post-WWII period. Yet the NAACP created conditions that led to enormous social change.