60 years ago, 1956, most black people were not "fine" in the south.

Segregation was the rule of law. The KKK was a major political force, with elected officials openly and proudly proclaiming membership. Black people were regularly convicted of crimes they did not commit in racist kangaroo courts. You could lynch a black man and reasonably expect to get away with it. A black person who tried to register to vote was courting violence or death from their white neighbors.

A lot of southern black families were picking up and moving to Chicago or Los Angeles, where the worst they could expect was housing discrimination and police brutality (this was considered nice by comparison).

And of course, the next decade would be one of the most turbulent in the history of American race relations. The civil rights movement was in its infancy. Racial tensions were about to reach a boiling point like they never had before. The coming years would see race riots in multiple major cities and an all out assault on black communities across the country. Whole neighborhoods would burn to the ground and that's not an exaggeration. Look it up.

Sure, at the end of all that we'd sign the Civil Rights Act and things would get marginally better but not every black person alive in 1956 was going to survive to see that. Things were about to get a whole lot worse before they got better.