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THE TIMES: The Vietnam War split Americans into two sides: hawks (for the war) and doves (against the war). The Civil Rights Movement turned more militant and violent as riots and police actions exploded the inner cities.

THE PLUS SIDE: Nixon, though an Establishment conservative, was surprisingly helpful to African Americans in several important ways. He started the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), which provided financial and other assistance to black small businesses, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which began to clean up environmentally damaged areas where blacks lived, and he also increased college financial aid for black students. To reduce Soviet influence, his State Department formed closer ties to Caribbean and African nations. Nixon’s Justice Department was also the first to bring a housing discrimination suit against a major landlord, Fred and Donald Trump in New York. (Prior to his presidency, it was Nixon who bailed Martin Luther King Jr. out of a dangerous Georgia prison in 1960, thus potentially saving his life.)

THE MINUS SIDE: Privately, “Tricky Dick” Nixon shared many of the bigoted traits of TV’s Archie Bunker, and his attitude and policies toward equal employment opportunity were regressive. Many programs designed to help minorities were proven to be rip-offs. The administration intensified the drug war, and the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies continued to undermine black communities. Nixon’s Southern Strategy during his 1968 campaign, designed to appeal to white racists in the North and South, began the Southern and Midwestern party realignment from Democrat to Republican.

OVERALL: If you were the type of black person who was a supporter (or at least remained neutral) and didn’t make waves, you tended to thrive under Nixon’s presidency. Otherwise, you would face the administration’s wrath.