Report: Black America doing much better than 40 years ago

Education, Jobs & Justice, looks at how blacks and Hispanics have been doing in the United States over the last few years and how they were doing in 1976, the year the National Urban League began issuing its annual report.

The National Urban League derives its numbers from an "equality index" that is based on nationally collected data from federal agencies including the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With full equality with whites in economics, health, education, social justice and civic engagement set at 100 percent, the National Urban League said this year's equality index for blacks stands at 72.2 percent, compared with last year's 72 percent.

Morial said the voting difference was likely because they compared a presidential election year, 1976, to a non-presidential election year, 2014.

Washington, D.C., and its suburbs are where blacks, whites and Hispanics have the highest median household income.

Morial is calling for a major commitment from the government to rebuild the nation's urban communities called the "Main Street Marshall Plan."