When President Barack Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, it was a watershed moment for African-Americans, a historic moment for the nation in general and the beginning of what many expected would be a transformative moment in the nation's halting, usually painful discussion on race and equality.

Over eight years, the first black president acted on issues crucial to African-American progress, including putting criminal justice reform and police use of deadly force on the national agenda. Some scholars argue his presence alone in the Oval Office helped advance the discussion: It normalized a black commander-in-chief.

But that administration now yields to President-elect Donald Trump, an inexperienced, bombastic politician who spent years questioning Obama's citizenship. The stunning win of a former reality show TV star – who was backed by white nationalists, swept white voters in nearly every demographic category and promised law-and-order crackdowns – has African-American activists sounding the alarm, worried he'll reverse the legacy of progress under Obama.

"We feel more than disappointed or angry – we feel betrayed" by a nation that seemed headed toward equality, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the Movement for Black Lives, a consortium of activist groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement. "Donald Trump has promised more death, disenfranchisement and deportations … The violence he will inflict in office, and the permission he gives for others to commit violence, is just beginning to emerge."

Other civil rights groups' calls to action were more reserved, but no less urgent.

"At minimum we must confront and acknowledge that a majority of white voters with and without college degrees, at all income levels, voted for Trump," Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told the Washington Post. "They did so after a campaign inconsistent with the values and priorities of those who believe in equality and the core principles we as a country claim to hold dear."

One Justice Department official fears the worst.

"There are a whole lot of career attorneys who are determined not to let their work get dismantled, by working twice as hard, by just being total pains in the butt if people try to undo their work," the official told The Huffington Post , speaking on the condition of anonymity. "People recognize that the resources aren't going to be there and that the support isn't going to be there."

However, Trump – who described black inner-city neighborhoods as lawless nightmares, noted Democratic neglect of their communities and asked black voters, "What have you got to lose?" by voting for him – says African-Americans shouldn't fear change. True to his campaign promise, he's released a legislative agenda focused on revitalizing the nation's cities, heavy on tax credits and infrastructure upgrades, and insists he'll be a president black voters can be proud of.

"Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back," he said in an interview broadcast Sunday on "60 Minutes." "You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time."

Only time will tell whether Trump will – or even can – completely dismantle the Obama legacy and roll back racial progress. But civil rights organizations have signaled that they'll be watching him closely: In several post-election press conferences , groups representing black, Hispanic, Arab, Muslim and Jewish people say that the new president must protect the advancements made under his predecessor, or they'll lock arms and take to the streets to oppose him.

Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University, says she's not surprised that, for African-Americans, the high of Obama taking office in 2008 would be followed by anxiety and fear of Trump, his polar opposite, in the Oval Office.

As the first black president, Obama's election "marked a moment of racial progress that probably will never be matched," says Gillespie, whose specialty is the intersection of race and politics. Whomever the next black president might be, "it won't be a breakthrough" she says, since, as the pioneer, "he faced challenges that others won't."

As a nation, however, "our path for racial progress has not been linear – the history of racial progress in America is basically a function of two steps forward and one step back," says Gillespie. Just as the Jim Crow era followed the end of slavery and "white flight" came after school desegregation in the 1960s, "We should have been prepared for the fact that the magical moment of 2008 would have been met with resistance" from white voters moving away from Obama.

By nearly any measure, African-Americans' lives have improved since Obama took office and the Great Recession ended. Unemployment is down, more people have health insurance, national education policy has been revamped to close black-white education gaps and the White House created task force to examine police use of deadly force against African-Americans, personally convened by Obama.

The president himself has, arguably, evolved on how he discusses race in America, after early stumbles following the mistaken arrest of a black Harvard professor in 2009 and the 2010 firing of Shirley Sherrod, an African-American Agriculture Department employee accused of racism.

After the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 and death of Freddie Gray in 2015 spurred urban unrest, the president gave nuanced, impassioned statements on how decades of neglect in black communities, cultural bias and heavy-handed police tactics, have left African-Americans and police mistrustful of one another, almost inevitably leading to the deaths of young black men.

"If we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could," the president said when asked about Gray's death in April 2015. "It's just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant – and that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped. We're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids, and we think they're important. And they shouldn't be living in poverty and violence."

Still, unemployment under the first black president is still far higher for African-Americans, the Supreme Court has undermined the Voting Rights Act, the education, achievement, wealth and health gaps between black and white are wider than ever. At the same time, despite Obama putting his presidential imprimatur on the issue, the Black Lives Matter movement is still considered controversial, and Trump, on the campaign trail, called for an investigation of their activities – a clear signal he's unlikely to view the racial divide the same way.

Meanwhile, Obama's exit, and Trump's rise to power, has coincided with an increase in white aggression towards minorities: In the week since the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports a spike in reports of hateful intimidation and harassment, swastikas and white-power graffiti has appeared on public buildings and the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party have celebrated Trump's hiring of Steve Bannon, who hate watch groups have labeled a racist, for a top White House post.

The developments are alarming but should have been anticipated, writes Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University professor and author of "The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America" Obama's groundbreaking presidency "found its troubling apotheosis" in Trump's White House run, unleashing "the country's worst racial instincts" that had lain dormant during decades of black advancement.

"It is unsurprising that the man who led the 'birther' movement disputing Mr. Obama's American citizenship should build a campaign that reflects elements of the 'birther' bigotry: anti-Muslim talk, xenophobia toward Mexicans and hostility toward blacks at his rallies," Dyson wrote in a recent New York Times essay. "It's possible that if the president had spoken more forcefully on race, it might have blunted some of the bigotry that fueled Mr. Trump's rise, or at least provided a compelling alternative to his vision of race."

But A. Scott Bolden, a Washington, D.C. attorney and former head of the D.C. Democratic State Committee, worries that, despite the softening of his rhetoric and a plan to revitalize cities, the Trump administration will ignore African-American issues. While it pales to President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty or civil-rights reforms, Bolden says, Obama got a lot accomplished for black America in the face of lockstep opposition from congressional Republicans, who held legislative power during six of his eight years in office.

"I think that the bar is far lower for Donald Trump than it was or could ever be" for Obama, Bolden says. "Not only did [Obama] have to be competent, but he took over a government that was in the worst recession since 1933. The problems he faced were larger, and people of color, who are successful, have always reached success by being twice as good, twice as better. Whether that was real or perceived, that has always been."

Because Obama set such a high standard of professionalism – so much so that Trump and Obama have both agreed Obama will help Trump figure out how to manage the world's most powerful office – history will be kind to the first black president over the long run, Bolden says.

"Clearly, under stress and duress, under spite [from Republicans], he still achieved," says Bolden. "And I think that's going to be the ultimate legacy of his leadership. Will he get that credit? I certainly hope so."

Yet Gillespie says the larger question is "how much of Obama's legacy Trump will keep intact. Whether or not you support or oppose Obama's record in office, I think, the question is how much Trump will change, and what will be the outcome of those changes."

American voters "wanted change so much that they replaced the Obama administration with someone who is a complete novice. That has to not feel good," she says. Though Obama enjoys high approval ratings on his way out of office, Gillespie says, "I also think there are a lot of unknowns" that only Trump can answer.

For African-Americans worried that Trump's presidency means a worsening of outcomes and biases not even the first black president could change, Gillespie offers some cold comfort: We've been here before.

"It's the comfort that your parents and grandparents survived these really tough periods" when African-Americans faced state-sponsored repression, like segregated lunch counters, widespread lynching and poll tests at the ballot box.

While things aren't likely to get that bad under Trump, African-Americans "had the strength to survive," she says. "During these periods, black people did have agency" and found ways to protect their advancements, including legal fights and voter registration drives as well as marches and civil disobedience.