To what extent did racial inequality exist in the USA in the 1950s?

Civil Rights in the 1950s

1.Negatives

  • Segregation Laws:
  • The principles of ‘Separate but equal’; in many southern states there were ‘Jim Crow laws’ – segregated buses, shops, restaurants (20 states had segregated schools).
  • ACivil Rights Committee set up by President Truman (1946)had recommended anti-lynching laws, voting rights and desegregating interstate travel – but its ideas never became law.
  • Attitudes in the southern states:
  • Bogus ‘scientific racism’ claimed the Black people were ‘an inferior race’.
  • In some southern states, Black people were legally prevented from voting or sitting on a jury; where they were legally allowed to vote, they had to take literacy tests before they could register as voters (which poorly-educated Black people failed).
  • In some southern states White Citizens’ Councils went through voting lists finding reasons to delete any Black voters they could.
  • A number of southern states outlawed the NAACP.
  • The Ku Klux Klan:
  • Fiery crosses, lynchings to ‘keep the negro in his place’, murders (e.g. NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore, 1951).
  • The White Knights of the KKK terrorised Blacks into not voting.
  • Living Standards for African Americans
  • Black people were generally poorly educated, in menial jobs; the average Black income was only 57% that of a White worker; unemployment (at 11%) was double.
  • 41% of African Americans still lived below the poverty line in 1959.
  • In the north, Black people lived in ghettoes; there were riots in Detroit in 1943 when Black workers tried to move into a ‘white’ district.

2.Positives

  • Black action:
  • There was a lively Black culture, e.g. Jazz and the 1930s Harlem cultural renaissance.
  • The NAAC (under Charles Houston) had 450,000 members by 1945. It trained black lawyers and defended Black people accused of crimes.
  • James Farmer founded CORE (1942) to challenge segregation (e.g. they sat in ‘white’ seats on interstate buses).
  • The Second World War:
  • showed 1 million Black soldiers a world beyond the cotton fields or ghetto, and gave them ambition – ‘I went into the Army a nigger, I’m coming out a man’.
  • The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (1948) opposed discrimination and racism.
  • Changes in the law:
  • Fair Employment Practices law (1941) abolished discrimination in the defence industries.
  • The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 made discrimination illegal, made it illegal to prevent somebody voting and set up the Federal Civil Rights Commission. However, these rules were NOT implemented in many southern states.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956

Events

  1. There was often trouble on Montgomery buses -- white drivers drove away before Black passengers (who had to pay at the front but board at the back) had got back on the bus.
  2. On 1 Dec 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested and fined $10.
  3. The incident on 1 Dec was planned:
  4. Edgar Nixon, local NAACP leader, was looking for an incident to make into a ‘cause’
  5. Parks was a trained NAACP activist.
  6. Nixon formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) under the leadership of a young Baptist preacher named Martin Luther King.
  7. For 381 days Black people refused to use the buses – they walked, organised car pools, or got free rides from Black taxi drivers.
  • The MIA did not challenge segregation, asking only that seats should be on a first-come-first-served basis; this made the white opposition seem UNreasonable.
  • King’s home was firebombed by the KKK
  1. The NAACP took the case to the Supreme Court(1956) which ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional -- and forced the bus company to back down.

Results

  1. It was the first sustained mass protest, and it proved that Black people could win.
  2. Rosa Parks became a Civil Rights hero and an inspiration to others.
  3. Martin Luther King became the Civil Rights leader. In particular the boycott established his principles of non-violence and ‘direct action’.
  4. BUT it was the NAACP which had won (‘all that walking for nothing’ was the NAACP view).

The struggle over education

Brown versus Topeka Board of Education, 1954

  1. Oliver Brown challenged the right of Topeka School Board, Kansas, to make his daughter attend a Black school many miles away.
  2. Supported by the NAACP, he won a ruling from the Supreme Court that segregated schools were unconstitutional.
  3. By 1956, nine states (300,000 children) had desegregated.
  4. HOWEVER
  5. In 1956, Southern senators launched the Southern Manifesto to resist integration.
  6. White ‘Citizens’ Councils’ were set up to resist Black rights/integration.
  7. The Ku Klux Klan revived; there were murders and bombings – in 1955 a 14-year-old Black boy, Emmett Till, was murdered for being cheeky to a white woman.

Little RockHigh School, 1957

  1. In September 1957, nine Black students tried to enrol at Little Rock school, Arkansas.
  • The School Board only let the nine brightest students enrol, on academic grounds.
  • A mob of 1,000 turned out to stop them: ‘2,4,6,8, we aren’t going to integrate’.
  1. The State Governor sent the National Guard to ‘protect’ the school from the Black pupils.
  2. Eisenhower sent the US Army to escort the students into school; he ordered the National Guard to protect the students.

HOWEVER, in some ways Little Rock was a setback for Black Civil Rights:

  1. The Black students were hated and verbally abused in the school; even some Black Americans turned against the families for ‘meddling’.
  2. At the end of term, the State Governor closed the school; Little Rock school was not desegregated until 1972.
  3. Little Rock terrified other States, which stopped integration; by 1960, only 2,600 of two million Black pupils in the southern states attended integrated schools.

How effective were the methods used by members of the Civil Rights Movementbetween 1961–1968?

Civil Rights methods, 1960-65

1.In the early 1960s, the Civil Rights movement was dominated by the principles advocated by Martin Luther King, who wanted a campaign of peaceful ‘direct action’ to expose discrimination.

2.The Sit-ins

  • Students went into ‘whites-only’ diners and sat down at the counter.
  • They tried not to react when whites attacked them/poured sauce over them etc.
  • The first sit-in was organised by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Greensboro, North Carolina (1960).

3.The Freedom Rides, 1961

  • After May 1961, CORE members rode on Interstate buses; there were 60 ‘freedom rides’, involving 450 people.
  • The buses were attacked, and the freedom riders were often badly beaten.
  • In November 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy forced the interstate busses to end segregation.

4.Freedom Marches

  • The first freedom march was organised by Rev. CT Vivian (a friend of King) in 1961.
  • Most of King’s campaigns involved a large march; these were more effective when they were attacked.

5.Albany, 1961

  • In 1961, King tried a major campaign of direct action at Albany, Georgia, including a march and attempts to use civic amenities.
  • The Albany Council did not use violence, although 1000 people were arrested and fined
  • In 1962, Albany desegregated all its facilities.

6.Birmingham, 1963

  • King selected Birmingham, Alabama, because the Chief of Police, ‘Bull’ O’Connor, was a known racist and friend of the KKK; King called his campaign ‘Project Confrontation’.
  • The campaign began with sit-ins and marches.
  • On 3 May 1963, a huge march involving a thousand schoolchildren was attacked by the police, using dogs, batons and water hoses; the events were televised all over the world.
  • There was an outcry and the city council was forced to desegregate its facilities.
  • In June 1963, President Kennedy announced his intention to introduce a Civil Rights Law.

7.The Washington March, 1963

  • King organised a march of 250,000 people (including 75,000 White supporters = 30%) to the Lincoln Memorial.
  • He gave his inspirational ‘I have a Dream’ speech.

8.Selma, 1965

  • King selected Selma, Alabama, because its Sheriff, Jim Clark, was know to be a violent racist.
  • Again, the march was brutally attacked, on TV, by the police.
  • In August the Voting Rights Act passed through Congress.

Civil Rights Successes, 1962-8

1962 / Robert Kennedy sent 500 federal marshals to force the University of Mississippi to enrol James Meredith, a black student.
1963 / Federal Marshals forced George Wallace, state governor of Alabama, to desegregate the University of Alabama.
1964 / The Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in schools, public places and employment, and set up the Equal Opportunities Commission to enforce this.
1965 / The Voting Rights Act ended literacy tests and enforced one man, one vote.
1965 / The Education Act provided funding for public schools, which gave black students in state school equal opportunity.
1968 / The Fair Housing Act banned discrimination in housing.

The Black Power movement in the 1960s.

1.At the Washington March of 1963, other Black leaders had been annoyed when King censored the speech of John Lewis, who had planned to say that they would ‘burn Jim Crow to the ground’.

2.After 1965, Black groups become more radical:

  • Malcolm X argued that White violence left Black people with no alternative but to fight back, and for ‘self-defence’ -- ‘by whatever means necessary’; he wanted a separate Black state.
  • Malcolm X advocated that Black people needed social and economic justice, not just theoretical civil rights’ – but the Watts riots of 1965 made everyone realise that getting civil rights did not make Black Americans any more prosperous.
  • After 1964, CORE workers rented houses in northern ghetto areas and got involved in social action to improve education, health and housing.
  • In 1965, James Farmer of CORE argued that equal rights was not enough – poor Blacks needed ‘affirmative action’ (positive discrimination) to take them out of poverty
  • In 1969, Farmer introduced affirmative action into the Department of Health.
  • In 1969, the government’s ‘Philadelphia Plan’ positively recruited black employees.
  • More Black boys than white boys were dying in the Vietnam War.
  • The new leaders were younger and more impatient for change.
  • The ‘Black Power’ movement began in 1966 when Stokeley Carmichael went with Martin Luther King on the ‘Meredith March’ (to support a Black student in a white university). To King’s horror, he shouted out ‘now is Black Power’.
  • Increased radicalisation included:

1966 / Floyd McKissick became leader of CORE; he expelled all white members.
1966 / Huey Newton formed the Black Panthers; they were a Communist group who attacked police and contacted international terrorist groups. The FBI called them ‘a black hate group’.
1966 / the SNCC chose Stokeley Carmichael as their leader; on the Meredith March in 1966 SNCC members sang: ‘O what fun it is to blast, a trooper man away’.
1967 / H Rap Brown became SNCC president; he urged Black people to loot local stores – this resulted in rioting in Maryland.
1968 / Olympic US athletes Tommy Smith and John Carlos celebrated their medals by giving the Black Power salute.

3.Gradually, some Black people began to be successful (e.g. Carl Stokes became Mayor of Cleveland in 1967), but Black people remain disadvantages to this day (a young Black man is seven times as likely to go to jail as a young White man).

How important was Martin Luther King in the fight for Civil Rights in the USA?

King’s role as a protest organiser, 1955–1963

1.King’s principles:

  • He was a Christian and said it was a fight for justice.
  • He believed ‘we will meet violence with non-violence’.
  • He was moderate (which is why white politicians felt able to do business with him).
  • He believed in ‘direct action’ – challenging prejudice.
  • He believed that CIVIL RIGHTS (especially the vote) were the vital thing; it would give Black people the opportunity to better themselves.

2.In the early 1960s he did not dominate the Civil Rights movement:

  • His Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957) was poorly organised, and few southern Blacks seemed interested (or brave) enough to get involved.
  • Brown v. Topeka (1954) and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Dec 1955 to Nov 1956) were NAACP victories.
  • at Albany (1961) his civil disobedience campaign failed because the council refused to use violence, and simply fined protesters.
  • The main early successes of the movement were organised by others:
  • Sit-ins were an SNCC initiative (though King was arrested at Greensboro in 1960).
  • The Freedom Riders (1961) were a CORE idea.

3.The years 1963-5 were the years of King’s greatest success:

  • Huge marches (e.g. the Washington Freedom March, August 1963, and the ‘I have a Dream’ speech).
  • He deliberately chose places with violent police chiefs because he knew that the TV footage of police attacking peaceful marchers would increase support:
  • In Birmingham (April 1963) he organised ‘Project Confrontation’, putting school children at the front of the march which was attacked by ‘Bull’ Connor’s police.
  • In Selma (Feb1965) Jim Clark’spolice were so violent it was called ‘Bloody Sunday’.
  • King’s friendship with the Kennedys led to the breakthrough in legislation:
  • In July 1964, the government passed the Civil Rights Act.
  • In 1965, the government passed the Voting Rights Act and the Education Act.
  • In December 1964 King won the Nobel Peace Prize.

4.After 1965, King was less successful:

  • He quarrelled with the new, radical Black leaders (such as Stokeley Carmichael, June 1966); he was distressed by the 1965-67 race riots and the violent Black Power protests.
  • After the Watts Riots of 1965, King realised that ‘civil rights’ were insufficient to improve the lives of Black Americans:
  • He began to support affirmative action (positive discrimination) to improve the social and economic status of Black Americans.
  • He opposed the Vietnam War (1967), saying the money should have been spent on the poor.
  • He organised he ‘Poor Peoples’ Campaign’ (March 1968).
  • In January 1966, King went to live in Chicago, but his ‘peaceful action’ tactics did not work there and he was unpopular.
  • By the time he was assassinated on 4 April 1968, King believed he had failed saying, ‘The day of violence is here’.