VCE Modern History Unit 2 AoS 2: US Civil Rights

Background of the US Civil Rights Movement

• 1861: 16 states of the US were considered slave states

• Africa Americans won freedom during the US Civil War in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863

• 6 December 1865: The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the US, however it remained integral in the southern (agricultural) states compared to the northern industrialised states, where a social devide was created

• Jim Crow: A character played onstage by a white performer dancing in blackface in the 1830s and 1840s (based on a dimwitted slave)

• Jim Crow Laws enforced racial segregation from the late 19th century until the mid-20th century

• It emerged after Reconstruction, and was under the principle of “separate but equal'“ upheld by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

• School for ‘coloured children’ were created, separate cars and coaches were required for people of different races and white and black people couldn’t be served in the same room 

• Some marriages were prohibited due to race, separate entrances were used, and white female nurses were prohibited from treating black people.

The Ku Klux Klan

• Was founded in 1866 by Southern Civil War veterans

• At the KKK’s peak in the 1920s it was thought to have had 3-4 million members

• Lynching of black people in the US was at its peak in 1892 with 162 lynchings, with lynching decreasing over time

• 1915: Racist film (first film) titled birth of a nation showed black people in a negative light

• Red Summer of 1919: At least 77 African Americans were lynched

• Immigration Act of 1924: Restricted non-northern European arrivals.

• 1963 Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church resulted in the deaths of four African American girls

• 1965: US President Johnson publicly condemned the Klan

Creation of NAACP and Early Challenges of the Status Quo

• 1908 Springfield Race Riot: 14-18 August 1908 saw about 5000 white Americans rampaging and creating racial violence (destroying homes and businesses), impacting approximately 2000 black refugees

• 12 Febuary 1909: National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) was created in response to lynchings and to secure rights.

• Founding members include William E. Walling, Mary Ovington and W.E Burghardt Du Bois, who created a magazine called The Crisis (informing people of racial issues)

• In 1915: A court case is won and Grandfather Clause was ended (applied to the whole country)

• 100,000 NAACP members by 1928

• 26 July 1948: Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 outlawed segregation in federal government workplaces and US armed forces (Truman)

• Reverend Oliver and Linda Brown in 1952 triggered the Brown v Board of Education case

• 17 May 1954: Brown v Board of Education caused the Court to rule racial segregation in public schools as unconstitutional.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott