Conflict as a Catalyst for Civil Rights Lecture Notes

Flashcards covering the mechanical shifts in civil rights and social progress resulting from the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II, based on lecture transcripts.

Emancipation Proclamation

A 1863 decree issued by Abraham Lincoln as a calculated military tactic to deprive rebellious Southern states of their enslaved labor force, explicitly excluding enslaved people in Union border states.

United States Colored Troops (USCT)

A branch of the military formed after 01/01/1863, consisting of approximately 190,000 African American men who provided a massive influx of manpower to the Union cause.

Sergeant William Walker

A member of the third South Carolina Infantry who was court-martialed and executed for mutiny after leading his men to stack their arms in protest of pay discrimination.

Matthew Brady

A photographer of the Civil War era whose early work depicted African Americans in subservient roles as 'contrabands' before the shift to formal military portraits.

Thirteenth Amendment

The 1865 constitutional amendment that abolished slavery nationwide but included a loophole allowing labor as punishment for a crime.

Fourteenth Amendment

The 1868 amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law.

Fifteenth Amendment

The 1870 amendment decreeing that the right to vote could not be denied based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Black Codes

Local Southern laws, including sweeping vagrancy laws, designed to criminalize Black life and exploit the Thirteenth Amendment's labor loophole.

Compromise of 1877

A cynical political deal where Republicans agreed to pull federal troops out of the South in exchange for the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, effectively ending Reconstruction.

Selective Service Act

Legislation passed in 1917 that resulted in the drafting of approximately 3,000,000 men for World War I, creating a massive domestic labor vacuum.

Jesse Fistaniels

The Secretary of the Navy during World War I who enlisted women by exploiting the use of the word 'persons' in the Naval Reserve Act of 1916.

Yeoman (F)

The rank given to women enlisted in the Navy during World War I, who were legally entitled to the same base pay as male sailors of the same rank.

Michelle J. Shover

An academic who analyzed World War I propaganda posters, making a distinction between role recognition and the state's intent of 'role management'.

Division of Pictorial Publicity

An arm of the Committee on Public Information that hired commercial artists and advertising executives to manipulate public psychology during World War I.

James Montgomery Flagg

A commercial artist who utilized 'the girl' trope and the Gibson girl aesthetic in military recruitment posters.

Atlantic Charter

An August 1941 document signed by FDR and Winston Churchill outlining the moral justifications for World War II, including self-determination and freedom from fear and want.

Julius A. Haberman

A Jewish American veteran from Massachusetts who served in Company L of the 272nd Infantry Regiment and participated in the liberation of the Thekla Camp.

Thekla Camp

A subcamp of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp system where prisoners were used as slave labor to manufacture aviation parts.

Double V Campaign

A strategic initiative launched by the Pittsburgh Courier advocating for victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home.

Vagrancy Laws

Statutes that made it a crime for African American men to be unemployed, often resulting in arrest and the leasing of their labor to private companies.

Role Management

A propaganda strategy designed to temporarily expand the boundaries of acceptable female behavior for war needs while reinforcing those roles as unnatural and temporary.