Ford & Carter: African-Americans in the North & South

What is an overview about Southern Progress (1945-1980)?

Key Question: Had African-Americans attained equality by 1980?

General Trend: Overall status (social, economic, political) improved greatly due to the 1964-65 civil rights legislation and supportive SCOTUS rulings, but the dream of full equality was not yet achieved.

Progress in the South: * The 1964 Civil Rights Act ended the legal social inferiority of Jim Crow laws.

• School desegregation accelerated, significantly dropping the percentage of African-American children in segregated Southern school from 68% to 8% during Nixon’s presidency.

• Desegregation in the South reached it’s peak later in the 1970s.

What was the education gap between African-Americans & White Students?

High School Completion (Age 25+):

• 1970: African-Americans: 31%/White students: 55%.

• 1980: African-Americans: 51%/White students: 69%.

College Completion (4+ years):

• 1970: African-Americans: 4%/White students: 11%.

• 1980: African-Americans: 8%/White students: 17%.

Takeaway: While African-Americans were steadily closing the educational gap, they still lagged significantly behind white peer by 1980.

What was the situation with De Facto Segregation & Busing in the North?

The Challenge: Unlike the South, de facto segregation (segregation by circumstance/neighborhoods rather than law) proved much harder to combat in the North.

Key SCOTUS Rulings:

• Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971): Ruled it was time for full implementation of school desegregation and explicitly endorsed busing black and white children to each other’s schools to achiebve racial balance.

• Milliken v. Bradley (1974): A more conservative SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that white suburbs had no constitutional obligation to merge school districts with predominately black cities (like Detroit) to force integration.

Political Backlash: Congress grew more conservative, approving anti-busing legislation in 1974 and 1975.

What was the impact and backlash to School Integration?

Social Conflict: Busing was deeply divisive, triggering the Boston anti-integrtion riots (1974-76) and a 1971 Ku Klux Klan bombing of ten school uses in Pontiac, Michigan.

Political Shifts: The white blacklash revitalised social conservatism into the 1980s. Conservatives attacked ‘limousine liberals’ (like Senator Edward Kennedy) for forcing racial harmony on others while remaining insulated from it themselves.

White Backlash results:

• Private School Surge: White families abandoned public systems. (e.g. Boston public schools has 45,000 white students in 1974, but only 16,000 by 1987).

• White Flight: Accelerated migration to the suburbs (6% of the population moved to suburbs in the 1970s).

What was the Media Status & Cultural Impact of Black-Americans?

Historical Context: White Americans had a long-standing admiration for Black music (e.g. Harlem nightclubs in the 1920s).

Progress by the 1970s: Black actors moved past being confined to servant roles in movies and television.

Key Milestones:

• Sidney Poitier: Achieved Hollywood ‘superstar’ status in the 1960s.

• Roots (1977): A groundbreaking TV mini-series chronicling an enslaved African man and his descendants. It became one of the most popular series in television history,

Perception: Some viewers felt roots symbolised a version of achieving the ‘American Dream’, as the characters eventually became property owners.

What was the Economic Status with Affirmative Action & Growth with African-Americans?

Government Intiatives: Following to the 1964-65 legislation, the federal government, judiciary, and city officials used affirmative action and anti-discrimination measures to boost Black employment and education.

Key Drivers: ‘Set-asides’ guaranteed a percentage of federal contracts to minority-owned businesses.

• EEOC pressure decreased hiring discrimination.

The Result: By 1980, one-third of African-Americans had entered the middle-class.

White Backlash: A strong backlash emerged against affirmative action in university admissions and workplaces.

• Example: A 1975 federal ruling overrode the Detroit police department’s ‘last hired, first fired’ rule to protect newly hired Black officers. This triggered a ‘police riot’ where white officers attacked a Black colleague.

What was the state of Black American Economic Inequality by 1980?

Income & Poverty:

• Median Income: Remained stuck at roughly 60% of white household income (the same ratio as 1965).

• Poverty Rate: Remained around 33% (three times higher than white people).

Employment & Welfare:

• Job Quality: One-third of Black Americans held low-status, low-skilled, low-wage jobs; average Black earnings were half those of white workers.

• Social Safety Nets: While making up 12% of the US population, Black Americans constituted 43% of those on welfare and 34% of those in subsidised housing.

What were the Health & Social Realities for Black-Americans by 1980?

• Infant Mortality: Driven by pervasive poverty, the Black infant mortality rate remained twice as high as that of white children (tough Medicaid helped lower the overall rate).

• Life Expectancy: There was very little progress in closing the gap between Black and white life expectancy during the 1970s.

• Insoluble Urban Issues: Ghetto crime, deep poverty, unemployment, and drug use remained massive, systemic problems that even new elected Black mayors could not solve.

• Core Takeaway: Civil Rights laws and affirmative action successfully built a Black middle class but failed to solve deep-rooted, structural economic problems.

What was the Life Expectancy for African-Americans (1960-1990)?

• 1960: Average Age at Death - Black; 63.6 - White; 70.6

• 1970: - Black; 64.1 - White; 71.7

• 1980: - Black; 68.1 - White; 74.4

• 1990: - Black; 69.1 - White; 76.1

• Key Takeaway: While life expectancy for Black Americans steadily increased by 5.5 years between 1960 and 1980, a persistent gap of roughly 6 years remained compared to white Americans.

• The ‘American Nightmare’: An August 1980 Black Enterprise magazine poll of 5,000 readers concluded: ‘if many of us have moved forward into the American Dream, more of us have slipped backwards into the American nightmare’.

What was the Debate over Black Poverty?

William J. Wilson’s View (The Declining Significance of Race, 1978): This Black sociologist argued that the structural disppearance of urban industrial job - rather than racism - was the main barrier to Black advancement.

The Political Divide:

• Liberals: Blamed ongoing, systemic racism and active discrimination.

• Conservatives: Complained that Democratic welfare programs created a ‘welfare dependency’ culture that destroyed the incentive to work.

Proposed Solutions: Varied wildly between demands for more federal aid, less federal aid, or grassroots community activism (championed by the National Urban League and CORE).

Civil Rights Shift: The NAACP stayed focused on legal litigation, while more radical 1960s groups like SNCC feel into terminal decline.

?What was the Political Status & Local Successes for Black Americans by 1980

• Impact of the Voting Rights Act: Enabled Black registration and voting in the South, triggering a surge in elected Black officials.

• Major Urban Mayors: Black candidates successfully won mayoral races in massive cities:

• Detroit (1973)

• Los Angeles (1973)

• Washington D.C. (1974)

• Atlanta (Maynard Jackson) & Birmingham (1979)

• Federal Representation: Over 20 African-Americans sat in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1973 and 1980. However, they almost exclusively represented areas with predominantly Black populations.

What were the Political Barriers & Judicial Shifts for African-Americans during the 1970s?

The Statewide Barrier: Winning statewide elections was incredibily difficult. The only Black U.S. Senator in this era was Edward William Brooke III (representing libeal Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979).

The 1% Statistic: Nationally, obly 1% of all electoral officials were Black in 1980.

Supreme Court Rulings:

• Beer v. United States (1976): Favorable ruling stating that redrawing political boundaries must not leave minority groups worse off in political representation. Some states drew specific districts to guarantee Black representation.

• City of Mobile v. Bolden (1980): A conservative shift. The Court weakened the Voting Rights Act by making it much harder to legally challenge discriminatory voting laws.

Summary: African-American political inequality continued, though it had somewhat decreased.

What was the Change and Continuity in the ‘New South’?

• A Regional Flip: The Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Avt (1965) fundamentally reshaped the South.

• Integration Success: Public places were completely desegregated by law, and by the 1970s, the South actually led the nation in school integration.

• Progressive Leadership: Southern governors like Jimmy Carter championed this transformation, signaling a stark departure from old Jim Crow era.

What was the significance of the ‘New South’ & Black Migration?

• Defining the ‘New South’: A term used to describe the socioeconomic and political changes in the Southern United States following the civil rights legislation of 1964-65.

• Shifting Political Rhetoric: By the 1970s, progressive Southern governors like Jimmy Carter of Georgia avoided the racist rhetoric of earlier decades. In 1974, even former arch-segregationist George Wallace declared himself a ‘born-again Christian’ and apologised to Selma marchers.

• The Return Migration: In the 1970s, the media noted a reverse migration of Black Americans moving from Northern cities back to the South.

• Reasons for Returning: Migrants interviewed by Ebony magazine citied rising Northern ghetto crime, discrimination, and a desire to escape Northern urban deterioration, contrasting it with a newly desegregated, economically growing South where they could live in greater peace.

What was the significance of the Change in Atlanta with Maynard Jackson?

• Historical First: In 1973, lawyer Maynard Jackson became the first Black mayor of Atlanta and Georgia, remaining in office until 1981.

• Middle-class Mobilisation: Jackson’s administration heavily reinforced Black middle-class involvement in Atlanta’s civic and economic affairs.

• Business Leadership Integration: A prominent example of this integration was Jesse Hill, who became the first Black officer of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and rose to become it’s president in 1977.

What was the situations with the Public Sector & Affirmative Action in Atlanta?

Public Employment Surge: Backed by 1972 Equal Employment Opportunities Act, Jackosn appointed Atlanta’s first affirmative action officer.

Employment Statistics:

• The proportion of Black public employees in professional positions rose dramatically from 19.2% in 1973 to 42.2% in 1978.

• The proportion of Black managers more than doubled, increasing from 13.5% to 32.6% over the same timeframe.

Legislative Scope: This massive shift was accelerated by the extension of federal anti-discrimination protections to state & local government jobs.

What was the situation with Economic Leverage & City Contracts with African-Americans in Atlanta?

Empowering Black Businesses: Mayor Jackson used the power of city funding to aggressively mandate economic integration.

Contract Allocations: He successfully increased the percentage of city contracts awarded to Black-owned firms to around 25%.

Banling and Financial Pressure:

• The share of city funds deposited in Black-owned banks soared from 2% to 33% during his first terms.

• Jackson boldly withdrew city money from a major bank that refused to accept affirmative action policies.

• A city ordinance went as far as setting mandatory minority hiring goals for all companies looking to do business with the city of Atlanta.

What continuity & persistent Inequality was faced by African-Americans by 1980? (1)

Political Limits in the Deep South: It is unrealistic to view the South as totally transformed. By 1980, increased Black voter registration had not resulted in a massive surge of Black elected officials in Deep South like Georgia.

Georgia Electoral Data (1980):

• African-Americans made up 27% of registered voters in Georgia, but the state had only 249 Black elected officials - accounting for a mere 3.7% of the state total.

• This averaged out to fewer than 5 Black elected officials per country.

• Across the South as a whole in 1980, nine of Georgia’s 23 majority-Black counties completely lacked any Black elected officials.

Overall Assessment (1980): Despite all efforts and progress made since 1945, Black economic, social and political inequality firmly continued.

What continuity & persistent Inequality was faced by African-Americans by 1980? (2)

Poverty & Unemployment Realities:

• One-third of Black residents in Atlanta remained below the poverty line.

• Black unemployment in Georgia stood at 12.5%, which was three times the percentage proportion for the white population.

• Inside Atlanta specifically, Black unemployment was double white unemployment, and 70% of those employed held lower-paying blue-collar jobs.

• Around 33% of Atlanta’s Black families lived below the poverty line, compared to only 7% of white families.

Environmental Racism: A study launched in 1979 by sociologist Robert Bullard revealed that official rubbish dumps in the South were disproportionately situatied in Black population areas.