Civil Rights - 1917-55

13th Amendment - 1865

Abolition of slavery

14th Amendment - 1868

All people born or naturalised in the USA made US citizens

15th Amendment - 1870

All US citizens had the same voting rights

Jim Crow laws

• Segregated every aspect of life - where to sit on the tram, send children to school, live

• Many workplaces segregated their workers

Voting discrimination

• Literacy tests - black people often given a harder passage to read

• Voters had to be home owners

• All-white elections to select candidates for the actual election

• Polling stations surrounded by white waiting to beat up black voters

Number of black Americans registered to vote in Louisiana

Fell from 130,000 in 1896 to 1342 in 1904

Lynchings

• Between 1915 and 1930, 579 black men were lynched

• Often advertised beforehand

• 14 year-old Emmett Till lynched in 1955 for talking to a white woman, allegedly asking her on a date

Klu Klux Klan

• White supremacist organisation revived in 1915

• By 1925, estimates of membership ranged from 3-8 million

• Most knew who Klan members were, but the hoods allowed them to claim that they couldn’t identify individual Klansmen

Federal government intervention in the South

• In 1896, the Supreme Court, in Plesy v Ferguson, had ruled that, despite the 14th Amendment, segregation was possible if provision was ‘separate but equal’

• President Wilson, a southerner, had no problem with segregation

• President Harding spoke out about lynching and broadly in favour of civil rights, even addressing 30,000 at the University of Alabama on the evils of segregation

• President Harding and Coolidge were committed to a policy of laissez-faire; they could express and opinion and try to influence behaviour but would not enforce it by legislation

• When the Depression hit, civil rights issues slid further out of sight

The Great Migration (1917-1932)

• Movement from the South to cities and industrial towns in the North and East

• Black population of Detroit rose from c.6000 in 1910 to 120,000 in 1930

• WW1 led to a rising need for workers in munitions factories → factory owners advertised in Southern newspapers for workers → offered housing, free transport and good wages

• Jobs often low-paid - sometimes replacing white workers pushing for a higher wage

• Accommodation in the most crowded room and run-down part of the city → rent higher than a white person would be charged

• Some black professionals lived in their own black communities, in better parts of the cities

• Some poorer black Americans moved to their own areas of rich white suburbs, within reach of families that needed nannies and domestic servants

Impact of migration

• Sharp rise in population of these cities

• In cities where black migrants settled in areas that coincided with voting wards, black people came to have significant political influence

• Elections for mayor of Chicago in 1919 → black people listened to and a more powerful business-oriented elite grew up that had a vested interest in segregation

• Segregation made it more likely that they could try for positions in politics, because a black American in a black ward was likely to sweep the black vote

• In cities such as New York, where the black population was more evenly distributed and white politicians had a tight hold on the politics of the city, black Americans did not gain political power and influence

• Tended to live in a few smaller parts of the city or smaller segregated groups all over the city → own businesses, schools and churches

• Black migrants dislodged white workers, especially members of unions pushing for better conditions → businesses put pressure on workers to leave unions or lose their jobs

Impact of migration in the South

• Labour force shrank and framing areas, already having economic problems, struggled to get by

• The poorest farmers suffered the most, most of them black

• Southerners tended to see the migration as black people ‘voting with their feet’ over Jim Crow laws → assumption that those remaining in the South were accepting of Jim Crow

Impact of the New Deal

• During the 1930s black voters shifted from mainly voting Republican to voting Democrat - significant part of Roosevelt landslide

• Roosevelt appointed some black advisers

• Needed support of many people who were against equal rights, so did little to advance civil rights → often restricted the number of black workers on a project if a donor to the project wished

• Executive Order 8802 - banned racial discrimination in the defence industry, in order to get as many people into war-work as possible

New Deal measures

• Supposedly colour-blind → agencies he set up to provide relief and work said they put people into work project ‘by merit’ alone

• Black people constantly moved off projects to make space for whites, despite denials that this was happening → sacked in their thousands during agricultural reforms

• Social security provisions of the New Deal did not apply to farm workers or those who worked in other people’s homes → many were black Americans

• Black officials in the government protested and advised → persuaded the National Recovery Administration to set the minimum wage for black and white people at the same rate → often they were ignored

• Some New Deal measures helped black Americans because of their situation → 1/3 of low-income housing built had black tenants, because many of the poorest people eligible for this housing were black

Support from communist and left-wing groups

• In 1931, the NAACP turned down the case of nine black men framed for raping two white girls on a train in Alabama → communist lawyers took the case, uncovered a conspiracy and the men were found not guilty

• In the early 1930s, Birmingham, Alabama had 6 members of the NAACP and over 3000 black American communists

• Communists in the Northern cities championed the cause of all workers and demanded that relief funds should be distributed equally between blacks and whites → the black press followed these campaigns and often applauded them

• Association with communist gave opponents of black civil rights another stick with which to beat the civil rights movement

1930s civil rights organisations

• Black church organisations → Set up support systems for black Americans during the Depression → more of this support in the North and mostly in cities, because there were more churches and people to contribute to relief work

• In Harlem, Father Divine of the Peace Mission church group set up restaurants and shops that sold food and supplies to black people at a lower cost than white-run stores

• Housewives’ League → began in Detroit and spread across the country → mounted ‘don’t buy where you can’t work’ campaigns to boycott stores in black districts until they hired black workers

1937 depression

• Executive Order 7207 - Set up the Resettlement Administration in May 1935 → resettled low-income families in new housing and lent money where needed → only helped 3400 of over 200,000 farmers

• Things were so bad that, in 1939, around 2 million people signed a petition asking for federal aid to move to Africa

Gains for black Americans during WW2

• Did not benefit much from the war induced boom that began in 1939 → white workers given preference

• In May 1941, A. Philip Randolph threatened a 100,000-strong all-black march on Washington unless Roosevelt banned discrimination in the army and defence factories → march stopped by Executive Order 8802

• Many complaints were made to the Fair Employment Practices Committee (set up by EO 8802) → equality was only patchily implemented due to pressure from opponents of equal rights

• In 1942, only 3% of defence workers were black; in 1944, this was 8%

• Influx of black workers to northern cities was resented → 1943 saw outbreaks of racist violence and strikes by white people over having to work with them → several towns set up race relations committees because strikes and riots damaged the war effort

• Shortage of workers meant white skilled workers had to allow black people to be trained in these skills → working side by side improved reaction to post-war civil rights efforts

• A survey at the end of the war revealed that many white Americans were still racist, supporting housing segregation and saying jobs should go to whites before blacks

Impact of President Truman

• Proposed anti-lynching, anti-segregation and fair employment laws in 1954 → failed to push them through Congress

• In 1946, Truman set up the President’s Committee on Civil Rights → called for equal opportunities in work and housing → urged strong federal support for civil rights

• Truman’s Cold War focus meant he concentrated more on fighting communism than on fighting for civil rights

• The National Negro Congress ended up on the government’s list of suspect organisations due to earlier collaboration with communists

• In 1948, Truman issued executive orders desegregating the military and all work done by businesses for the government

NAACP membership

• 1917 - 9000

• 1919 - 90,000

• 1946 - 600,000

Separatist movement

• Believed black Americans would never have equality with whites → suggested they embrace segregation and fight for equal conditions within it

• Black children would grow up without being made to feel inferior; they could feel proud instead

• Marcus Garvey advocated for black Americans to go back to Africa in the early 1920s

NAACP

• Set up in 1910 with the aim of gaining black Americans legal rights

• Began by mounting a campaign against lynching, feeling that many people had no idea about the scale of it → published pamphlets, demonstrated, held marches and petitioned Congress → laws against lynching were brought to Congress but blocked by Southern politicians

• Took cases of segregation to court → argued that the ‘separate’ provision wasn’t equal, so couldn’t be overruled by the 1896 Supreme Court ruling

• Provided lawyers to defend black people on trial who it felt had been unjustly accused

Success of legal challenges

• NAACP won every case it fought in the 1950s

• Brown v Board of Education challenged the Plessy ruling → Judge Earl Warren said ‘separate but equal’ had no place in education and schools and colleges should be desegregated

• Supreme Court didn’t enforce its rulings and weakened the force of its rulings by not setting time limits for desegregation, or using vague phrases such as ‘with all deliberate speed’ as in Brown II

• Ten years after the ruling, only 1/100 black children in the South was in an integrated school

• The White Citizens Council formed in 1954 to fight desegregation and civil rights for black Americans in response to Brown v Board of Education

• Integrating schools was less helpful if families still lived in segregated neighbourhoods → for this reason, the NAACP targeted housing next, having helped to set up the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing in 1950

Direct action

• NAACP and other organisations stepped up direct action in the 1940s and 1950s, as their membership grew and they saw that legal rulings were not enough

• More local and frequent protests

• Influenced by the peaceful, passive resistance of Mahatma Gandhi in India, protestors targeted segregation and deliberately challenged ‘illegal’ state legislation

• Boycotts and picketing of shops which would not serve black people

• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held a series of sit-ins in the Northern cities of Chicago (1942), St Louis (1949) and Baltimore (1952) to desegregate public facilities

• In 1947, a group of CORE members and the Fellowship for Reconciliation went on the Journey of Reconciliation, riding interstate buses through the Southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky to desegregate them

• Thousands of black people took it into their hands to be the first to move into all-white housing blocks or business districts, often putting themselves in very real danger to do so

Rules of non-violent protest

• Demonstrators dressed as well as they could to look respectable

• Weren’t loud or abusive

• Didn’t fight back if attacked

• Tried to show they supported the government and looked for the government to support them → collected petitions and took them to local and federal government representatives

• Tried to demonstrate the evils of segregation and persuade white people, both ordinary and important in government, to change their views about black people, share their outrage and fight for change

• Demonstrators were of all ages, but were predominantly black → CORE was unusual in deliberately having black and white members working together