Civil Rights 1917-55 - key facts

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

Plesy v Ferguson - 1896

Despite the 14th Amendment, segregation was possible if provision was ‘separate but equal’

1919 Red Summer

• 25 anti-black race riots

• Hundreds killed

• Worst was in Chicago, not the South

Black voters registered to vote in Louisiana

• 1896 - 130,000

• 1904 - 1342

KKK lynchings 1925-30

579

Members of KKK by 1925

8 million

Harding

• Addressed 30,000 people at the University of Alabama on the evils of segregation

• Committed to a policy of laissez-faire - would not enforce opinion through legislation

Black population living in Northern cities in 1920

40%

Black people in Detroit

• 1910 - 5741

• 1930 - 120,000

Power of black vote

• Votes from black wards kept the mayor in power in 1919

• Business-oriented black elite with a vested interest in segregation

• Less political power in cities like New York where black population was more spread out

Oscar de Priest

Elected first black Congressman of the 20th century in 1929

National Urban League

• Established in 1910 to help black people migrating north

• Helped them find employment, housing and adjust to urban life

Executive Order 8802

Banned racial discrimination in the defence industry, in order to get as many people into war-work as possible

Impact of AAA

200,000 black sharecroppers evicted from their land

NRA

Social security provisions did not apply to agricultural or domestic workers; 75% of black workers employed in these areas

Benefits of New Deal

1/3 of low-income housing built had black tenants, because many of the poorest people eligible for this housing were black

NAACP vs Communists

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

Father Divine of the Peace Mission church group in Harlem

Set up restaurants and shops that sold food and supplies to black people at a lower cost than white-run stores

Housewives Leagues

• 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

Resettlement Administration 1935

• Resettled low-income families in new housing

• Gave black farmers who had lost their homes loans

• Only helped 3400/200,000 farmers

Response to 1937 Depression

In 1939, around 2 million people signed a petition asking for federal aid to move to Africa

March on Washington

• 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

Black defence workers

• 1942 - 3%

• 1944 - 8%

President’s Committee on Civil Rights - 1946

• Called for equal opportunities in work and housing

• Urged strong federal support for civil rights

Truman’s shortcomings

• Proposed anti-lynching, anti-segregation and fair employment laws in 1954

• Failed to push them through Congress

Government list of suspect organisations

National Negro Congress - earlier collaboration with communists

1948 executive orders

• Desegregation of military

• Desegregation of all work done by businesses for the government

NAACP membership

• 1917 - 9000

• 1919 - 90,000

• 1946 - 600,000

Back to Africa movement

Separatists like Marcus Garvey supported a return to Africa

Moore v Dempsey 1923

• First case to come before the Supreme court in the 20th century related to the treatment of black Americans in the criminal justice systems of the South

• Ruled that mob-dominated trials deprived defendants of due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment

1948 Shelley v Kraemer

Banned regulations barring black people from buying houses in an area in any state

Cases won by Thurgood Marshall in the 40s and 50s

29/32

Black children in integrated schools in the South 10 years after Brown v Board

1/100

1954 - Formation of White Citizens Council

• Fought desegregation and civil rights for black Americans in response to Brown v Board of Education

• 250,000 members by 1956

1917 - Silent Protest Parade

March of over 10,000 black people in New York in response to both lynching and anti-black riots that year

CORE

• Set up in 1942

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

• Sit-ins in Chicago (1942), St Louis (1949) and Baltimore (1952) to desegregate public facilities

1947 - Journey of Reconciliation

CORE members and the Fellowship for Reconciliation rode interstate buses through the Southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky to desegregate them