Historical Context and Civil Rights Movements

FHA Loan Limits (2021)

  • Effective January 1st, 2021, the loan limits for FHA loans were:
    • Low Cost Area: 356,362356,362
    • High Cost Area: 822,375822,375

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  • Westinghouse refrigerators:
    • Marketed as chilling faster than meal preparation.
    • Promoted as a "cook" due to food chilling.
    • Features include "Shape of Tomorrow" styling, fitting under standard 18" cabinets.
    • Offered in 55 color combinations with magnetic doors and Ceramicor magnets.
    • Priced from 199.95199.95 less trade.
  • Hoover vacuum cleaners: Marketed as a desirable Christmas gift.

Veterans and Housing

  • Veterans were encouraged to learn about guaranteed loans for farms, homes, or businesses.
  • The slogan was "Your rent money will buy a home."
  • The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) offered mortgages and resources for modernization.

Historical Context and Civil Rights

Civil Rights Movement

  • The conventional wisdom doesn’t just change gradually.
  • Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat was not simply because she was tired.

Legal and Electoral Strategies

  • Reconstruction-era precedents: Constitutional conferences, public office, and appeals to Radical Reconstruction leaders.
  • Late 19th-century court challenges: Examples include Ida B. Wells challenging segregated transport.
  • Niagara Movement and NAACP (1909):
    • Successfully challenged racial zoning in Richmond (1917).
    • Won a Supreme Court case in 1938 invalidating state laws that forced Black graduate students to attend out-of-state and segregated programs.
    • Formed the Legal Defense Fund (1940).
    • Successfully challenged Texas’ all-white primary in 1944 and won Shelley v. Kraemer (1948).
    • Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Collective Action and Civil Disobedience

  • Forms of protest: Migration, self-help organizations (schools, community banks), labor unions (Knights, IWW, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters), political journalism (DuBois, The Crisis), boycotts, and strikes (Atlanta washerwomen; “Don’t Shop Where You Can’t Work”; MOW movement; Double V campaign).

  • Wartime and Post-War Experiments:

    • CORE (Congress on Racial Equality): Founded by the Fellowship for Reconciliation; experimented with “ride-ins” in the 1940s.
    • Baton Rouge bus boycott (1953).
    • Eisenhower and Congress deferred to states regarding civil rights issues.
    • White violence: Emmett Till murdered in 1955.
    • Crackdown on NAACP: Created an organizational vacuum with 226 branches closed between 1955 and 1957; none left in Alabama.
    • Montgomery Bus Boycott: E.D. Nixon and JoAnn Robinson (Women’s Political Council) decided Rosa Parks would make a good test case and helped recruit Martin Luther King Jr.
    • MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association): Boycotts required coordinated, tireless, and mundane work.
    • Tallahassee’s Inter Civic Council (1956); Birmingham’s Christian Movement for Civil Rights (1956).

Montgomery and MIA

  • Local leadership coordinated with a national network.
  • Widespread media coverage (Cold War as leverage).
  • Legal and protest traditions were complementary (Gayle v. Browder, Nov. 1, 1956).
  • SCLC (1957).
  • First MIA meeting (Dec. 5, 1955).
  • Jet (Dec 22, 1955) covered the events.

Sit-ins and Rise of SNCC

  • Local origins at North Carolina A&T students; became a national movement.
  • Linked to national networks like In Friendship, Highlander.
  • Organizers from NAACP households followed 50s activism and heard King speak.
  • Ella Baker and the founding of SNCC.

Ella Baker

  • Born in Norfolk, VA in 1903.
  • Mid-20s: Shaw University, activist.
  • 1930s: Young Negro Cooperative League (NYC).
  • 1938-1946: National NAACP (National Secretary, Director of Branches, etc.).
  • 1957: SCLC (Executive Director).
  • 1960: Arranged conference at Shaw and creation of SNCC; remained an influential advisor and mentor.

SNCC Voter Registration

  • Leadership included Bob Moses and Amzie Moore.

March on Washington (1963)

  • A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) were key organizers, referencing the March on Washington Movement (MOW) of 1941.