African American History: WWII to Civil Rights Movement (1940-1970)
STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE
African American history is heavily tested on the APUSH exam.
Questions from World War II to the Black Power movement average five points per exam.
KEY POINTS AND HISTORIC GENERALIZATIONS
Executive Order 8802: FDR's order was the first federal commitment against racial discrimination since Reconstruction.
Double V Campaign: Called for African Americans to fight fascism in Europe and racism in America, marking a new assertive attitude against segregation. (Movement during WW2 advocating for “double victory;” aimed to address hypocrisy of fighting for freedom abroad while being denied civil rights at home.)
Brown v. Board of Education:
Reversed "separate but equal" from Plessy v. Ferguson. (legal support for Jim Crow Laws)
Ruled segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.
Reflected a growing belief in using federal power for racial justice after World War II.
Dixiecrats:
Southern Democrats who opposed President Truman's civil rights proposals.
Marked the first break in the Solid South.
Southern Segregationists: Called for "massive resistance" to the Brown decision.
Little Rock School Crisis: Tested the federal government's commitment to enforcing Brown.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Galvanized the black community with nonviolent civil disobedience.
Sought equal rights and racial integration.
March on Washington:
Aimed to build support for President Kennedy's civil rights bill.
Led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning segregation in housing, jobs, education, and public facilities.
Voting Rights Act of 1965: Outlawed poll taxes, literacy tests, and other practices preventing African Americans from voting.
Malcolm X: Advocated black separatism, black pride, and stronger ties with newly independent African nations.
Stokely Carmichael & Black Power:
Argued for African Americans to build economic and political power.
Promoted black-owned businesses and voting for black candidates.
TOPIC 10.1 WORLD WAR II AND A NEW ASSERTIVE SPIRIT
A. THE POOREST OF THE POOR
Vast gap between American Creed and reality of racial injustice.
Three-fourths of African Americans lived in the South.
Average black worker earned 37% of the average white worker's income.
Nine out of ten black families lived at or near poverty level.
B. EXECUTIVE ORDER 8802
World War II ignited the American economy, but defense plants turned away black job applicants.
In 1940, black workers held just 300 of the 100,000 aircraft jobs.
A. Philip Randolph threatened a mass protest march in Washington, D.C.
FDR issued Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in defense jobs, and established a Fair Employment Practices Commission.
Black workforce in defense industries increased from 3% in 1942 to 9% in 1945.
Executive Order 8802 marked the first time since Reconstruction that the federal government committed itself to opposing racial discrimination.
The lure of jobs sparked a second phase in the Great Migration.
During the 1940s, a massive wave of about one million Southern blacks boarded "liberty trains" heading for urban areas in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific coast.
In 1943 alone over 100,000 African Americans abandoned their homes in Texas and Louisiana and moved to southern California.
The Second Great Migration far exceeded the movement of 1.5 million African Americans between 1910 and 1930.
In the quarter-century following World War 11, more than five million blacks left the South in search of better jobs, higher wages, and greater social equality.
By 1970, about 80 percent of African Americans lived in cities.
C. THE DOUBLE V CAMPAIGN
More than one million black soldiers served in America's armed forces during World War II.
Black Americans were keenly aware of the contradiction between fighting for democracy abroad while facing discrimination at home.
Langston Hughes asked, "How long I got to fight both Hitler and Jim Crow?"
In February 1942, the Pittsburgh Courier called for blacks to support a Double V campaign to win victory over fascism in Europe and victory over racism in America.
This new assertive attitude signaled both rising expectations and a determination to fight racial injustice.
TOPIC 10.2 THE TRUMAN YEARS: PROGRESS AND RESISTANCE, 1945-1952
A. "TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS"
Black leaders started a voter registration drive in the South before the 1946 congressional election.
Ku Klux Klan members and their supporters responded by threatening, assaulting, and even killing African Americans who tried to exercise their constitutional rights.
Truman learned about a particularly brutal assault on a black soldier in South Carolina he vowed, "We've got to do something."
President Truman appointed a presidential commission to study mob violence and civil rights.
The committee's report, "To Secure These Rights," called for 35 reforms including a federal anti-lynching law, a civil rights division within the Justice Department, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, and a law abolishing poll taxes.
Southern opposition blocked any congressional actions.
B. THE "DIXIECRATS"
Hubert H. Humphrey called for support of a civil rights plank in the party platform.
Delegates from Alabama and Mississippi walked out of the convention hall waving Confederate battle flags.
Deep South delegates nominated Strom Thurmond to head a new States' Rights or "Dixiecrat" Party.
Truman eventually won the 1948 presidential election, but the Dixiecrats carried Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
The Dixiecrat Party marked the beginning of a significant change in the Democratic Party coalition.
Southern states formed a politically unified block known as the Solid South.
The Dixiecrat success in the 1948 presidential election marked the first crack in the Solid South.
The election demonstrated that life-long Southern Democrats would abandon their party over the issues of civil rights and desegregation.
C. THE END OF MILITARY SEGREGATION, 1948
Southern resistance continued to block civil rights legislation in Congress.
Truman signed Executive Order 9981, abolishing discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces.
This historic action marked a major victory in the emerging Civil Rights Movement.
D. JACKIE ROBINSON
On April 14, 1947, major league baseball mirrored American society - The rosters of all 16 major league teams contained only white players.
Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Robinson became the first black major league baseball player in the twentieth century.
Branch Rickey warned Robinson to expect a torrent of abuse.
Opposing pitchers threw at Robinson, base runners tried to spike him, and fans taunted him.
Robinson persevered and excelled, proving that talent and character are more important than skin color.
Robinson's success illustrated the shift in attitudes taking place across America.
TOPIC 10.3 BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA
A. SEPARATE BUT NOT EQUAL
Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment forbade states from denying their residents "the equal protection of the laws."
In 1896 the Supreme Court narrowed the equal protection clause by ruling in P/essy v. Ferguson that racially "separate but equal" public facilities are constitutional.
Justice John Marshall Harlan warned "the thin disguise" of equality "will not mislead anyone."
Once legally sanctioned, Jim Crow segregation became a pervasive part of life in the South.
The "separate but equal" doctrine created separation but it did not create equality.
When the 1953-54 school year opened, 2.5 million African American children attended all-black schools in the nation's capital and in 17 Southern and border states.
The NAACP's Legal Defense Fund discovered appalling disparities between the white and black school systems.
In Clarendon County, South Carolina, the local school board spent to educate each white child and just for each black child.
Black students in Clarendon County attended classes in buildings lacking running water or indoor toilets.
B. THURGOOD MARSHALL AND OLIVER BROWN
Thurgood Marshall understood the humiliation caused by legal segregation.
In 1933, the University of Maryland Law School denied Marshall admission because he was black.
He attended law school at the historically black Howard University.
Charles Houston taught Marshall to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans.
After graduating first in his class, Marshall eventually became the Chief Counsel for the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund.
He soon compiled an impressive record of court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination.
Oliver Brown also understood the humiliation caused by legal segregation.
A welder and part-time pastor, Brown and his family lived in an integrated neighborhood in Topeka, Kansas.
In September 1950, Brown and his seven year-old daughter Linda walked four blocks to an all-white neighborhood elementary school.
The principal refused to enroll Linda because she was black.
This degrading rejection forced Linda to walk across dangerous railroad tracks to reach an all-black elementary school two miles from her home.
Linda Brown's father and Thurgood Marshall together changed the course of American history.
In February 1951, Oliver Brown filed a federal lawsuit against the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education.
His suit soon became one of five test cases chosen by Marshall and the NAACP legal team to challenge state laws mandating segregation in the public schools.
Oliver Brown's famous case became the first name on the list.
C. "WE CONCLUDE … "
Thurgood Marshall and his team argued that segregated schools placed a stigma or badge of second-class citizenship on black children by implying that they were not fit to be educated with white children.
He forcefully insisted that this denied black children the "equal protection of the laws" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
On May 17, 1954, a hushed audience of reporters closely watched as all nine Supreme Court justices solemnly entered the Court's ornate chamber.
Americans and indeed people all over the world anxiously waited to hear the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
Chief Justice Earl Warren firmly announced the Court's unanimous decision: "We hold that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
The decision marked a momentous turning point in American history.
The ruling overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in P/essy v. Ferguson.
It thus opened a new era in the African American struggle for equal rights.
The unanimous Brown decision placed the Supreme Court on the side of racial justice.
Galvanized by the Court's ruling, America's 15 million black citizens began to demand "Freedom Now!"
TOPIC 10.4 MASSIVE RESISTANCE
A. THE SOUTHERN MANIFESTO
Outraged Southern leaders did not applaud the Court for becoming an active agent of social change by opening a new era in the African American struggle for equal rights.
Instead they responded by calling for "massive resistance" to the Brown decision.
In Congress, 82 representatives and 19 senators signed a Southern Manifesto accusing the Supreme Court of "a clear abuse of judicial power."‘
The Southern Manifesto inspired widespread resistance to integration.
Deep South states successfully evaded or defied plans to integrate their schools.
Three years after the Brown decision, none of the 1.4 million African American children in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina attended integrated schools.
B. CRISIS AT CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL IN LITTLE ROCK
Little Rock's Central High School first opened its doors in 1927.
State officials hailed the new building as America's most expensive, most beautiful, and most spacious public high school.
Nearly 2,000 white students expected to attend Central when it opened for the new school year on September 3, 1957.
According to a desegregation plan adopted by the Little Rock school board, nine carefully selected black students would join them.
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus denounced the school board's desegregation plan and warned, "blood will run in the streets."
In order to deter violence he dispatched over 250 Arkansas National Guardsmen to surround Central High School and prevent the nine black students from entering the building.
Massive resistance became painfully visible on September 3, 1957.
A howling mob of over 1,000 white segregationists threatened the black students.
Televised images of black students confronted by armed soldiers and their white tormentors stunned America.
After three weeks of mob rule, Little Rock's mayor sent President Eisenhower an urgent wire declaring, "Situation is out of control and police cannot disperse the mob … immediate need for federal troops is urgent."
C. PRESIDENT EISENHOWER ACTS
President Eisenhower ordered 1,200 paratroopers from the famous 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the black students and enforce the desegregation order.
He explained his action in a stern, nationally televised address: "The very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rests upon the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and insure the carrying out of the decisions of the federal courts, even, when necessary, with all the measures at the President's command."
The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division arrived in Little Rock within eight hours of the president's order.
Their deployment marked the first time since Reconstruction federal troops were sent into the South to protect the rights of African Americans.
Shocking images of armed soldiers escorting the Little Rock Nine into Little Rock's Central High School became symbols of America's struggle for racial equality.
The events in Little Rock began to build public support for desegregation.
However, they did not end determined and often violent Southern resistance to integration.
TOPIC 10.5 THE BEGINNING OF NONVIOLENT PROTESTS, 1954-1960
A. ROSA PARKS
Rosa Parks grew up on a small farm outside Montgomery, Alabama.
Like other blacks, she faced the daily struggle of living with humiliating Jim Crow segregation laws.
Knowing her place meant drinking from colored-only water fountains, eating in colored-only restaurants, and sitting in colored-only seats on public buses.
On December 1, 1955, Parks finished a long day's work in a Montgomery department store and boarded a bus to ride home.
When she sat down, Parks was an unknown and very tired 42-year-old seamstress.
A white bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white passenger.
Rosa Parks refused the driver's order by saying just one fateful word-"No."
The driver promptly called the police, who arrested Parks and fined her .
B. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Parks's act of defiance shifted attention to her 26-year-old minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
King showed great academic promise as a student at Morehouse College.
After choosing to become a minister, he attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania.
King distinguished himself as both a scholar and a student leader.
The mostly-white student body voted him president of their class.
He left Crozer to earn a Ph.D. at Boston University.
Dr. King's force of personality and strong moral convictions made him a charismatic leader.
He mobilized Montgomery's black community by organizing a boycott of the city buses.
During the 381-day boycott, blacks walked, carpooled, and bicycled to their destinations.
Extremists retaliated by bombing Dr. King's home.
Dr. King did not apologize for his "crime" of violating unjust segregation laws.
Influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau and the actions of Mahatma Gandhi, he inspired boycotters by urging them to meet hate with love and violence with nonviolent civil disobedience.
Dr. King convinced his followers that "noncooperation with evil is a moral duty."
He refused to retreat or compromise. "If I am stopped," he told his fellow boycotters, "this movement will not stop, because God is with this movement."
The Montgomery Bus Boycott finally prevailed when the Supreme Court declared the Montgomery and Alabama laws segregating buses unconstitutional.
Dr. King's leadership in the Montgomery Bus Boycott transformed him from an unknown local minister into America's foremost civil rights leader.
Within a short time. he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to apply the principles of nonviolent civil disobedience to test cases across the South.
C. THE SIT-IN MOVEMENT
The victories in Montgomery and Little Rock did not end segregation's iron grip on Southern life.
While moderates urged patience, Joe McNeil and three black college students disagreed.
Calling segregation "evil pure and simple," the four students sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and ordered cups of coffee and slices of apple pie.
The Greensboro Four did not leave when their waitress refused to serve them.
Even though segregationists shouted obscenities, threatened violence, and poured ketchup and mustard on their heads, the students remained resolute.
During the next few days, more and more students joined the sit-in.
Faced with mounting losses, the Greensboro Woolworth desegregated its lunch counter.
The Greensboro Four pioneered a successful tactic of student-led sit-ins.
Encouraged by the civil rights organizer Ella Baker, black and white students formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Soon a wave of student protesters held "read-ins" at libraries, "watch-ins" at movie theaters, and "wade-ins" at pools and beaches.
TOPIC 10.6 "WE SHALL OVERCOME"
A. THE FREEDOM RIDERS
Young black and white activists continued to press for a faster pace of desegregation.
In May 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent an integrated group of 13 "freedom riders" on a bus trip scheduled to begin in Washington, D.C., and end in New Orleans.
They hoped to find out if a 1960 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in bus stations was being obeyed.
They quickly learned that it wasn't.
A mob of angry whites attacked the freedom riders in Anniston, Montgomery, and Birmingham, Alabama.
Violence did not stop the freedom riders.
By the end of 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy convinced the Interstate Commerce Commission to issue an order banning segregation in interstate bus terminals.
The freedom riders thus proved that direct action would work.
Across the country, more and more black and white demonstrators marched against segregation as they sang the civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome."
B. BIRMINGHAM, "A VISUAL DEMONSTRATION OF SIN"
In April 1963, Dr. King led a campaign of demonstrations designed to topple segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.
"If we could break through the barriers in Birmingham," Dr. King predicted, "all the South would go the same way."
However, segregationists led by Eugene "Bull" Conner, the city's Commissioner of Public Safety, offered forceful resistance.
Connor's police officers promptly arrested over 3,000 demonstrators, including Dr. King.
While in jail, Dr. King composed an eloquent plea for racial justice, the "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Dr. King defended civil disobedience as a justified response to unjust laws.
He called upon white clergymen to join him in being "extremists for the cause of justice."
He reminded them that "segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
Bull Connor responded by being an extremist for the cause of segregation.
He unleashed snarling police attack dogs and high-pressure fire hoses to disperse peaceful protestors.
Widespread television coverage exposed the American public to what one journalist called a "visual demonstration of sin, vivid enough to rouse the conscience of the entire nation."
C. PRESIDENT KENNEDY, "WE ARE CONFRONTED WITH A MORAL ISSUE"
Public outrage forced President Kennedy to act.
In a televised address on June 11, 1963, he argued for racial justice: "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue … The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated."
Eight days later, the President called upon Congress to pass a sweeping civil rights bill prohibiting segregation in public places.
D. THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON, "I HAVE A DREAM"
Dr. King and other civil rights leaders called for a massive March on Washington to build a "coalition of conscience" to support Kennedy's civil rights bill.
The climax of the day came when Dr. King addressed a crowd of over 200,000 black and white supporters.
His famous "I Have a Dream" speech featured an eloquent call for a society based on racial harmony.
Stating that his dream was "deeply rooted in the American dream," Dr. King yearned for a day when his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
E. THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964
President Johnson plunged into his duties in the dark days following the assassination of President Kennedy.
Johnson used his legendary legislative skills to overcome strong Southern opposition and win passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The new law was the most comprehensive civil rights legislation ever enacted by Congress.
It banned segregation in housing, jobs, education, and public facilities such as hotels, restaurants, and theaters.
The law also authorized the attorney general to bring suits to speed school desegregation.
The landmark act played an unexpected role in promoting women's rights.
Title VII outlawed discrimination in employment on the basis of race, religion, national origins, or sex.
Women's groups used this provision to secure government support for greater equality in education and employment.
F. THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965
Following this victory, civil rights activists shifted their attention to black voter registration.
A major campaign in Mississippi failed to overcome fierce resistance from segregationists who intimidated blacks and murdered three civil rights workers.
Dr. King then launched a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, a city that allowed just 355 of its 15,000 blacks residents to vote.
Dr. King hoped to use Selma as a test case for voting rights, in the same way he had used Birmingham as a test case for civil rights.
On Sunday March 7, 1965, about 600 activists began a peaceful march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery.
However, a large contingent of deputies and state troopers attacked and brutally beat the marchers with nightsticks, tear gas, and electric cattle prods.
Known as "Bloody Sunday," the shocking event provided yet another graphic demonstration of violent resistance.
Bloody Sunday galvanized civil rights activists who poured into Selma to complete the march.
President Johnson delivered a nationwide address endorsing a strong voting rights bill, vowing "We Shall Overcome."
Five months later Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, outlawing poll taxes, literacy tests, and other practices that had been used to block blacks from voting.
The new law thus made the Fifteenth Amendment an effective part of the Constitution.
TOPIC 10.7 A NEW MILITANCY
A. MALCOLM X
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represent historic achievements that struck down Jim Crow segregation.
However, these victories did not satisfy a new generation of militant black leaders living in urban ghettos.
They pointed to decaying cities, soaring crime rates, and depression level unemployment rates as evidence of problems that could not be solved by sit-ins and freedom marches.
Malcolm X emerged as a charismatic black leader who demanded radical change.
He first came to public attention as a militant minister for the Nation of Islam, a religious group known as the Black Muslims.
Malcolm X rejected Dr. King's strategy of nonviolence and vision of a racially integrated society.
Instead, he advocated black separatism, black pride, and the expansion of links with the newly independent black nations in Africa.
He chose the surname "X" as a tribute to the memory of his unknown African ancestors.
Malcolm X expressed the growing anger and frustration of urban African Americans.
He condemned white racism and the failure of liberal whites and moderate blacks to address the pressing economic needs of the African American community.
Malcolm X underscored his differences with Dr. King when he declared, "I don't see any American dream. I see an American nightmare."
Within a short time, Malcolm X became America's most effective militant voice.
However, his growing national notoriety sparked rivalry and jealousy with leaders in the Nation of Islam.
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X gave a scheduled speech before a crowd of several hundred followers in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom.
Black Muslim assassins suddenly unleashed a barrage of bullets, silencing the most articulate spokesmen for black militants since Marcus Garvey.
B. STOKELY CARMICHAEL AND BLACK POWER
Stokely Carmichael began his activist career as a supporter of Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience.
While still a student at Howard University, Carmichael participated in the first Freedom Ride.
After graduating from Howard, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC} and within a short time became the organization's national chairman.
Carmichael soon replaced Malcolm X as America's most militant black leader.
He promptly turned SNCC in a sharply radical direction by making it clear that white members were no longer welcome.
Carmichael expressed his generation's more militant mood when he defiantly proclaimed, "Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation is out of breath. We ain't running no more."
In a speech in Mississippi he electrified a crowd of 600 supporters by boldly shouting, "We want Black Power!"
When he asked his listeners "What do you want?" the crowd roared, "BLACK POWER!"
Black Power became the rallying cry of a younger, more radical generation of black activists.
As explained by Carmichael, Black Power represented a decisive break with the traditional civil rights goals of racial integration and "Freedom Now."
Instead, it marked "a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize our heritage and build a sense of community."
Building their own community meant developing black-owned businesses and electing black public officials.
C. THE LONG HOT SUMMERS
The Civil Rights movement raised high hopes that could not be quickly fulfilled.
At the same time, the Black Power movement inflamed long-simmering tensions in inner cities across America.
The frustration and anger caused by this combustible mix exploded in urban riots that began in 1965 in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
The riot in Watts claimed 34 lives and destroyed millions of dollars of property.
It proved to be a harbinger of worse to come.
During the long hot summers of 1966 and 1967, racial riots struck over 150 cities and towns.
The most serious violence occurred in Detroit, where the worst riot in American history left 43 dead and 5,000 homeless.
D. DR. KING-ASSASSINATION AND LEGACY
The Black Power movement forced Dr. King to expand his focus from civil rights to the deep-rooted problems caused by inner-city poverty.
At the same time, he became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.
Dr. King questioned the war's growing cost and asked why America was sending young black men "eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem."
Determined to promote economic justice, Dr. King traveled to Memphis to support a strike by the city's underpaid sanitation workers.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, a white assassin, later identified as James Earl Ray, fired a high powered bullet that struck and killed Dr. King as he stood on the balcony of his motel.
The tragic news sparked a wave of rioting that impacted over 130 cities.
Dr. King left an enduring legacy that transformed American society.
In just over a decade he led a campaign of nonviolent protests dismantling a system of segregation that had stood essentially unaltered since Reconstruction.
His famous dream of a just society continues to inspire Americans to work for a future without racial prejudice and discrimination.