Results for "1964 Civil Rights Act"

1964 Civil Rights Act

Chapter 13: Standards for Police Recruitment

Chapter 19:The Economics of Labor Market Discrimination

(Draft) 1961-1969: Black American civil rights - changing patterns and approaches Southern-based campaigning: -success of Montgomery bus boycott led to further mass activism: civil rights movement exploded into life with the student sit-ins in 1960. Martin Luther King offered the students the support of SCLC + student-sit ins were more confrontational than simply boycotting buses SNCC and grassroots empowerment: -younger generation often adopted a different approach from the NAACP litigation strategy and the one-off events and short-term campaigns designed to publicise black inequality that King favoured. -SNCC focused on empowering local black communities. 1961-1964 organised grassroot struggles in the South: held citizenship classes and assisted impoverished black sharecroppers in voter registration in the Mississippi Delta. -SNCC also joined in CORE’s Freedom Rides (when integrated groups of civil rights activists rode on interstate buses to defy segregation and monitor whether Supreme Court rulings against segregation were being ignored) in 1961: had the specific intention of creating a crisis. It worked: when white racists attacked the Freedom Riders with clubs and chains, Attorney General Robert Kennedy began working to implement the Supreme Court rulings. It also inspired King to operate ‘with the specific intention of creating a crisis’. King and short-term campaigns: -King knew that racist law enforcement officials would mistreat protesters and thereby publicise Southern white racism -Birmingham (1963): President Kennedy told the nation he was sickened by the use of televised scenes of dogs and high-powered hoses on black marchers → encouraged Kennedy’s promotion of the civil rights bill -March on Washington a few weeks later: designed to publicise black economic and social inequality, highlight was King’s ‘I have a dream speech’ -Birmingham and March on Washington helped arouse some white sympathy for the black predicament in the Jim Crow South and contributed to the passage of the civil rights bill in 1964. However, it also required Kennedy’s death and Johnson’s determination and legislative skills to bring about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. -1964 Act did nothing to facilitate black voting → it took King’s Selma campaign to make Congress respond to Johnson’s requests for voting rights legislation → encouraged sympathetic interracial marches in the North and the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which led to a dramatic increase in Southern black voting. The emergence of Black Power: -NAACP litigation and King’s campaigns = concentrated on solving Jim Crow problem in the South. Problems in the North and West: Great Migration and white flight to the suburbs had hastened development of crowded black ghettos. For example, Chicago’s ghettos had 50-70 percent youth unemployment. The Nation of Islam’s contribution to the Black Power movement: -black separatist religion, encouraged separation from whites, black supremacy -Malcom X (member of NOI): encouraged armed self-defence The growth of Black Power: -Meredith March: SNCC members chanted ‘BLACK POWER’ -SNCC and CORE demonstrated growing black radicalism: expelled whites in 1966 and 1968 and declared non-violence inappropriate when black Americans needed to defend themselves -The Black Panthers focused upon ghetto improvements The impacts of civil rights legislation - achievements and limitations: 1964 Civil Rights Act - Achievements: -ended de jure segregation in the South -prohibited discrimination in public places -furthered school desegregation -established an Equal Employment Commission - Limitations: -did little to facilitate black voting -black Americans in ghettos continued to suffer poverty and discrimination: led to ghetto riots 1965 Voting Rights Act - Achievements: -made literacy tests illegal -replaced racist white registars with federally approved officials -by December 1966, only four Deep South states still had fewer than 50 per cent of eligible black voters registered. By 1980, the proportion of black Southerners registered to vote was only 7 percent below the proportion of whites. -the vote ensured black representation at many levels of government: number of black Southerners elected to office increased six-fold between 1965 and 1969, then doubled again from 1969 to 1980 -in 1960 there were no black officials in Mississippi; in 1980, there were over 300 Other legislation promoted by President Johnson: -1965 Education Acts sped up school desegregation and helped black colleges -Great Society programmes contributed to a 34 per cent fall in black unemployment and a 25 per cent fall in the percentage of black Americans living below the poverty line Black housing: -after the Voting Rights Act, Congress proved reluctant to pass legislation to aid black Americans. -in 1966, polls showed that 70 percent of white voters opposed large numbers of black neighbours, so Congress rejected Johnson’s proposed bill to prohibit discrimination in housing rental and sales. -in 1968, Johnson sought legislation to help black children suffering from rat bites in ghetto housing, but Congress refused to pass his ‘civil rights rats bill’ and congressman joked that he should send in a federal cat army -King’s assassination in 1968 prompted congressional guilt and the passage of the Fair Housing Act HOWEVER determined white opposition made it difficult to enforce its prohibition of discrimination in the sale or rental of housing Black education: -while Southern schools desegregated with increasing speed, many Northern schools remained segregated -although the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbade federal funding for segregated schools, Chicago’s Mayor Daley was a Johnson ally so he kept his federal funds and his de facto segregated schools, a pattern repeated in other Northern cities -as a result, many ghetto children continued to receive an inferior education Black poverty: -doctors told a 1969 congressional hearing that a considerable number of black children in Mississippi were so hungry that they ate tree bark -poverty remained high in the ghettos -Johnson believed affirmative action (giving disadvantaged people extra opportunities in education and employment in order to compensate for previous unfair treatment) could alleviate poverty and used his executive powers to promote it -under his executive order of 1965, any institution receiving federal funding had to employ more non-whites -black middle class was expanding