AA exam questions II

Question 1

How supportive was the federal government of AA civil rights 1865-1992 - voting rights

Answer 1

• Congress passed 15th amendment 1870 giving AA men theoretical right to vote but did nowhere enough to enforce it - by 1877 most Democrats had already gained control of most southern states and the fed gov did nothing to stop systematic disenfranchisement of southern blacks 1890-1908
• SC banned grandfather clause (USA v Guinn 1915) and all white primary elections (Smith v Allwright 1944) but little was done to enforce these judgements and Eisenhower Civil Rights Act 1957 and 1960 the first since 1875) were ineffective in giving AAs the right to vote because the fed gov had no power to enforce them

Question 2

How supportive was the federal government of AA civil rights 1865-1992 - violence

Answer 2

• Congress passed 14th amendment 1868 giving AAs theoretically equal civil rights with whites but did little to enforce it, especially after the Crash of 1873 distracted it from the issue of AA CR: it passed Civil Rights Acts in 1866 and 1875 but Presidents Johnson and Grant showed little interest in enforcing them
• SC Moore v Dempsey 1923 gave fed courts the power to overturn state court verdicts obtained through intimidation but racial violence and intimidation continued

Question 3

How supportive was the federal government of AA civil rights 1865-1992 - segregation

Answer 3

• No CR acts passed 1875-1957
• Plessy v Ferguson judgement 1896 gave ‘green light’ to the Jim Crow laws enforcing seg under the fiction that facilities were ‘separate but equal’
• SC ruled against seg (Morgan v Virginia on interstate buses 1946 and Brown on schools 1954) but fed gov did little to enforce this: Congress rejected Truman’s CR Bil 1948 and diluted Eisenhower’s CRAs 1957 and 1960

Question 4

How supportive was the federal government of AA civil rights 1865-1992 - economic rights

Answer 4

• Freedmen’s Bureau 1865 to enable freed slaves to become economically independent but only patchily supported and in case abolished in 1872 before much could be achieved
• Fed gov did nothing to help AAs until New Deal which over time progressively became more helpful - by 1940 WPA provided 350K jobs for AAs each year and PWA spent over 45M on construction of black schools, hospitals and housing
  but 200K AA sharecroppers evicted bc of the AAA and the Wagner Act excluding agricultural and domestic workers (therefore didn’t help 2/3 of AA employees)
• LBJ Great Society 1960s improved welfare and extended benefits of the 1938 Fair Labour Standards Act - BUT didn’t bother to read Moynihan report which he commissioned into AA poverty and no president had since done anything sig to relieve it: Reagan freezing minimum wage and welfare cuts disproportionally hurt AA, especially AA women single mothers

Question 5

WW2 was the most important turning point in the development of civil rights - political rights

Answer 5

• War against nazi racism inspired ‘Double V’ campaign calling for a double victory over racism both at home and in Europe and the experience black US soldiers had of more liberal attitudes made them more determined - as a result CORE formed in 1942 and NAACP membership quadrupled during the war
• MORE important periods - 15th amendment 1870 gave AA right to vote and over 700K registered during Reconstruction era - 15% public officeholders in South blacl, higher proportiin than in 1990. 22 AAs elected to Congress
• AA agitation did increase immedietly after WW2 but did not have a major impact on national politics until MLK got involved in 1955
• LBJ’s Voting Rights Act 1965 made 15th more of a reality - no. of mississipi black voters x10 in 3 years and resulted in a massive increase in political officeholding black from 1970s onwards
• 1992 8000 AAs held public office compared to only 100 in 1964 and 36 AA congressmen had been elected

Question 6

WW2 was the most important turning point in the development of civil rights - economic position

Answer 6

• Threat to stage a March on Washington led up to the setting of the Fair Employment Committee 1941 before USA joined the war - rearming in prep
• Jobs created by the war - black unemployment in 1945 only 16% of its 1940 level and black migration north increased much more dramatically between 1914 and 1918 - aircraft industry first time, and steel and iron industry rose 25%
• lasting effect - black employment remained high after WW2 and migration to the north continued. by 1960s for the first time most AAs lived in the north compared with 1930s where 2/3 of AAs worked in agr in the south

BUT other periods more progress - freedmen’s bureau after civil war, ww1, new deal, ‘new frontier’ and ‘great society’ in 1960s and AAs didnt benefit as much as whites from the doubling of the size of the US econ

Question 7

WW2 was the most important turning point in the development of civil rights - segregation and violence

Answer 7

• Riots in Detroit 1943 showed people resented the econ progress AAs had made during ww2
• formation of CORE laid foundation for deseg campaigns after the way like Journey of Reconciliation in 1947 for deseg on interstate buses

BUT
- little progress in this regard compared with 13 and 14th amendment during Recon which abolished slavery and LBJ Civil Rights Act 1964 which banned legal seg and discrimination

• MORE progress in 1950s and early 60s with the Brown judgement, Little Rock, and the violence in Birmingham showed how much resistance there was to AA CR as late as 1963
• NAACP formed as early as 1909 and campaign against lynching made a big impact before WW2 with2 anti-lynching bills being passed by House of Rep in the 1930s

Question 8

To what extent does the aims of campaigners for AA civil rights remain the same 1865-1992 - political rights and participation

Answer 8

• Congress passed the 15th amendment giving AA men the vote in 1870 more to ensure Republican control in the southern states than in response to AA campaigns but thereafter AA were persistent in campaigning for the right to vote
• The NAACP secured the banning of the ‘grandfather clause’ 1915 in the Guinn v USA Supreme Court case
• They got another SC decision in Smith v Allwright 1944 banning the exclusion of AAs from primary elections
• After the passage of the Civil Rights Act 1964 AA CR campaigners focused on voting rights in ‘Freedom Summer’ in Mississippi 1964 and the Selma campaign 1965 which forced LBJ to pass the Voting Rights Act 1965

Question 9

To what extent does the aims of campaigners for AA civil rights remain the same 1865-1992 - violence

Answer 9

• 14th amendment in 1868 giving AA theoretically equal CR was part of Congress’s battle with Johnson rather than a response to AA campaigning
• From its formation in 1909 until the end of the 1930s the NAACP campaigned against lynching and other forms of racial violence - Silent Parade 1919 to protest in NY and attempting to pass a series of bills through Congress in the 1930s, making lynching a federal crime
• After WW2 (especially after 1960s onwards) the emphasis switched from lynching to police brutality, highlighted by the Rodney King case 1991-2 - highlighted

Question 10

To what extent does the aims of campaigners for AA civil rights remain the same 1865-1992 - segregation

Answer 10

• From the 1930s onwards the NAACP began to focus on more on segregation than violence
• 1930s NAACP commissioned Marigold Report to show that AA schools were inferior to white, disproving the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine
• In Brown Case 1954 the NAACP (with Thurgood Marshall as its chief lawyer) persuaded the SC to rule that school seg was unconstitutional and that desegregation be enforced ‘with all deliberate speed’ - marked success in their campaign ever since their foundation to reverse the Plessy v Ferguson ruling 1896
• MLK Birmingham campaign and March on Washington, both 1963, led to the Civil Rights Act 1964 which finally ended legal seg and discrimination against AAs
• In the 1970s there was a focus on affirmative action and busing as a way to enforce the abolition of seg and discrimination in education and employment

Question 11

To what extent does the aims of campaigners for AA civil rights remain the same 1865-1992 - economic position

Answer 11

• Until the 13th amendment slavery was the main issue AA campaigned on - like other reconstruction measures, the setting up of the Freedmen’s Bureau 1865 was initiated by the Radical Republicans in Congress rather than a response to AA campaigning but
• Hostile climate around 1900, all Booker T Washington could realistically aim was to win white acceptance of gradual improvements in AA education, training and economic status - seg and disfranchisement could not be openly challenged
• Washington Garvey and later campaigners like Malcolm X, Carmichael and Jackson could only aim at making AAs as econ self sufficient as possible - no interest in white sympathy
• After Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964-5 AA campaigners focused more on poverty of the AA underclass trapped in inner city ghettos with inferior accomodation and educational and employment opportunities

Question 12

To what extent does the aims of campaigners for AA civil rights remain the same 1865-1992 - cultural

Answer 12

• Garvey, Malcolm X and Carmichael aimed at establishing AAs to rediscover pride in their African cultural heritage and to seperate whites rather than integrate - but clearer about what they stood for (Garvey favoured return to Africa but later Black power activists divided and Black Panthers combined black nationalism with Marxism, calling for the abolition of capitalism)
• Continuity in the sense that Black Power activists inspired by Garvey but increasing emphasis from 1966 onwards (when Carmichael coined the ‘Black Power’ slogan) on Black power rather than civil rights. MLK proud to be American, whereas Malcolm X emphasised that AAs were not Americans but Africans who happened to live in America