African Americans: 1945-52 Flashcards
What were Truman’s past actions on racism?
- From Missouri
- Brief connection with the KKK (support in his early career)
- Record of voting for civil rights in the Senate in the 1930s
- Roosevelt picked him as VP partially on his pro-civil Rights voting record
What did Truman do for African Americans during his presidency?
- First president to address the NAACP in 1947
- Spoke of his horror at black servicemen being attacked by the South and the lack of punishment they received
- Issued an Executive Order de-segregating the armed forces (1948)
- His ‘President’s Committee on Civil Rights’ released ‘To Secure these Rights’.
What was the ‘To Secure these Rights’?
1949: An attack on the discrimination against black Americans and offering a 10-point plan to bring about change
What discrimination did Black Americans face in the South?
- Jim Crow Laws and segregation (de jure)
- Renforced by Plessy v. Ferguson- separate but equal
Examples of Jim Crow laws in the South:
- NC- books shall not be interchangeable between white and coloured schools
- GA- all persons licensed to run a restaurant shall serve either white ppl exclusively or coloured ppl exclusively
- TX- separate facilities required for white and black citizens in state parks
What obstacles were put in place in the South to prevent black Americans from voting?
- 1940: only 3% of AA could vote
- 1947: 12% of AA could vote
- Literacy tests, poll taxes, and laws such as the ‘Grandfather Clause’, asked impossible questions to Black Americans
Was there a threat of violence for African Americans during the 1940s/50s?
- Constant threat; lynchings during the 20s and 30s
- KKK flourished again in the 1950s
Why were African Americans (in the South) at an automatic disadvantage?
- Most AAs were dependent on the white population for work and use of land
- The legal justice system and police were institutionally racist
- Black schools were poorly funded- when George McLaurin managed to get a place at OSU and was forced to sit at a desk alone outside of the classroom
What opportunities did African Americans have in the South?
- e.g., better-paid jobs in the motor industry in Detroit
- Some growing success of Black sportsmen and artists, e.g., Jackie Robinson (major league baseball), Joe Lewis (boxing HW champion), Louis Armstrong (jazz) and Billie Holiday (singer)
- 1945: 2 black congressmen in the House, in Chicago and Harlem
What disadvantages were Northern African Americans facing?
- Discrimination, notably in the Legal Justice system, black ppl tended to get harsher sentences and were targeted by police
- The ‘Great Migration’ starting in 1900 saw millions of AAs leave the South
- In the Northern ghettos movements such as the Nation of Islam emerged
How many black Americans moved from the South to the North in ‘The Great Migration’?
- 1940s: 1.4 million
- 1950s: 1.1 million
How did WW2 impact race tensions in the US?
- Black soldiers saw the world outside the South
- In Europe, they were warmly welcomed as liberators and relatively well-off
- Churchill spoke out against segregation
- The war sped up the great migration
- tensions remained (1943 Detroit race riot)
- Awful treatment and violence against returning Black servicemen prompted Truman to condemn it
What was CORE and what civil rights campaign did they do?
- Congress of Racial Equality
- In ‘Journey of Reconciliation’ (1947), 8 black and 8 white men took a two-week bus ride through the South. They were testing the 1946 SC judgement Morgan V Virginia which ruled against segregation in interstate travel
What was NAACP and what civil rights campaign did they do?
- National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
- Use of Legal Denfence Fun to chip away at Plessy v. Fergurson: McLaurin v. Oklahoma State, Morgan v. Virginia, Smith v. Alright
How did the federal and state authorities respond to the emerging civil rights movement?
- 1946- Truman created the ‘Presidents Committee on Civil Rights’
- Led to ‘To Secure These Rights’ (1949)
- Congress did not share Truman’s vision
- Opposition from racist Democrats like James Eastland (Mississippi) and Storm Thurmond (SC)
- By 1952 only 5 states retained the poll tax
