African Americans Flashcards
What was the 13th amendment and when did it come into place?
- Abolished slavery
- 1865
What was the Freedmen’s Bureau? Date?
- Federal agency supplying food/medical services/schools to freedmen
- 1865
What was the 14th amendment and when did it come into place?
- Confirmed rights to citizenship
- 1866
What was the 15th amendment and when did it come into place?
- Forbade stated from denying the right to vote
- 1870
What were the Jim Crow Laws? Date?
- A series of state laws in Southern and border states that introduced formal segregation
- 1887-1891
What was the date of Plessy vs Ferguson and what was it about?
- 1896
- Deemed segregation constitutional and came up with the ‘separate but equal’ ruling
When was the New Deal introduced? What were the aims?
- 1933
- To relieve human suffering and promote economic recovery (post Depression)
What was the date of Brown vs Board and what did it do?
- 1954
- Desegregated schools and reversed Plessy vs Ferguson
What was the date of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and what did it do?
- 1955
- Peaceful non violent protest could make a change
What was the date of Little Rock and what did it do?
- 1957
- First sign of federal intervention to protect civil rights of AAs
What were sit ins and freedom rides? When did they start?
- Non violent activism/protest aimed to desegregate public areas - lead to desegregation of public areas in 100 cities
- 1961
When was the March on Washington? What did it do?
- 1963
- Around 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington DC
- Helped bring into effect the Civil Rights Act
- Increased public consciousness and improved view on AAs
When was the Civil Rights Act passed? What did it do?
- 1964
- Ended segregation and discrimination altogether
What did the Voting Rights Act of 1965 do?
- Abolished literacy tests, understanding clauses and proof of moral character and prevented disruption to black people trying to register
What was Andrew Johnson’s aims for the reconstruction plan?
- To re-admit and re-build the Confederate states
- To help African Americans integrate
- All Southerners to swear oath of Allegiance to amnesty
- All slaves freed
What were the strengths of reconstruction?
- Granted AAs citizenship
- Protected them by the law
- Men had right to vote
- Accommodation
- KKK Act
What were the weaknesses of reconstruction?
- AA women couldn’t vote
- Violence and murder
- ‘Black Codes’
- Disease
- Southern States didn’t want to abolish slavery in law
- Loop holes in 15th Amendment
What were the opportunities of reconstruction?
- System of social welfare
- Work/education
- Able to buy property
- Govt. recognised needs
- Changing attitudes (to an extent)
- Free to marry and travel
- 700,000 enrolled to vote
- 22 black people elected to Congress in 1870s
What were the threats of reconstruction?
- Share cropping
- Freedmen’s Bureau was limited
- Newly elected assemblies refused to ratify 13th Amendment
- 13,000 rebels pardoned
- Educational segregation
- Not seen as equal
What were the different ways in which AAs were prevented from voting in the Gilded Age?
- Understanding clause: had to explain part of the constitution
- Literacy tests
- Poll tax: $2 in tax to vote
- Grandfather clause: if your grandfather had been able to vote pre 1867 then you didn’t have to take literacy tests
What were the impacts of the state voting laws?
- No black congress after 1901 for 28 years
- Decrease in amount of eligible black voters from 70% to 11% (1880-1896)
How did AAs respond to the Jim Crow Laws?
- Cooperation
- Emigration and migration: Northward migration popular, along with African migration and Western migration
- Political protest: Equal rights leagues, uncoordinated protest, AA league in 1890 which aimed to promote black economical/educational progress
- Accommodation: Accept status quo and make most of opportunities, black middle class supported
What was the NAACP?
- National activist organisation with branches across the USA
- Led by blacks and whites
- Focus on civil rights not social conditions
- Secretary in the 1920s targeted desegregation, voting rights and education
What were the NAACP Policies?
- Believed races should live and work and be educated together
- Take cases to federal courts to establish equal rights
- Defended those accused of rioting but non-violent organisation
- Lobbying rather than mass action was the central policy
- Supports anti-lynching law
What were the NAACP developments from 1915 to 1941?
- Growth in membership post 1915: impact of WW1
- 90,000 members in 1920 - greater interest in civil rights
- Decline to 50,000 members in 1930
- Seen as cautious and bureaucratic
- Run by middle class AAs and whites - limited relations with socially deprived majority
- Peaceful opposition in the North
- White population in the south still violently anti-NAACP
How did the Depression affect AAs?
- 2 million black farmers left the land as crop prices fell
- Many went to cities but unemployment was high for black people (between 30 and 60%)
- Desperate whites moved into jobs that were previously dominated by blacks
- Whites organised vigilante group (Black Shirts of America) to stop whites getting jobs
What was the AAA (New Deal)?
Agricultural Adjustment Act
- Regulated farm production by machines - AA farmers displaced
What was the CCC (New Deal)?
Civilian Conservation Corps
- Provided work for young men aged 18-25 - worked in environmental projects earning $30 a month
- Racial segregation occurred and it was disbanded in 1942
What was the SSA (New Deal)?
Social Security Act
- Created guaranteed retirement payments for over 65s, insurance for unemployed and assistance for disabled
- Still continues today
- Excluded domestic workers which was a major area of black female employment
What were the overall impacts of the New Deal?
- Provided 1 million jobs
- 50,000 housing units
- Govt. assistance allowed sharecroppers to become independent farmers
- Eleanor Roosevelt had an impact on black women - working rights
- Aid didn’t always get to black people
- Fed govt. wouldn’t guarantee mortgages on houses in white areas
What was the impact of WW2 on migration?
- Blacks moved to cities as farms became mechanised
- Large scale migration led them to have greater economic and political power
- Large numbers in one town or cities meant they were less vulnerable/not intimidated by white supremacists
- 2 million migrated North and west
- Crowding in cities led to rivalry for homes and race riots in Detroit in 1943
- Increased tension with blacks and whites in close proximity
What was the impact of WW2 on blacks and whites working together?
- Tension in workplace
- More employment but still lower wages and ‘last hired first fired’
- Whites lashed out over employment of blacks in Alabama Dry Dock Company in 1943
- Jealousy over jobs
- White men disliked black men and women working together
- Over 1 million blacks served in army
What was the impact of WW2 on black conciousness and activism?
- NAACP increased from 50,000 to 450,000
- Cooperation with trade unions brought in urban workers
- Whites aware that American racism was not hugely different to Hitler
- Refusal to integrate armed forces but Fair Employment Practises Committee (FEPC) set up to promote equality in defense industries so 2 million blacks employed
- CORE established in 1942 which organised sit ins
- Successful bus boycott in 1941
- Riots convinced blacks that radicals were irresponsible
What was the impact of WW2 on federal intervention?
- 2 thirds of job discrimination cases referred to FEPC were dismissed
- FEPC accomplished too little to be a great success but enough to show importance of Fed. aid
- Southern black political rights increased in 1944 - Supreme Court declared that exclusion of AAs from the primaries was unconstitutional under the 15th Amendment
- Between 1940-1947 the number of black registered voters increased in the South from 3 to 12%
What did Harry Truman do to improve the Civil Rights situation?
- Senate in 1930s - supported legislation to abolish poll tax and lynching
- Gave help to FEPC when President - but Congress refused to fund it
- Supported NAACP in Supreme Court ruling over housing
- ‘To Secure These Rights’ - called for anti-lynching, voting rights, end to discrimination in work, civil rights in the justice department
- State of Union addresses said that first goal was to secure the essential human rights of citizens
- Campaigned in racist areas (Texas and Harlem)
What was CORE? When was it established? What did it do?
Congress of Racial Equality
- Established in 1942
- Organised sit ins, freedom rides and boycotts
- Non-violent
What was SCLC? When was it established? What did it do?
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
- Founded in 1957 by black ministers
- Led by MLK
- Aimed to improve situation of southern Blacks
- Wanted to offer alternative, non-violent direct action
- Difficult for southern racists to attack due to religion
- Poor organisation and lack of mass support
What was SNCC? When was it established? What did it do?
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
- Working in 1960s
- Aimed to politicise local communities and empower ordinary people
- Established freedom schools, organised grass roots struggles in Alabama and Georgia
- Unprotected by the govt.
- Became militant
What did JFK do to help Civil Rights?
- Publicly stated support
- Planned legislation for better health care/wages
- Black appointments and federal judges
- Sent in federal guard to force integration in Alabama
- Offered public support after Birmingham Protest
- Proposed Civil Rights Bill
What did JFK do to hinder/stop progress of Civil Rights?
- Didn’t have public on his side for forced integration
- Backed down on voting rights in Mississippi
- Claimed protesters in Freedom Rides ‘unpatriotic’
- Refused to offer fed help to enforce voting rights unless there was a breakdown of law and order
- Did little to improve housing
What did LBJ do to help Civil Rights?
- Passed Civil Rights Act
- Voting Rights Bill
- Great Society - aimed to end poverty and racial injustice
- Prohibited discrimination in public places, school desegregation and Equal Employment Commission
- Helped children out of ghettos with Elementary and Secondary Education Acts - increase number of blacks getting high school diplomas
- Offered subsidies to desegregated schools
- Appointed first black SC judge
What did LBJ do to hinder/stop progress in Civil Rights?
- Limited success of Education Acts
- Blacks felt Voting Rights Bill wasn’t enough
- Found it hard to get financial support from Congress to aid black people
- Relied heavily on local and state authorities which were reluctant to enforce legislation
- Great Society had unrealistic hopes
- Riots after MLK’s assassination stopped progress
- Vietnam war prevented progress
- Backlash from white people
What was the Black Power Movement and why did it develop?
- Term used in Meredith March 1966
- Focused on Black Supremacy
- Developed as a result of racism, the need for political and economic power, working class revolution
- Focused on black culture and pride
What did the Black Panther Party do?
- Formed in 1966
- Focused on self defense
- Prepared for war and patrolled streets looking for violence against blacks
- Alienated and threatened moderate whites in the North
When were the Watts Riots in LA? What happened?
- 1965
- Provoked by poverty, unemployment, lack of education and healthcare
- 6 days
- 50,000 blacks burned and looted neighbourhood, attacking whites
When was Malcolm X assassinated?
When was MLK assassinated?
What was the result?
- Malcolm X - 1965
- MLK - 1968
- BP movement collapsed, focus on Vietnam war, gave AAs effective backing and legislation from govt.
What were Malcolm X’s beliefs?
- White people were devils
- Revolutions should be violent
- Interracial marriage was betrayal to your race
- MLK was keeping black people defenseless
What were Malcolm X’s methods?
- Violence against whites
- Separatism
- Followed Elijah Muhammad’s teachings
What were MLK’s beliefs?
- Evoke shame within oppressor
- Personal Sacrifices must be made to progress in CR
- Win friendship and understanding of opponents
- Non-violent protest
- Advocated for integration
What were MLK’s methods?
- Non violent protest, speeches and boycotts
- Believed that non violent protest exposed injustices and changed public opinion
What were the positives of Nixon?
- Affirmative action
- Increased AA workers from 1 to 12%
- 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act
- Increase fed expenditure on poverty programmes
- Integration
- Southern schools better integrated
- Limited funding for segregated institutions
What were the negatives of Nixon?
- Privately racist
- Didn’t want to meet with black leaders
- Nominated racists to SC
- Crushed Black Panthers
- Promoted bussing
What were the positives of Ford?
- Keen to cultivate good relations
- First black Secretary of Transport
- Extended Voting Rights Act
What were the negatives of Ford?
- Refused to support anti-bussing organisation
- Doubts on Brown vs Board
- No stance in Civil Rights
What were the positives of Carter?
- Opposed bussing and segregation
- Employed many black people
- Appointed more blacks to fed judiciary than any other president
- Appointed black women to cabinet
- Renewed Voting Rights Act
What were the negatives of Carter?
- University of California vs Bakke - discrimination against non-minority applicants as blacks and hispanics admitted with lower academic scores than whites
What were the positives of Reagan?
- Supported extending Voting Rights Act for 10 years
- Expanded Fair Housing Act
- Grove City College vs Bell SC - overturned by Civil Rights Restoration Act
What were the negatived of Reagan?
- Didn’t support fed initiatives to provide blacks with CR
- Opposed both Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act 1965
- Said the Voting Rights Act was humiliating to the South
- Opposed Fair Housing Legislation in California
- Under pressure to delay change
What were the positives of Bush?
- Found officers in LA riots guilty - violence
What were the negatives of Bush?
- 1992 SC supported attacks on desegregation
- Riots in LA over Rodney King Case - police brutality victim
