African Americans

Question 1

In 1868 how many deaths and injuries were there to African Americans at the hands of white supremacists and in which city?

What was the response of the Us government?

Answer 1

In 1868, there were 2000 deaths and injuries in Louisiana alone.
The US government had to deploy troops, but a precedent had been set which continued into the twentieth century.

Question 2

What reforms were brought in by congress during the period of Reconstruction? (4)

Answer 2

1) A Freedmen’s Bureau, which promoted welfare and education.
2) The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which outlawed discrimination.
3) A Civil Rights Act (1866) which gave legal equality.
4) The First Reconstruction Act (1867), which guaranteed the right to vote and created new Southern Constitutions.

Question 3

Who was Booker T. and what were his contributions to civil rights? (4)
Which two institutions did he found?

Answer 3

1) Washington was famous, both for gaining the confidence of White Americans and for his moral authority amongst African Americans.
2) He stressed the importance of African Americans relying on their own efforts to make progress, stating that the key was to demonstrate responsibility, to become educated and to become prosperous.
3) He did not campaign openly against discrimination in the South, but received support from wealthy businessmen and advised presidents on racial issues.
4) In 1881 he founded the famous Tuskegee Institute to train teachers, and in 1901 he founded the National Business League to encourage African American enterprise.

Question 4

Who was W.E.B DuBois and what were his contributions to civil rights? (3)

Answer 4

1) DuBois’s view was that an African American elite – the ‘talented tenth’ would spearhead a movement for change.
2) He co-operated with white reformers in the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) which was established in 1909.
3) He also led marches and campaigns for equal civil and political rights.

Question 5

Who was Malcolm X and what were his contributions to civil rights? (3)

Answer 5

1) Malcolm X was of the separatist tradition – he worked with the Nation of Islam to promote African heritage and was a powerful and influential leader.
2) The Black Panther movement developed from this.
3) Huey Newton and Bobby Seal founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966 with a radical social programme calling for equality and armed resistance to authority and white hostility.

Question 6

Who was Marcus Garvey and what were his contributions to civil rights?

Answer 6

1) Garvey accepted the need for economic enterprise and improvement backed by education.
2) However, he did not pursue the line that was started by DuBois and developed by Martin Luther King of equality within the system.
3) His goal was to create a separate African-American community, aware of its African roots and part of a pan-African community.
4) His Universal Negro Association was the first large civil rights organisation in the USA an was said to have 4 million members.

Question 7

Who was Phillip Randolph and what were his contributions to civil rights? (4)

Answer 7

1) Randolph followed the ideas of DuBois and also took some ideas of economic development and rallied black organised labour to the cause of Civil Rights.
2) He believed in mass non-violent protest and was influenced by the civil disobedience campaigns, led by Gandhi in India.
3) He pressured the government to end discrimination in war production industries in 1941, by threatening a mass march.
4) This was the first time an African American had managed to substantially influence policy.

Question 8

Who was Martin Luther king and what were his contributions to civil rights?

Answer 8

1) King took up the tactics of marches and mass protests begun by Dubois and Randolph, and had similar charismatic leadership qualities to Garvey.
2) He also co-operated with white liberals and used the tactic of non-violence.
3) King brought a new fervour to the movement and an ability to use publicity and image effectively.
4) Key moments of his leadership include:
- Forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957.
- The march in Birmingham in 1963.
- The ‘I have a dream’ speech in 1963.
- The march on Washington 1965.
- The march from Selma to Montgomery (1965).

Question 9

What was the impact of FDR on civil rights? (4)

Answer 9

1) New deal reforms were supportive of black civil rights.
2) Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) helped to provide jobs.
3) However, segregation was a feature of work camps, and many of the New Deal reforms excluded key areas of African American employment such as agriculture and domestic service.
4) When war broke out, the US armed forced remained segregated, although Roosevelt did end segregation in war industries.

Question 10

What was Truman’s impact on civil rights? (2)

Answer 10

Harry S. Truman (1945-53) was responsible for the following:

1) Issued an executive order in 1948 against segregation in the armed forces.
2) Appointed a committee on civil rights and urged Congress to pass civil rights legislation.

Question 11

What was Eisenhower’s impact on civil rights? (2)

Answer 11

1) Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61), a Republican, created the Civil Rights Acts which reaffirmed African Americans’ right to vote.
2) Eisenhower also sent troops to enforce a Supreme Court ruling on desegregating schools at Little Rock in 1957, when Arkansas authorities tried to prevent the desegregation of Little Rock High School.

Question 12

What was the impact of Kennedy and Johnson on the development of civil rights? (4)

Answer 12

1) John F. Kennedy (1961-63), a Democrat, spoke clearly against the ‘harmful, wasteful and wrong full results of racial discrimination’, and prepared a general civil rights bill in 1963 before his assassination, but was prevented from passing it due to Southern White opposition.
2) Lyndon Johnson (1963-69) passed the most significant series of civil rights acts since the 1880s:
The 24th Amendment, 1964
The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.
3) Restriction on voting rights as well as discrimination in public accommodations and employment was banned.
4) Johnson also appointed the first African American Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, a noted campaigner for civil rights.

Question 13

What was the impact of Nixon on civil rights? (3)

Answer 13

1) Richard Nixon (1969-74) extended ‘affirmative action’ to promote wider equality.
2) All employers with federal contracts were required to draft policies showing they were actively promoting the employment of African Americans.
3) This, along with the act of 1972 extended equal employment legislation to all federal, local and state governments, showed a desire by the government to go above simply ensuring political rights to promote greater prosperity and stability by making working practices more equal.

Question 14

What was the Hayes-Tilden Compromise? (2)

Answer 14

By 1876 the Democrats had more seats in Congress and their candidate, Tilden, won more of the popular vote in the presidential election of November 1876 – but there were 20 disputed votes for the electoral college.
In 1877 the Democrats agreed (in the Hayes-Tilden Compromise) to allow those votes to go the Republican, Hayes, provided that all federal troops left the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.

Question 15

What important decision was made by the Supreme Court in 1896?

Answer 15

In 1896 in the Plessy v. Fergusson case, where the court ruled that Louisiana was not acting against the constitution by discriminating on its railroads.

Question 16

What important ruling occurred in the Supreme Court in 1954?

Answer 16

In 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, the court ruled that segregated education was illegal, and that the concept of separate but equal was inherently unequal.

Question 17

What important decision were made by the Supreme Court in the 1960s and 70s? (3)

Answer 17

A series of other decisions in the 1960s and 70s ruled against segregation:

1) On interstate bus travel (1960)
2) Supporting the bussing of African American children into white schools (1971)
3) Opposing employment discrimination (1971).

Question 18

Who was James Meredith?

Answer 18

In 1962, there was another clash, this time between the state government of Mississippi and the federal government of President Kennedy, when federal law officers enforced the African American James Meredith’s entry into a forcibly desegregated Mississippi university.

Question 19

What was the reaction of the Southern States after 1877? (5)

Answer 19

1) The all-white legislatures and governments passed the Jim Crown Laws which prescribed:
- Separate hospitals, prisons, public and private schools, churches, cemeteries and public restrooms.
- Codes of behaviour regulation social and sexual relations between individuals of different races.
- Complex regulations for voting, which ensured African Americans were excluded.

2) Additionally Southern states did little or nothing to stop violence against African Americans or lynching.
3) Throughout the South, the state authorities became determined opponents of African American civil rights.

Question 20

What happened in Alabama in 1963?

What were the consequences? (2)

Answer 20

There were also examples of heavy handed state authority measures, such as those of Police chief Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor who used fire hoses and attack dogs against civil rights protestors in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.
The unwitting effect of state resistance to segregation prompted:
1) Increased media coverage, which turned public and world opinion against segregation.
2) Federal intervention.

Question 21

What happened at Little Rock in 1954? (4)

Answer 21

1) State governments resisted the 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation was unconstitutional.
2) In Texas, local police actually prevented it.
3) In Arkansas Governor Ovral Faubus prevented nine black students from entering the Central High School of Little Rock by using the local National Guard.
4) This led to President Eisenhower putting the state National Guard under federal control and imposing integration by the used of federal armed forces.

Question 22

What was the impact of lynching on civil rights? (4)

Name two of the most notorious lynchings.

Answer 22

1) Perhaps more dangerous than formal organisations was the ability of white Americans to organise and publicise lynching.
2) There were some 2,700 lynching between 1885 and 1917.
3) Conspiracies to kill African Americans who were seen to have broken the unwritten code of subservience, were a form of organisation.
4) The most notorious was the murder of Emmet Till in Mississippi in 1955 and the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1962.
In both cases white southerners closed ranks.
An all-white jury acquitted the murderers of 14 year-old Emmett, and local authorities seemed to do very little to find the murderers of Evers.

Question 23

What were white citizens councils and how did they impact civil rights? (3)

Answer 23

1) White Citizens’ Council were formed after Brown v Board of education (1954) in order to protest about school desegregation.
2) They encouraged intimidation of African Americans trying to register to vote and hostile actions against civil rights initiatives.
3) However these councils declined in the 1960s.

Question 24

What problems remained at the end of the period? (6)

Answer 24

1) By the end of the 1980s, 63% of African Americans graduated from high school compared to 77% of white people.
2) Only 11% of African Americans graduated from college as opposed to 22% of white Americans.
3) Unemployment remained higher amongst African Americans.
4) The gap between average family incomes between white people and African Americans grew larger in the 1980s.
5) The average hourly wage remained lower for African Americans.
6) African American poverty had increased since the 1950s – 1/3 were living below the poverty line and 1/3 were working in low paid jobs.

Question 25

What was affirmative action?
Give an example of this.
How was it supported by congress?

Answer 25

The idea behind affirmative action was to compensate African Americans for the lack of opportunity and discrimination in the past and to ensure racial harmony by giving them a share in national prosperity.
One example of this is when Nixon, anxious for Southern African American votes, introduced the Philadelphia Plan in 1967 to set quotas for workers in the construction industry.
Congress supported the policy by passing the Equal Opportunity Act (1972). The number of African American construction workers rose, but civil rights leaders saw the plan as another form of unequal treatment.

Question 26

What was busing?
Which two presidents were against it?
Why did it decline?

Answer 26

Busing was the policy of forcing integration in schools by busing African American children into white areas.
This was unpopular with the public and both Nixon and Ford opposed it.

Though it did lead to greater integration, the policy declined in the late 1970s due to a lack of local support.
Supreme court decisions made positive discrimination

Question 27

What was the Rodney King affair?

What issues did it highlight?

Answer 27

Civil rights progress was challenged by the assault of a black motorist, Rodney King by white police in Los Angeles in 1991.
An all-white jury acquitted the police officers in 1992, which led to serious unrest.
The case highlighted many remaining issues for African Americans:
Housing
Disproportionately large African American prison population.
Unequal treatment of African Americans by the police.

Question 28

What was the impact of the NAACP on civil rights? (5)

Answer 28

1) Achieved 1944 Supreme Court ruling that it was illegal to deny African Americans the right to vote in primary elections.
2) Instrumental in Brown ruling of 1954.
3) 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
4) Organisation of the march on Washington in 1963.
5) NAACP was largely white and middle class but had the advantage of being seen as ‘american because of its legal work.

Question 29

What was the impact of the Nation of Islam on civil rights?

Answer 29

1) Helped to promote black nationalism and separatism which empowered black Americans.
2) Extensive prison rehabilitation program.
3) Horrified whites with talk of violent retribution and revolution.

Question 30

What was the impact of the SCLC on the civil rights movement? (3)

Answer 30

1) They were instrumental in gaining the attention of national and international media and showing the solidarity between african american and white activists.
2) Popular amongst white americans as King desired cooperation and integration.
3) Led mass demonstrations culminating in march on Washington in 1963.

Question 31

What was the impact of the Black Panther movement on civil rights?

Answer 31

1) Promoted black pride and developed black culture.
2) Breakfast programmes helped to feed and look after poor black children.
3) Seen as a threat to white society and the American way of life.
4) It was arguably the work of the black panthers that led to the formation of COINTELPRO.

Question 32

What was the impact of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) on civil rights? (3)

Answer 32

1) Challenged segregation.
2) Introduced freedom rides in 1947, whereby activists challenged segregation on interstate buses.
3) This provoke violence in 1961 which led Kennedy to desegregate interstate transport.