African Americans in the North and South (1952-1960)

Question 1

What is de facto segregation?

Answer 1

Segregation that occurs in practice or reality, rather than by law

Question 2

What is de jure segregation?

Answer 2

Legally enforced racial segregation (like Jim Crow Laws)

Question 3

What was the situation for African Americans in the North?

Answer 3

• De facto segregation remained
• Organisations like the National Urban League (NUL) continued to campaign for change and push for integration within trade unions
• CORE was beginning to challenge de facto segregation in Chicago schools and elsewhere
• White flight to the suburbs left the inner cities ethically homogenous
• Rents were high and prices at local stores were increased

Question 4

What was the 8 Mile Road in Detroit?

Answer 4

a racial dividing line, with African American communities primarily located south of it and white communities to the north

Question 5

What was ‘The Hate that Hate Produced’

Answer 5

• A show which aired in July 1959 covering the Nation of Islam (NOI)
• It aimed to terrify white viewers

Question 6

Who was Malcolm X?

Answer 6

• A prominent African American civil rights leader who advocated for black empowerment and self-defence in the North
• He was a member of the Nation of Islam
• The media presented him as the antithesis of Martin Luther King Jr

Question 7

What was the situation for African Americans in the South?

Answer 7

• The role of media began to play a bigger role in Civil Rights (over half of US households owned a television by 1955 and could witness segregation first-hand)
• The NAACP was beginning to win more court victories against Jim Crow Laws

Question 8

What was Brown v Board of Education?

Answer 8

• In early 1953, the NAACP’s legal team, headed by Thurgood Marshall, presented evidence that separate school facilities were unequal
• On the 17th of May 1954, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren announced that the court had ruled in favour of Brown

Question 9

What was Ike’s reaction to Brown v Board?

Answer 9

• It created problems for him
• He later said that appointing Earl Warren as Chief Justice was ‘the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made’

Question 10

What were segregationalist reactions to Brown v Board?

Answer 10

• White Citizen’s Councils were formed
• The KKK was revitalised and began to grow in membership
• The Southern Manifesto was created

Question 11

What was the Southern Manifesto?

Answer 11

A document signed by 101 Dixiecrats in 1956 stating that they would use ‘all lawful means’ to oppose the Supreme Court’s decision (BvB) on the grounds of it infringing state’s rights

Question 12

What Civil Rights events did Eisenhower ignore?

Answer 12

• Emmett Till in 1955
• The expulsion of Autherine Lucy from the University of Alabama (its first black student) despite the NAACP winning Lucy v Adams in 1955 to secure her place
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Question 13

What was the Little Rock Crisis?

Answer 13

• In September 1957, Central High School in Little Rock accepted its first 9 black students
• Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, appeared on TV and warned that a riot might occur when Little Rock was desegregated
• Several protestors blocked the entrance for the students and Faubus mobilised the National Guard to turn the students away
• The scenes were displayed on national TV (which was an international source of embarrassment for Ike)

Question 14

How did Ike respond to the Little Rock Crisis?

Answer 14

• He dispatched the 101st Airborne troops to protect the students (he became the first president to send troops to the South since the Civil War)

Question 15

What was ‘The Lost Year’

Answer 15

• The period which describes how Faubus closed all of the public schools in Little Rock in 1958
• No African Americans could afford to attend private schools which were opened

Question 16

How did Faubus benefit from the Little Rock Crisis?

Answer 16

• After the crisis, he was re-elected 4 times
• He was voted one of the ten most admired men in America in a 1958 Gallup Poll

Question 17

What was the Montgomery Bus Boycott?

Answer 17

• Following Rosa Parks’s arrest in 1954 for sitting in a white section of a bus, the bus boycott was organised
• It was led by MLK and lasted for 381 days from 1955 to 1956 (it was originally only meant to be 1 day)
• The boycott cost bus companies 80% of their costs per day

Question 18

What was Browder v Gayle?

Answer 18

• A case the NAACP took to court during the bus boycott
• In December 1956, the court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment

Question 19

What were some things Ike said about segregation?

Answer 19

• “It is difficult through law and through force to change a man’s heart”
• He said that this call for equality of opportunity did not mean the races “had to mingle socially - or that a N*gro could court my daughter”

Question 20

What is miscegenation?

Answer 20

The mixing of different races through marriage, cohabitation, or procreation

Question 21

When did Ike issue the two Civil Rights acts and why?

Answer 21

• 1957 and 1960
• To increase the black voter registration in the south (only 7000 of Mississippi’s 900,000 African Americans could vote)

Question 22

What were some methods used by Southern States to prevent black voters?

Answer 22

• Extremely hard literacy tests (questions like ‘how many bubbles are in a bar of soap’)
• ‘Grandfather clauses’
• Poll taxes

Question 23

Why was Nixon passionate about passing the bill?

Answer 23

• IN 1957, he met MLK in Ghana as the country celebrated its independence, and they got along well with Nixon inviting him to his office to discuss the bill once they returned
• On the same trip, Nixon asked a man who sat next to him how it felt to be free and the man responded, ‘I wouldn’t know, sir. I’m from Alabama”

Question 24

What is filibustering?

Answer 24

A tactic used to delay a vote in Congress by prolonged speechmaking

Question 25

How were the Bills watered down?

Answer 25

• The 1957 bill was undermined by Dixiecrats in Congress and by filibustering (Strom Thurmond did this for 24 hours and 18 minutes)
• The bill also did not do much for black people and only 3% more could vote in the South by 1960
• The second bill was also watered down and there wasn’t much done to actually turn the obstruction of desegregation into a federal crime