African Americans - opposition and organisations Flashcards
What is the Ku Klux Klan?
They had white supremacy ideology and their aim was to undermine Republican Domination of the South.
They were localised group of people with a variety of grievances, pursuing personal grudges and indulging in racist violence and intimidation.
What are the methods of the KKK?
Intimidation - white hoods, flaming crosses and secret oaths.
They physically attacked, beat, lynched and murdered AAs, destroyed their property and set off bombs.
Powerful sexual elements of white women in danger, were employed.
Freedmen’s Bureau members were targeted in 1860s, 1950s and 1960s.
Stopped AAs from registering and voting.
Attacked AAs to stop them attending desegregated schools.
What is the scale of violence of the KKK?
Quite considerable - 2000 deaths and injuries in Louisiana alone in the run-up to the 1968 election.
Why did the KKK decline in the 1870s?
Grant was prepared to suspend Habeas Corpus and use federal troops to supress violence e.g., South Carolina 1871.
It led to African Americans and Republicans uniting against the KKK.
Effective indictments reached effect and the KKK was not strong enough to resist federal powers.
Individual acts of terrorism continued without the KKK group.
What is the attitude and action of state governments?
Opposition came from legally constituted state governments, the indifference of congress and the administrator, and Supreme Court judgments.
Jim Crow laws and ridiculous voting qualifications were official, and lynchings grew and not being punished.
The South was allowed to regulate its own affairs with race, reverting to pre-civil war.
The KKK became inactive because there was no necessity for it to exist.
How was the KKK revived in the 20th century?
Reborn 1915 on the basis of a myth in the film a birth of a nation - portraying them as heroic against black control.
Enemies included African Americans, Jews, Catholics, foreigners and opponents of prohibiting alcohol. The effect on AAs were much less, but sporadic violence continued.
Membership fell from 4 million in 1920 to 30,000 in 1930.
What resistance was there from the State governments?
State governments like Faubus and Wallace continued to challenge desegregation.
Faubus resisted the integration of Little Rock 9 and closed the school rather than allow 9 blacks to attend, despite the intervention of Eisenhower.
Jim Crow laws continued to enforce segregation despite Supreme Court rulings.
The Democratic party dominated the South by defending segregation and white supremacy. Big barriers to change.
What resistance was there from the judicial system?
1961 civil rights campaigners travelled from north to south on buses to challenge segregation.
When buses reached Birmingham, they were attacked.
Police Chief Eugene Connor gave the KKK 15 minutes to attack before letting the police intervene.
What resistance was there from the judicial system - Emmett?
1955 Emmett Till was brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman in Mississippi.
Despite the men being identified they were not convicted by an all-white jury.
What were the acts of violence?
In the South White Citizen’s Councils were formed, opposed to desegregation following Brown v Topeka.
Many members were middle class and used their economic power and violence to discourage AAs using their rights.
What were the acts of violence - killings?
In 1963 and 64 there were several examples of high-profile violence.
Medgar Evers, a cv leader, was murdered in Mississippi.
An AA Church was bombed in Birmingham, killing 4 girls.
3 CV workers were killed in Mississippi.
What was a turning point for violence?
A Klan member was executed for the lynching of an African American in 1981, though it took 16 years for punishment to be inflicted.
This was the first time a white man had been convicted and executed for racial murder since the 1870s.
What was the extent of opposition to civil rights in the 1950s?
It was not nearly as effective in the 1950s and 60s as it had been during Reconstruction.
Segregationist white governors tried to prevent desegregation in schools.
What is the NAACP?
The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.
Originated in 1909 from concerns about race riots and lynchings expressed in the Niagara movement.
It included Du Bois, Ida Wells, and Liberal white social reformers.
It concerned suffrage rights, equal justice, better education, equality before the law and employment opportunities.
What did the NAACP do?
It aimed to challenge Jim Crow laws.
It campaigned against Wilson’s policy of segregating federal employment, and in favour of allowing African Americans as officers in the army.
It established 50 local branches and a journal, and set up marches against race riots and ‘A birth of a Nation’
