African Americans under Ike 1953-1960 Flashcards
NUL
National Urban League
Pushed for integration in the rascal trade Unions
Founded in 1911 in New York City, the National Urban League (NUL) is one of five civil rights organizations collectively known as the “Big Five.” The organization was founded to provide assistance to African Americans to further the dual tenets of economic and social justice.
8 Mile road significance
Eight Mile exists as a physical dividing line, as well as a de-facto psychological and cultural boundary for the region. As the northern border to the City of Detroit, Eight Mile separates the city’s predominately African American urban core from the more white suburbs to the north.
White flight to the suburban areas
No change since Truman examples
Senate remained white
Situation in the south
The Civil rights movement in the South began to gather momentum during the Ike administration.
Especially because by 1955 over half of US households owned a television and could see firsthand the realities of segregation
What was the segregation difference in North and south schools
Schools in the North were de facto segregated through the economic inequalities that led to ghettos
Schools in the south were deputy segregated by Jim Crow and poesy vs Ferguson.
14th Amendment
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka Kansas
On 17th May 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that the court had ruled in favor of Brown
Legal Team was headed by Thurgood Marshall
Significance of B vs BOE
Triumph for the NAACP vindicating their gradualist approach
However for Ike who stated that appointing Warren as Chief of Justice was ‘the biggest dammed- fool mistake I ever made’
Why did ike think it was a mistake to hire Warren
Eisenhower was a gradualist who wanted to coax white Americans in the South into eventually accepting integration, while Warren, author of the Supreme Court’s historic unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, demanded immediate action to dismantle the segregation of the public school system.
Significance of B vs BOE on white extremists (3)
- -White Citizens Council were formed the first being formed on July 11, 1954
And by 1956, it boasted 250,000 members - The Ku Klux Klan was revitalized and began to grow in membership and in brutality
- The signing of the ‘Southern Manifesto’ in 1956 by 101 Dixiecrat congressmen which threatened to use ‘all lawful means’ to oppose the Supreme Court design on the grounds of infringing states rights
What was Ikes opinion on the white extremists
Due to the Southern Manifesto, Ike was faced with a potentially explosive situation with echoes of the 1861-1865 Civil war
He was also reluctant to use federal power to enforce the design and tried to avoid commenting on subsequent events eg Emmet Till This led to accusations that Ike was against desegregation but he simply didn’t want to deal with it
Emmet Till
Brutal murder of a 14 year old black Chicago boy, in Money Mississippi,
lead to a lot of media attention due to the open casket funeral
Autherine Lucy
1956 the University of Alabama expelled its first black student Autherine Lucy, despite the NAACP having won a core case Lucy vs Adams in 1955 to secure her place,
Ike did not intervene
What was the follow-up of the Brown decision
In 1955 Supreme Court followed up known as Brown 2 where the NAACP sought to establish a timescale for desegregation in school. The Courts ruling was that desecration should occur ‘with all deliberate speed’
How did southern officials slow down desegregation
Most obvious in Virginia where senator Harry Byrd urged committed segregationists to adopt a strategy of ‘massive resistance’ including closing down schools completely
