NEW DEAL Truman and Eisenhower

Question 1

how the democrat party prevented civil rights progressing

Answer 1

1932 - all former confederate states = democrat controlled - state governments
1932 - democrats won all the seats in the house + every senate seat that was up for re-election in former confederate states
one party system in the south
held all white primaries (which for the one party southern system was where the power lay)
seniority rules meant southern democrats tended to control committees
failed to address lynching - Dyer Bill 1922 died in the senate, took till 2005

Question 2

4 ways to test FDR civil rights impact

Answer 2

Jim crow
Eleanor Roosevelt
anti-lynching
voting swing

Question 3

FDR and jim crow

Answer 3

US armed forces remained segregated
school segregation didn’t end till 1954
allowed them to continue

Question 4

Eleanor Roosevelt on civil rights

Answer 4

much stronger than husband
quit DAR when refused integrated audience
1938 SCHW meeting Alabama, wanted to be fully integrated, police tried to enforce integration but couldn’t stop the first lady sitting next to a/a

Question 5

FDR on anti-lynching legislation

Answer 5

first president since 1870s to denounce lynching
went against 5th amendment of right to life
but FDR was unwilling to challenge southern democrats
dyer bill failed then Gavagan
overall no progress made

Question 6

voting swing

Answer 6

gained a huge swing of a/a voters from republican to democrat
1932 - 70% Hoover
1936 - 76% supported FDR
amazing considering Lincoln legacy
new deal + black cabinet

Question 7

alphabet agencies

Answer 7

AAA
TVA
CCC
NRA
PWA
WPA
NYA
FHA
FERA

Question 8

AAA

Answer 8

AAA

agriculture
40% of all a/a workers during new deal made their living through sharecropping
aimed to stop overproduction
but was dominated by white landowners and a/a rarely got the compensation they were due
1940 200,000 a/a sharecroppers evicted

Question 9

TVA

Answer 9

improved employment, electricity and farming methods
discriminatory
NAACP wrote an expose on their discriminatory practices and the situation improved somewhat

Question 10

CCC

Answer 10

created jobs for young people
10% of places for a/a
but Robert Fechner later (July 1935) ordered ‘complete segregation’

Question 11

NRA

Answer 11

nicknamed Negro Removal Act
aimed to help businesses and industry recover
a/a hugely discriminated against as NRA codes regularly overlooked a/a (to keep the southern democrats onside)
black jobs were excluded from many NRA codes

Question 12

WPA

Answer 12

reate jobs through public works
taught 250,000 a/a to read and write
employed 300,000 a/a per annum
but a/a only held 5% of supervisory roles in the south and 11/10344 in the south

Question 13

NYA

Answer 13

aimed to help unemployed youths

exceptionally fair in distribution of money but still accepted segregation

Question 14

FERA

Answer 14

relief and work projects from the poor
$4000 million to help the unemployed
but unemployed still viewed as idle
thought a/a needed less income than white families
eg: Mississippi relief payments 30% lower for a/a than whites

Question 15

How significant was the work of Eleanor Roosevelt in improving the lives of black Americans

Answer 15

How the First Lady helped to improve the lives of black Americans
During the new deal she held 348 conferences on how opinion on what should be done
Received 300,000 letters from people normal youth asking her to improve their life
She highlighted the plight of young people faced with extreme poverty and lack of opportunity
She pressured key members to such as Donald Richburg to investigate the race- based wage differentials implemented by southern Industries.
She lent her support to the NAACP campaign to introduce an anti-lynching law. This brought conflict between the president and his wife as he thought it would alienate the southern white democrats
She became the chairperson of an informal “Black cabinet group”
One of the most prominent black American to participate in the administration of the New deal was Mary McLeod Bethune, which she made the president special advisor on minority affairs in 1935 the year she founded her own civil rights organisation the National Council of Negro Women
She was one of the most high-profile symbolic gestures in favour of black Americans during the new deal years

Question 16

Anti- lynching bill

Answer 16

• In 1934 the NAACP supported senators in their introducing of an anti lynching bill. However, southern Democrats in senate organised a filibuster and the bill died
• Later that year the Claude Neal incident happened where his body was hung outside the county courthouse and following it removal white mobs rioted and headed to black areas of town, looting and burning houses where the national guard was sent in to supress it
• This led to another bill however fearful for the passage of the New deal relief legislation he didn’t do anything in supporting the bill
• Southern democrats organised another filibuster, lasting seven weeks
• In the meantime other legislation could not be passed, and as a result the anti lynching bill was dropped, another bill meet the same fate in 1937

Question 17

A Black cabinet

Answer 17

• Made up of nearly 50 black Americans with relatively senior positions in government departments and agencies
• They had frequent meetings and concerted pressure of the administration over the implementation of the new deal programmes.
• Marry McLeod Bethune was the leading figure of the group
• Roosevelt appointed the black cabinet

Question 18

Black employment and entertainment and scholarship

Answer 18

• The new deal provided jobs in the world of entertainment and culture
• Black songs and oral reminiscences of slavery and hardship were recorded for posterity
• Black authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright benefited from the Federal writers’ project
• Many congressmen were convinced that those people who worked in Theatre project and writers project were communist

Question 19

Harlem race riots of 1935-43

Answer 19

Riot of 1935 reason: rumours of beating of a shoplifting ten, The Kress five and ten store caught a 16-year-old black kid shoplifting g 10 cent piece of candy. Later that night a group by the name of the young Liberators started a demonstration outside the store and quickly attracted a crowd thousands strong. At some point in the night rock was thrown through the window and the crowd began looting and destroying things, specifically targeting white owned business.
Riot of 1945: August 1 2nd 1943, White police officer shot and wounded African American soldier Robert Brandy ( WW2 Veteran)` who was inquiring about a woman arrested for disorderly conduct as was asking fir her release. Brandy reportedly struck the officer and was shot trying to flee the scene. A crowd of 3000 gathered the scene and dales reports began to spread throughout the crowd that Brandy had been killed inciting rage in the crowd, the ensuing riot lasted 2 days and led to the death of 6, 600 arrests and millions of dollars in damages. The riot inspired the climax of Ralph Ellison’s invisible man movie. Overcrowding, high rent, competition payed less worked hard worse conditions, housing

Question 20

Thurgood Marshall

Answer 20

He was a lawyer
In 1935 he was employed as the NAACPs top lawyer
His most famous case was Brown vs Board, this man that overturned Plessy vs Ferguson separate but equal
1962 JFK made him a judge
1965 LBJ made his US solicitor general
1967 LBJ elevated him to a judge of the supreme court
In 1948 he wins the case Shelly vs Kraemar which ruled that the supreme courts could not legally enforce restrictive covenants,

Question 21

What was education like in the USA after WWII?

Answer 21

• There were glaring differences in obvious challenges to the notion of “Separate but equal.”
• In 1949 in South Carolina the white students were each worth $179 … but only $43 per black child.
• This means they received 24% of the equivalent funding in their all black schools.
• Unsurprisingly the teacher-student ratio was 20 better in white schools as they could afford more and better staff.
• Black teachers generally received half the salary of white teachers which would mean…?
• This lack of equality would be challenged and pursued by the NAACP and the most skilful of its civil rights lawyers; Thurgood Marshall.
• Note; the NAACP had to tread carefully after 1945 due to accusations made against them, hence they went more down the legal road rather than direct (de facto) campaigning – any ideas what the accusations were? … the date and colour of this text are your clues…

Question 22

Truman administration

Answer 22

• Roosevelt died in 1945 and Harry Truman became President (a Democrat).
• In principle (at least) he was not a racist.
• He was very much aware of the power of the black vote in some states.
• But he was also very much aware of the power of the Solid South in others.
• He appears to have been genuinely shocked when he witnessed racial violence in Texas in 1946 saying “I’d no idea it was as bad as that.”

Question 23

Eisenhower, why was the 1954 Brown v. Board case a landmark verdict?

Answer 23

What were the origins of the case? - right back to Plessy Ferguson a separate but equal, Linda and Olivier brown decide that their daughter should be going to the nearest school, she feels its unfair and takes it to NACCP to take it to caught?

What evidence and arguments did Thurgood Marshall use in favour of Linda & Oliver Brown?
To do so, Linda walked six blocks, crossing dangerous railroad tracks, and then boarded a bus that took her to Monroe Elementary. Yet, only seven blocks from her house was Sumner Elementary, a school attended by white children, and which, save for segregation, Linda would otherwise have attended. Her father, Oliver Brown, encouraged by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall, brought suit against the Topeka school district.

What was the verdict/decision of the Supreme Court?

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

How did the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren take things even further? (who does he remind you of?)

In Brown v. Board, however, the Warren Court ruled 9-0 that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibited the operation of separate public schools for Whites and Blacks. When some states refused to end the practice, the Warren Court—again unanimously—ruled in the case of Cooper v. Aaron that all states must obey the decisions of the Supreme Court and cannot refuse to follow them.
The unanimity Warren achieved in Brown v. Board and Cooper v. Aaron made it easier for Congress to enact legislation banning racial segregation and discrimination in broader areas, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.What were the results of the verdict?

Why does it therefore warrant being described as a landmark verdict?
was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as “ separate but equal “.

President Eisenhower failed to enforce the verdict.

a ruling followed in 1955 by the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, and then by the refusal of Arkansas governor Orville Faubus to allow the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School in the fall of 1957. A clearly distressed Eisenhower was compelled to call in the National Guard to enforce the court’s decision and to protect from mob violence the African American students who were scheduled to attend the high school.The embarrassment over strident domestic opposition to integration and to the equal participation by African Americans in the nation’s social and political systems hurt the nation’s image abroad
He was afraid of stirring up resentment in the south.