The Growth of the Civil Rights Movement Flashcards
What was life like for black Americans following the Second World War?
- Some progress towards tolerance, understanding and integration had been made in WW2
- Racism still an every day occurrence for black people
- Racism particularly bad in the southern states
Why did Black Americans protest?
- 12% of Americans were black and descended from slaves
- All slaves were freed in 1863
- Most still suffered from poverty, segregation and discrimination
How were Black Americans discriminated against?
Segregation - especially in southern states
- blacks had their own cafes, cinemas, transport, toilets etc.
- Jim Crow laws prevented blacks from voting and enforced separate and unequal schools
- Many blacks suffered intimidation or violence at the hands of organisations like the Klu Klux Klan
What were the Jim Crow Laws?
State Laws that prevented any black from voting
Blacks had to pass tests in order to vote
Blacks went to poor schools due to segregation
Why could blacks not vote?
Officially they could having been given the vote in early 1900s
Had to pass literacy tests to vote in many states - poor schooling meant that they couldn’t
Often victims of violent attacks if they tried to vote
Apart from voting and segregation, how else were blacks discriminated against?
Legal discrimination in areas such as education and employment; white teachers earned at least 30% more than black teachers
Best universities were closed to black people
How did WW2 impact on black Americans?
- Fought alongside white soldiers so had hopes life would be different
- ‘Double v’ campaign calling for victory in the war and civil rights at home
- had been migration of blacks during the war to northern and western cities
What was the NAACP and what happened to it after WW2?
National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
Founded in 1909 to raise the issue of the denial of civil rights
Their numbers grew from 50,000 to 450,000 in 1945
What was CORE?
A group founded in 1942 that used Ghandi’s non-violent methods such as sit ins to end segregation
Was there political support for the civil rights movement?
- FDR encouraged the Civil Rights Movement in war years by reducing discrimination in he armed forces and demanding fair employment in the companies with government contracts
- Truman attempted to pass anti-lynching laws and introduced a Civil Rights Act in 1948 - both were rejected by his fellow Democrats
What were the key methods used by the Civil Rights Movement?
Legal challenges direct non-violent action empowerment of the people marches and speeches violent protest
What were the key legal challenges?
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka
Little Rock in Arkansas
Who favoured challenging inequality through the legal system?
NAACP
They took an individual case all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided in their favour forcing the states to react
What inequality did the NAACP successfully challenge?
Segregation in education
What complaint did the NAACP and Civil Rights lawyer T Marshall bring about in the 1940s?
Segregation of schools
Judge Waring ruled saying that education should be equal between black and white but that it didn’t have to be integrated.
What was the name of the case that the NAACP successfully won?
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka
What was the complaint in the case of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka
Oliver Brown complained that his daughter had to travel too far to go to school instead of being able to attend the local all white school.
NAACP supported him and Marshall represented him - Marshall later became first black member of the Supreme Court
Eventually Brown won the case
What were the effects of the Brown v Topeka case?
- 1954 segregated schools declared illegal
- 1955 all states with segregated schools had to integrate with ‘deliberate’ speed
- 1957 300,000 black children were attending schools that had been desegregated
- KKK began to reemerge and White Citizens’ councils were set up to maintain segregation
- Further challenges were made to segregated education
Why was a challenge raised at Little Rock in Arkansas?
1957 and Arkansas still hadn’t introduces integrated education
What happened as a result of the challenge at Little Rock in Arkansas?
- Supreme Court ordered state governor Faubus to allow Elizabeth Eckford and 8 other black students to enrol at Little Rock High School
- Faubus refused and surrounded the school with National Guard to prevent the black students from entering - he claimed that he was using troops to protect the children
- President Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort and protect Eckford and the other black students
- after a month they federal troops were replaced by National Guard who remained for a year
Why was Little Rock important?
- Forced President Eisenhower to do something when he would have preferred to do nothing
- Demonstrated that individual states would be overruled by federal government when necessary
- 1957 Eisenhower introduced the first Civil Rights Act since 1875 - set up a commission to prosecute anybody who tried to deny American citizens their rights
- Attracted world-wide attention and was on TV across the USA - worry as USA was accusing other countries of being oppressive
- Black activists realized that direct action was needed - not just reliance on the courts
How successful was Little Rock?
- somewhat successful as Little Rock admitted black students
- 1958 Faubus closed all schools in Arkansas - was forced to reopen them to all black and white students by the Supreme Court
- However - only a small success in real terms - by 1963 only 30,000 children in mixed schools in the South out of a possible 2,900,000 - none in Alabama, Mississippi or S Carolina
