The Race Issue 1930-1955

Question 1

What ended following the Civil War 1861-65?

Answer 1

Slavery of black Americans

Question 2

The constitution was changed in 1865 to allow black Americans to be equal and have the right to vote. What was the name of the laws introduced by southern whites to ensure black Americans remained as second class citizens

Answer 2

Jim Crow laws

Question 3

What is the meaning of segregation?

Answer 3

Separation of blacks from whites

Question 4

How did the Supreme Court support segregation ?

Answer 4

By allowing it if separate facilities were ‘equal’ (which they weren’t of course )

Question 5

How did white state governments in the south stop black Americans from exercising their right to vote?

Answer 5

By making them pay a tax they couldn’t afford or making them take a literacy test or plain violence and intimidation

Question 6

What was the Ku Klux Klan

Answer 6

A white supremacist organisation against blacks, Jews, Catholics and communist/socialists

Question 7

What is the American term for an illegal hanging?

Answer 7

Lynching

Question 8

How did the Klan get away with their crimes?

Answer 8

Often police and judges etc were klansmen or sympathisers

Question 9

What organisation was set up in 1909 by WEB Dubois to fight for black Americans ?

Answer 9

NAACP

Question 10

What does the term NAACP stand for?

Answer 10

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People

Question 11

What were the aims of the NAACP?

Answer 11

Abolish segregation
End lynchings
The right to vote for black Americans
Equal education for black Americans

Question 12

Many black Americans were sharecroppers. What is a share cropper?

Answer 12

A farmer who had to rent the land and equipment from the white landowner and had to buy all his goods from the landowners shop and pay for it all with his crop which very rarely left him with any profit. Economically not much different to slavery.

Question 13

What did many black Americans do to escape the evils of theSouth ?

Answer 13

Moved north to cities like Washington, Chicago, Detroit and New York

Question 14

Why did the Depression in the 1930s hit black Americans hardest?

Answer 14

Because they had the worst jobs and were already very poor. Also the money given to southern states by Roosevelts New Deal was often spent mainly on whites.

Question 15

Black troops in World War Two fought in all black segregated units and many others worked in the war industries. How did WW2 help the cause of Civil Rights ?

Answer 15

Because it seemed wrong now to many that blacks should fight against racism in Europe only to face it back at home. Black soldiers and workers felt that they should be rewarded for fighting and working for their country

Question 16

Many Americans were stationed in the UK during the war, how did this affect the civil rights movement?

Answer 16

They had a lot more freedom to mix with whites in pubs etc

Question 17

What happened to NAACP membership after the war ?

Answer 17

It rose from 50,000 to 450,000

Question 18

How did Truman’s Fair Deal help civil rights?

Answer 18

Truman had hoped to end lynchings and abolish taxes to prevent voting but he couldn’t get this through Congress. He did desegregate the army. The US President had effectively declared that segregation was wrong.

Question 19

Why was the Brown versus board of education case in 1954 so important?

Answer 19

In the end the US Supreme Court sided with the little girl who had to go to an all black school a long distance from home.it declared that schools should be desegregated. Whites resisted but the door was open now to tackle al sorts of segregation.

Question 20

What were the tactics of the NAACP?

Answer 20

They used the churches as meeting places , they used petitions and marches, freedom rides and sit ins.

Question 21

In December 1955 who started the Montgomery bus boycott ?

Answer 21

Rosa Parks by refusing to move seats

Question 22

Which preacher came to prominence during the Montgomery bus boycott ?

Answer 22

Reverend Dr Martin Luther King