Unit 1.2: The Quest For Civil Rights

Question 1

What was life like in the south pre 1917?

Answer 1

-Slavery was a reason behind the civil war - south, slavery was prominent - many plantations
-1865 - 13th amendment - abolished slavery - due to Lincoln
-1868 - 14th amendment - former slaves are made US citizens - laws in the constitution apply to slaves
-1870 - 15th amendment - right to vote for black males
-Laws changing doesn’t mean attitudes change
-Plessy V Ferguson 1896

Question 2

What was Plessy V Ferguson 1896?

Answer 2

Rule black and white people were ‘separate but equal’ - segregation legal as long as groups being segregated are being treated equally - difficult to combat segregation

Question 3

What was life like in South post 1917?

Answer 3

-Jim Crow Laws introduced in 1917
-Facilities for AA were much worse than the white ones - social, educational and economic disadvantages
-There was segregation in the military
-Wilson introduced segregation in the workplace
-Poll tax on AA - couldn’t vote in national elections without paying to vote as well as literacy tests that were very difficult - limited voting - on paper, voting rights were the same but they weren’t
-Brown V Board
-Underrepresented in politics - not enough people present to fight for their rights and overturn laws - no one with the power to make the change
-Lower paid jobs - not equal quality of education - didn’t allow them to work in high paid jobs - there were exception like MLK but this is based on the majority, it was less likely

Question 4

What were the Jim Crow Laws? When were they introduced? When did they end?

Answer 4

-Jim Crow Laws = Southern states legalised the marginalisation of AA, they limited voting, excluded access to higher education or stopped them from getting well paid jobs - if laws were broken, some were killed or jailed - introduced in 1917
-1964 CRA 1965 VRA - ended Jim Crow Laws

Question 5

What was the KKK?

Answer 5

-Ku Klux Klan
-Lynched coloured people
-made up of WASPs
-against non-WASP group but especially black people
-Resurged during the Second Red Scare and Civil Rights Movement
-Started after the civil war after the 13th amendment - disappear and become less influential - come back in the 1920s (specifically 1915) - membership increases to 5-8 million
-Imperial Wizard found guilty of SA so it declined once again at the end of the 1920s

Question 6

Why did the KKK use lynchings? Statistics on lynching.

Answer 6

-they felt as though segregation wasnt enough and that black people needed to be terrorised into obedience
-1915-30 - 65 white men lynched and 579 black men lynched - lynchings were often unjustified - only made illegal 2022

Question 7

Who was Emmet Till? What was the impact of this?

Answer 7

-1955 - Emmet Till was a 14 year old boy who was visiting relatives in the south from Chicago and was lynched for talking with a white woman, allegedly asking her for a date as he didn’t understand souther rules
-it shocked many and got a lot of publicity

Question 8

What was the membership of the KKK by 1925?

Answer 8

-The membership of the KKK by 1925, was between 3-8 million

Question 9

Who did members of the KKK include?

Answer 9

-people of political power in the South even state governors
-those of social power such as policemen and the army
-rumours that Harding, Coolidge and Truman were all part of the KKK

Question 10

What was the role of women Klan members in the KKK?

Answer 10

-rarely took part in more violent Klan activities such as lynchings
-but, they brought up their children up as whites supremacists and especially in rural areas
-created anti black environments that even non Klan people felt too intimated to reject it - indoctrinated children

Question 11

What had more of an impact on life in the South? KKK or JCL?

Answer 11

-KKK
- JCLs legalised segregation, however the KKK enforced it through their actions

Question 12

Why was there limited federal intervention in life in the south for AA’s?

Answer 12

-relied on the people in the south to be voted in president
-republicans had a Laissez faire attitude so they didnt want to get involved
-Supreme Court is the federal government and they ruled that segregation was legal
-The republicans felt like they could express opinions but could not enforce it with legislation
-Harding made a race committee but he didnt feel like it was the job of the president to make legislation based on their opinion - legislating on something opinion based and not a moral issue
-Depression in 1929 - main concern for the government and civil rights issues were not prominent - but you do see the CCC as part of the new deal that helped AA’s

Question 13

What was the Great Migration? What is it also known as? Some other key facts?

Answer 13

-also known as the Northern Migration
-The Great Migration was the mass movement of about five million southern blacks to the North and West between 1915 and 1960
-During the initial wave the majority of migrants moved to major northern cities such as Chicago, Illiniois, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New York
-By World War II, the migrants continued to move North but many of them headed west to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington

Question 14

Why did Black Americans emigrate north?

Answer 14

-North were welcoming AA and helping to solve their issues that they were facing due to the racial segregation of the South
-To get better jobs and employment opportunities
-To work in industrial areas not in agriculture

Question 15

Migrate

Answer 15

Move from one place in a country to another

Question 16

What impact did the Great Migration have on the North?

Answer 16

1. The populations of cities rose sharply
2. Black people came to have significant political influence if they were based in cities where black migrants settled in areas that coincided with voting wards e.g. Chicago - the elections for mayor of Chicago in 1919 showed that the black vote could keep a mayor in power - black people were thus listed to more and a powerful business black elite grew up that was pro segregation
3. Segregation made it more likely that AAs could try for positions in politics as a black American campaigning in a black ward was likely to sweep the black vote
4. In some cities like NYC, they didnt have a political influence but they did live in smaller more segregated parts of the city with their own businesses, schools and churches - churches became important in organising protests
5. Black migrants dislodged white workers especially those who were members of unions and pushing for better conditions, which allowed employers to force employees to leave unions

Question 17

What impact did the Great Migration have on the South?

Answer 17

1. The labour force shrank
2. The farming areas of the South struggled to get by which was intensified by pre existing economic problems - poorest, black farmers struggled most
3. Southerners tended to see their migration as black people voting with their feet over Jim Crow Laws as those who remained in the south were seen as accepting Jim Crow

Question 18

What were the 3 factors that had an impact on civil rights?

Answer 18

1. New deal and FDR
2. WWII
3. Truman

Question 19

3 factors that had an impact on civil rights?

Answer 19

1. New Deal and FDR
2. WWII
3. Truman

Question 20

Why was there a shift by black voters in the 1930s?

Answer 20

1930s - black voters shifted from voting republican as they freed them from slavery or to voting Democrats
-believed the new deal would help them progress and recover from the depression - impact on the Roosevelt landslide

Question 21

What was Roosevelt’s view on civil rights?

Answer 21

-Appointed some black advisers but needed the support of many who were against equal rights
-did little to advance civil rights
-restricted the number of black workers on a project if a donor to the project wanted this

Question 22

What was Executive order 8802? Why was it important?

Answer 22

-An executive order issued when the war broke out which banned racial discrimination in the defence industry to get as many people into war work as possible regardless of their colour

Answer 23

4. How did the New Deal discriminate against Black Americas? (Alphabet agencies) The agencies set up provided relief and work put people onto work by merit alone but black people were constantly moved off projects to make way for whites, Black Americans weren’t helped as many of them were farm workers who were supported in social security
5. How did Black Americans benefit from the New Deal? They benefited because the NRA made minimum wage equal for all colours and new deal measures did help blacks becuase of their situation like one third of low income housing built had black tenants
6. Why did Black Americans protest against the New Deal? About their treatment during the New Deal - sometimes having support from communists rather than black civil rights organisations
7. Who were the NAACP and why were they important during the 1930s? National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - A group of people established in 1910 that set up legal actions against segregation in the USA, failure to support protests led to communist groups taking over
8. What was the impact of communist support of black civil rights? The impact of communists was that communist lawyers uncovered a conspiracy and the men were not found guilty in a case where 9 young men were framed for raping 2 girls
9. What organisations were set up during the 1930s protesting against the New Deal? Why were they important? Organisation that set up support systems during the Depression such as Father Divine of the Peace Mission church group set up restaurants and shops that sold food and supplies at a lower cost. Women’s organisation like Housewives Leagues campaigned to boycott stores until they hired black workers.
10. What was Executive order 7027 and what impact did it have? Set up the Resettlement Administration in 1935 that resettled low income families in new housing and lent money to- black farmers had lost homes got loans but only helped 3400 out of 200,000 farmers