SECTION 3 : The civil rights movements and their impact on American society

• In the southern states in the USA blacks had their own, separate, cafes, cinemas, transport, toilets, etc. Jim Crow Laws prevented blacks from voting and enforced separate, and unequal, schools. These were state laws that forced, for example, blacks to pass tests in order to vote. Many suffered violence and intimidation at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.

• The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People), which had been founded in 1909, particularly tried to raise the issue of their denial of civil rights. However, their struggle gained strength in the 1950s until it dominated US politics.

• The experiences of black Americans during the war, the FEPC etc., encouraged hopes that there would be real changes when the war ended.

• In 1946 Truman set up a President’s Committee on Civil Rights and produced a programme of reforms in 1947, including a bill to outlaw lynching and ban Jim Crow Laws, but this was crushed by Congress. The Republicans and southern Democrats voted against it.

• In 1948 Truman ended segregation in units in the armed forces. This came into effect in 1950.

What advances were made in education?

• In 1950 the Supreme Court declared that black and white student could not be segregated in the same school and that the education provided in segregated schools had to be equal in every respect.

* The Brown Case : In 1954 Oliver Brown used the Supreme Court ruling to take the City of Topeka in Kansas to court for forcing his daughter to attend a school a long way away, instead of being allowed to go to a nearby whites only school. The NAACP supported the case and Brown was represented by Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black member of the Supreme Court. Eventually Oliver Brown won his case. In 1954 the Supreme Court declared that all segregated schools were illegal, because separate must mean unequal. In 1955 the Supreme Court ordered all states with segregated schools to integrate black and white schoolchildren.

Why was Little Rock important?

• In 1957 Eisenhower introduced the first Civil Rights Act since 1875. It set up a commission to prosecute anybody who tried to deny American citizens their rights.

• It attracted world-wide attention and was on television screens across the USA.

• When Faubus closed all the schools in Arkansas in September 1958, he was forced to reopen them to black and white students by the Supreme Court.

* But by 1963 there were only 30,000 children at mixed schools in the South, out of a total of 2,900,000 and none at all in Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina.

• In 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man. Martin Luther King organized a boycott of the buses which lasted for a year until the bus company gave in.

• In 1956 the Supreme Court said that segregation on buses was also illegal.

• Martin Luther King was the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership conference. He was influenced by Mohandas Gandhi’s campaign of non-violence and urged black Americans to show their opposition to discrimination peacefully.

• King began to organize non-violent protests all over the South. Their main method was the sit-in. The first was at Woolworth's in Greensboro North Carolina, where eighty-five students demanded to be served at a whites only counter. When they were refused they organized a sit-in. Altogether 70,000 took part and 3,600 went to jail. When whites turned violent there was widespread television coverage and support for Civil Rights.

• Student protests were organized by the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee.

What part did John F Kennedy play in the Civil Rights Movement?

• Kennedy began to appoint black Americans to important positions. His brother Robert, who was Attorney General, prosecuted people who tried to prevent blacks from voting.

• In 1961 the Freedom Riders began to make bus journeys to break Jim Crow Laws. They were members of the Congress of Racial Equality. Once again they were arrested, but gained tremendous publicity. The Freedom Riders wanted to put pressure on the Kennedy. They succeeded; later the same year all railway and bus stations were desegregated.

• In 1962 Kennedy sent the National Guard and federal troops soldiers into Mississippi to make sure that a black student, James Meredith, could take his place at a university. But when rioting followed, 23,000 troops were needed to keep order.

• 1962 Robert Kennedy, along with civil rights groups organized the Voter Education Project. This aimed at persuading and helping blacks to register to vote. The numbers of black voters rose quickly, but blacks were attacked and their houses and property burnt to try to intimidate them.

The focus of attention now became the state of Alabama

• In 1962 the city of Birmingham closed all public parks etc. to avoid integrating them. Martin Luther King organized a campaign to force the city to back down.

• The Police Commissioner, Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor responded with water cannon, dogs and baton charges. Arrests reached 500 a day, but it was all shown on television and most people were sickened by the violence.

• In 1963 Kennedy forced the city to give way and Alabama, the last state, was forced to allow desegregated schools.

• Kennedy now introduced a Civil Rights Bill to Congress. However, it got bogged down, partly because of opposition from Kennedy’s own party the Democrats, who were strong in the South.

• So even John Kennedy was unable to do anything really effective. He was not prepared to force the measure through and possibly lose support.

• When Martin Luther King planned a march through Washington in support of the Bill, Kennedy asked him to call it off. King refused and 200,000 people marched.

* Things changed after Kennedy’s death. There was a great wave of sympathy for him and for his aims. An important Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 by Kennedy’s successor President Johnson.

• Johnson was a southerner from Texas, where segregation was common, so it was surprising that he forced Congress to accept the act. This was partly a result of Kennedy’s assassination, but also because Johnson had been a schoolteacher who had seen the effects of segregation.

• Made segregation in education and housing illegal

• Stated that all Americans were entitled to equal employment opportunities

• Stated that all Federal projects must include racial integration

* The Voting Rights Act, 1965, made it illegal to try to prevent blacks from registering for the vote by setting literacy tests for voters.

As early as the late 1950s some black Americans began to reject the methods of Martin Luther King. This led to the formation of a number of groups, which demanded Black Power.

Why did the Black Power movement develop?

• The pace of change was too slow, King was prepared to wait for his tactics to work.

• They believed that US society was fundamentally white and that nothing would change it.

• There was growing interest in Islam, which was seen as a black religion.

• There was a rejection of the idea of integration and in some cases a demand for a separate black society.

• Malcolm X was a leader of the Black Muslims and founded the Nation of Islam. He advocated violence as a means of self-defence for blacks.

• Stokeley Carmichael wanted to set up a separate black society. He became the leader of the SNCC in 1966 and turned it into a violent organisation.

• The Black Panthers, founded in 1966, wanted to start a race war against white Americans.

• Riots broke out in many US cities. In 1965 there were serious riots in the Watts area of Los Angeles and 34 people died.

• There were further riots in the next three years in Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and New York. 1967 was the worst year, with 150 cities affected. It seemed that civil war was breaking out in the USA.

• In 1967 Johnson appointed Governor Kerner of Illinois to head a commission to discover what was causing the riots.

• The report was published in April 1968 and stated that the main cause was frustration of young blacks. In the same month Martin Luther King was assassinated, which led to a new wave of riots.

* Also in April 1968, the Open Housing Law banned discrimination in the sale or rental of houses.

Banned discrimination in housing and made it a Federal offence to injure civil rights workers, or even to cross a state boundary with the intention of committing such a crime.

Why did the issue of Civil Rights become less significant in the 1970s?

• Federal programmes were beginning to have some effect. Blacks were being appointed to prominent posts for the first time

• Johnson’s Poverty Program helped blacks in particular.

• Unemployment fell in the early 1970s, although blacks were still more likely to be out of work.

• Vietnam became a more important issue for many young Americans.