African Americans and Civil Rights (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes
African Americans and Civil Rights
By 1945, African Americans had made limited gains in employment and military service, yet discrimination and segregation remained entrenched across the Southern states. The migration of many African Americans to Northern industrial cities had created new racial tensions. The question of how much genuine progress occurred in the 1940s and 1950s requires examining several interconnected developments: federal leadership, legal challenges, grassroots activism, and violent resistance.
The legacy of the Second World War
World War Two provided momentum for the civil rights movement. Fighting against Nazi racism abroad whilst tolerating racial inequality at home created a contradiction that many Americans began to recognise.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) experienced dramatic growth during this period. Its membership expanded from 50,000 members in 1940 to 450,000 by 1945. This increase included both professionals and newly urbanised workers whose higher wages now allowed them to afford subscriptions. The organisation's expanded membership base enabled it to raise the profile of civil rights issues not only within the African American community but also amongst white Americans, whilst encouraging activism across the country.
In 1942, James Farmer founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights organisation that would become increasingly influential.
Americans began to perceive the incongruity of racial inequality in a nation that promoted democracy and equality of opportunity. This awareness became particularly acute after the war, when the United States had fought against the most racist regime of modern times and supported decolonisation worldwide. Communist regimes promoted racial equality and could easily criticise the USA for its lack of equality, making America vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy in the international arena.
Presidential leadership and federal action
Truman's presidency
Harry S. Truman became the first president since Lincoln to make a substantial contribution to civil rights development. In September 1946, he established the Civil Rights Committee to investigate racial abuse. The committee published its findings in 1947 in a report entitled 'To Secure These Rights', which bluntly stated that the USA couldn't claim to lead the free world whilst African Americans endured such unequal treatment.
The report called for several measures:
- Laws to prevent lynching
- Abolition of the poll tax (a device used to prevent African Americans from voting in many Southern states)
- Making the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) a permanent institution
A coalition of 20 Southern Democrats and 15 Republicans blocked most civil rights legislation in the Senate. These conservatives often introduced anti-lynching bills, then justified their opposition by claiming they upheld states' rights and that race was irrelevant, or by equating civil rights with Communism. Most historians now recognise that their opposition stemmed fundamentally from racism rather than principled constitutional concerns.
Eisenhower's presidency
President Eisenhower demonstrated less commitment to desegregation than his predecessor. As explored further below, civil rights became a more prominent issue during his administration. Eisenhower maintained that legislation couldn't change people's attitudes, arguing that passing laws to stop desegregation wouldn't work. Despite this stance, he wasn't a racist himself.
Eisenhower's major achievement regarding civil rights was facilitating desegregation in Washington DC. The capital, geographically a Southern city, was governed during the 1950s by Congress yet had largely segregated facilities. Eisenhower issued Executive Orders desegregating government-run shipyards and veterans' hospitals, and attempted to encourage integration of schools in the capital. This effort gained particular importance after the landmark Brown v. Topeka case ruled that schools should not be segregated. Washington DC itself became desegregated as the 1950s advanced.
Desegregation of the armed forces
One measure that successfully advanced was Executive Order 9981, which Truman issued in July 1948 to desegregate the armed forces entirely and guarantee fair employment opportunities in the civil service. A Fair Employment Board replaced the FEPC, though its impact suffered from insufficient funding.
Senior military personnel initially feared desegregation's impact, worrying it would not work effectively. By 1950, the Navy and Air Force had achieved complete integration. The Army followed during the Korean War, initially where military necessity demanded it through casualty levels. Even the military training camps in the South underwent integration without substantial problems. The successful desegregation of the armed forces offered hope for broader change.
The fight for educational equality
NAACP and schools
The NAACP recognised early that educational quality was essential to achieving genuine equality of opportunity. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case had permitted segregation whilst emphasising that facilities must be separate but equal. However, educational facilities in the South were starkly unequal in reality.
In 1930, the NAACP commissioned the Margold Report to investigate this ruling. Published in 1933, it argued that Plessy v. Ferguson had been imprecise, poorly conceived and vaguely written.
Evidence of Educational Inequality
The NAACP subsequently deployed researchers to investigate how schools in the South functioned unequally. Their evidence was compelling:
- South Carolina spent three times more on white schools than on African American schools, and one hundred times more on school transport
- African American schools often occupied tumbledown shacks built without proper facilities
- School materials frequently consisted of dog-eared books that had already served their useful life in white schools
- African American teachers typically received considerably less pay than their white counterparts
- The NAACP calculated that in 1946 one-quarter of African Americans in the South were functionally illiterate
The NAACP remained determined to challenge the separate but equal ruling in education.
Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka
The NAACP sought individuals prepared to bring cases challenging educational inequalities. Whilst the NAACP gathered evidence, potential plaintiffs faced attacks, dismissal from employment, arson of their homes, and forced relocation from their communities.
The NAACP ultimately decided to lead with Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka. Topeka was a town in Kansas. Brown referred to Reverend Oliver Brown, an African American whose seven-year-old daughter Linda had to cross railroad tracks and wait for a bus to reach school on the opposite side of town, despite a good white school nearby having plenty of available spaces.
The Supreme Court had appointed a new chief justice, Earl Warren, who showed sympathy to civil rights issues. On Monday 17 May 1954, the Court ruled that regarding education, the notion of separate but equal had no validity. This represented a monumental decision. Some called it a second American Revolution. Others referred to it as 'Black Monday'. Warren stated that for students, 'segregation' generates a feeling of inferiority regarding their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a manner unlikely ever to be reversed.
Impact of the ruling
Historians differ in how they assess this ruling's importance, emphasising its significance in various ways.
Writing during the 1950s and 1960s, historian C. Vann Woodward argued that the initial Southern response was to 'wait and see'. Panic developed when local courts began enforcing segregation following cases brought by the NAACP. Fort Pillow years later, control shifted. Diamond and Ware noted that the courts involved themselves in more aspects of life following the Supreme Court's lead. After Brown v. Topeka, courts became more willing to engage in political disputes and controversial issues.
James T. Patterson focused somewhat on opposition to the decision and criticised Eisenhower for not providing stronger support. Patterson believed that had Eisenhower acted more decisively, there would have been reduced opposition. Journalist Adam Cohen argued that the impact affected not school desegregation as such but the wider civil rights arena.
Limitations of the Brown Ruling
Many commentators expressed wildly optimistic views about the ruling, believing it would swiftly end segregation in schools. However, the NAACP chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, acknowledged that schools would be desegregated within five years. Other critics noted the ruling's vagueness:
- It failed to address what schools should teach or how they should operate
- It established no deadline
- Even when implementation began in May 1955, the Supreme Court declined to implement any deadlines
- It merely placed responsibility for implementation on local education authorities within a reasonable timeframe
- No sanctions existed for non-implementation
By the school year 1956–57, 723 school districts had desegregated, involving 300,000 African American schoolchildren, yet 240,000 remained in entirely segregated schools – predominantly in the eight states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and Virginia. Most of these states had established penalties for any district that initiated desegregation procedures.
Progress and resistance in the later 1950s
Whilst the prevailing mood in the South may have been 'wait and see' following the 1954 Brown v. Topeka ruling, attitudes were hardening. This hardening may have occurred because local courts, respecting the Supreme Court ruling, increasingly found in favour of desegregation – even though judges were risking themselves by doing so. By January 1956, they had upheld the ruling in nineteen cases, demanding either a prompt start to desegregation or overturning existing segregation laws. The NAACP had upwards of 170 cases pending.
Southern Resistance Tactics
Southern school boards discovered various ingenious methods to oppose desegregation beyond the penalties already mentioned:
- Private school grants: Georgia and North Carolina granted funding to white students to attend private schools, which could continue to be segregated
- School closures: As late as 1959, Prince Edward County, Virginia, actually closed all its public schools, enabling its white children to attend private segregated schools
- 'Public placement' laws: These enabled officials to assign pupils on racial bases to ensure white children went to the best schools
- Delegating powers: Some states delegated all educational powers to local boards so every individual board would need to be sued separately
- Making desegregation illegal: Mississippi actually passed legislation making desegregation illegal
By 1960, only two per cent of African Americans in the eleven Southern states attended fully integrated schools, and where schools were integrated, few African American teachers were permitted to work in them.
In March 1956, 22 Southern Senators and 82 of the 106 Southern representatives produced the Southern Manifesto, which accused the Supreme Court of abusing its powers. It insisted that the segregation question was one of states' rights. Furthermore, it promised to resist the decision.
All these states followed Alabama's lead, whose legislators declared the Brown v. Topeka ruling 'null, void and of no effect'. Attitudes were hardening, moreover, and moderate Southern politicians either had to become more conservative or yield to more extreme colleagues in elections. Meanwhile, white Southerners became increasingly anxious to promote their own perspectives on race relations in their region.
Little Rock High School, 1957
Eisenhower was compelled to take action following a clear example of Southern resistance to integrated education occurring at Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus deployed National Guard troops to prevent the entry of nine black children to the Central High School after a federal district court had ruled that the school must be desegregated. Eisenhower used his authority as Commander-in-Chief to deploy federal troops and announced that the 10,000 troopers of the Arkansas National Guard were to be placed under federal control. The soldiers, who had previously barred the way, now restrained white protestors and escorted the children into school.
Significance of Little Rock
Little Rock was significant for several reasons:
- It represented the only occasion when President Eisenhower used his federal authority to intervene and enforce the Brown ruling
- It demonstrated that states could be overruled by the federal government when necessary
- The demonstrations were broadcast on television and reported in newspapers worldwide, harming the USA's reputation
- It revealed how the USA could be portrayed as an oppressive nation when it was criticising Communist countries for not allowing their citizens basic human rights
- African American activists began to recognise that reliance on the federal courts alone was insufficient to secure change
The Montgomery bus boycott
In the South, separation on public transport was consistently the most resented form of segregation. African Americans were frequently made to stand, despite having paid for the poorer seats, and were thrown off buses for trivial reasons and generally spoken down to or humiliated by white drivers and passengers. The majority of African Americans lived in their own out-of-town areas and needed to travel frequently to employment in town centres.
On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was removed from a bus in Montgomery for refusing to surrender her seat for a white person. The driver called the police and she was arrested. This seemingly minor incident initiated a new and important phase in the civil rights movement: a bus boycott.
Over the following weekend, officials organised a massive boycott of the bus system by 50,000 black supporters in the city. The boycott, which lasted 381 days, gained near-unanimous support from ordinary African Americans and represented an impressive display of unity, with African Americans walking to work instead of using the local bus company.
It exerted financial pressure on the authorities, which initially unwisely refused the slightest concessions. However, in November 1956, following an initiative by the NAACP, the Supreme Court in Browder v. Gayle delivered another favourable verdict. It ruled segregation on buses to be unconstitutional, with similar reasoning to the Brown v. Topeka case. At the end of that long year, the buses were totally desegregated.
Rosa Parks (1914–2005)
Rosa Parks was a Methodist and a member of the NAACP who was highly regarded in the local community. Others had been arrested for similar reasons previously, but campaigners wanted to select a person of impeccable character and morals, to whom breaking the law would normally be unthinkable, and therefore Rosa Parks, a respectable middle-aged African American, was ideal.
Following the boycott, harassment by angry white Americans in Montgomery forced the Parks family to relocate to Detroit in 1957. She later established the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, providing career training to black youths. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Award in 1999.
The role of Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King had been a minister at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, for less than a year when the boycott began. He was chosen as leader of the bus boycott because he was seen as cautious and a very good speaker. King proved to be an effective organiser, a brilliant speaker and motivator. He organised frequent night-time rallies in his and other local churches as well as carpools to transport African Americans to work. By articulating the feelings and frustrations of the black community in a clear, intelligent and persuasive manner, he created a vital close link between the black civil rights leadership and the less educated African Americans that the NAACP had often failed to achieve.
His belief in non-violence was powerfully argued – the idea that true progress could only be achieved when the cycle of hate and violence was broken. Within a year, King had established a new civil rights organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
King's Philosophy: Speech of 5 December 1955
In a speech delivered on 5 December 1955, King explained the movement's philosophy:
"We are here this evening because we're tired. Now let us say that we are not here advocating violence. We have overcome that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. And secondly, this is the glory of America, with all of its faults. This is the glory of our democracy. If we were incarcerated behind the iron curtains of a Communistic nation we couldn't do this. If we were trapped in the dungeon of a totalitarian regime we couldn't do this. But the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right."
The boycott had demonstrated that unity and solidarity could achieve victory, offering hope to those who were fighting for improved civil rights. Moreover, the boycott demonstrated the benefits of a peaceful approach and showed that African Americans were able to organise themselves. It brought King's philosophy to the forefront and gave the movement a clear moral framework. Success also encouraged King to consider further action that would confront inequality and bring about greater change.
Violence and intimidation
The murder of Emmett Till, 1955
The year 1955 witnessed a deterioration in race relations and violence grew. Of the eleven lynchings in the 1950s, eight occurred in 1955. Some of the most horrific murders, including that of schoolboy Emmett Till, took place that year.
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, on 24 August 1955, when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white male jury acquitted them.
Till's murder and open casket funeral galvanised the emerging civil rights movement, exposing the brutal violence African Americans faced in the South and generating national outrage.
Key dates
- 1954 - Brown v. Topeka case
- 1955–56 - Montgomery bus boycott
- 1957 - Little Rock High School
Remember!
Key Points to Remember:
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The Second World War created momentum for civil rights through NAACP growth (50,000 to 450,000 members) and heightened awareness of racial injustice, but discrimination and segregation remained entrenched in the South
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Truman made the first presidential efforts since Lincoln through the Civil Rights Committee and Executive Order 9981 desegregating the armed forces, though Congressional opposition blocked most civil rights legislation
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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) was a landmark Supreme Court ruling declaring school segregation unconstitutional, but it lacked enforcement mechanisms and most Southern states actively resisted implementation through various tactics
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The Montgomery bus boycott (1955–56) demonstrated the power of mass action and economic pressure, lasting 381 days and ultimately desegregating buses through the Browder v. Gayle ruling
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Martin Luther King emerged as a transformative leader who articulated a philosophy of non-violent resistance, providing the civil rights movement with moral authority and forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to coordinate further action