Civil Rights Coursework Sources Questions

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Civil Rights Coursework- Rough Draft

James Ray-Leary

1a) Black Americans faced many disadvantages in the early 1950s. In the Southern states of the U.S.A, segregation was the biggest problem, the Jim Crow Laws made sure that there were separate transport services, schools, theatres, toilets and many other facilities that kept blacks from using the same services as white people. It is now widely accepted that the name for the Jim Crow Laws stems back from a minstrel show first performed in 1828 called ‘Jump Jim Crow’ by Thomas Dartmouth.

The Jim Crow Laws were introduced in the 1870s after the Federal troops had withdrawn from the Southern states. The South was famed for its hard-line racist attitudes in the early 20th century, lynching of blacks was common and there were various white supremacist groups operating in the Southern states, the most famous one being the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). This particular group were very powerful in the South and could carry out lynching and similar acts quite openly, as the Southern authorities -of whom the majority privately shared the KKK’s ideas- rarely challenged them.

There is no doubt that blacks faced worse problems in the South, but the black people living in the Northern states also had their own problems. There was no segregation enforced by law, but there was a type of segregation known as De Facto, black people felt intimidated by whites (and vice versa). Cafes were not officially black or white only, but the vast majority were used by one race or the other because neither blacks nor whites really wished to share facilities, keeping to there own people.

The most damaging form of segregation was in schools. A survey of segregated schools in 1937 revealed that while each white pupil had $37.87 spent on him/her that year, each black pupil got just $13.08. This lack of funding in black only schools meant that they were not educated very well and could not qualify for any worthwhile jobs. Most black people lived in ghettos, leading poor lifestyles well below the poverty line. Source J, a table showing poverty in the US (published in 1970) tells us that an massive 56% of black people lived below the poverty line, while just 18% of whites lived in poverty. This shows the amount of damage done by not educating people properly.

The white authorities in the South exploited this lack of knowledge among the black people -many of whom were illiterate- by setting tests allowing people to vote, if you couldn’t pass, you couldn’t vote. The authorities set questions such as, “How many bubbles in a bar of soap?” Many black people could not even read the question, let alone answer it. Southern authorities knew that the attitudes towards blacks would ensure that white people would not vote to help them, so providing that the black people could not vote, nothing would change. Those that did manage to register to vote were often lynched for doing so, discouraging other black people from even trying to register. White authorities in the South knew that no white people were going to vote in black peoples’ favour, so providing that blacks could not vote, segregation laws would not change.

These major problems in the black community- poverty and the inability to change the laws that oppressed them, really stemmed from segregation in education. They could not qualify for big money, respectable jobs or register to vote because most were too uneducated, the poverty trap.

1b) The roots of the civil rights campaign stem from WWII. Black Americans fighting in this war had to fight in different units to white soldiers. Nevertheless, they expected to be treated as equals to white people upon returning to America victorious, after all, they had fought and died for their country just as white soldiers had. However, nothing had changed, segregation laws were still in place and blacks were looked upon as second-class citizens. The shear disregard and lack of appreciation the government and the general public had shown for the black soldiers’ efforts told many blacks that something had to be done. Black soldiers set up the Double V Campaign after the war, this stood for:-

Victory against fascism in Europe

Victory against racism in America

Black soldiers realised that the racism in America, the country many had died to fight for, was just as bad as the fascism that they had been fighting in Europe. This campaign did achieve something, by the Korean War in the early 1950s, black and white soldiers were fighting along side each other in the same units.

Other things that started off the Civil Rights Movement included grass-roots activists, the most famous of whom was Rosa Parkes, a civil rights activist since the 1940s. On the 1st December 1955, she got on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama as she always did, not planning any form of protest, but when the driver asked her to move to let a white man sit down she refused. Even after the driver threatened to call the police, she still refused and eventually she was arrested for violating Alabama’s segregation laws. The black community was outraged and they mobilised quickly to show their anger. A bus boycott was organised almost immediately, the one-day event took place on 5th December 1955 and the black residents of Montgomery decided to continue it because of its success. Black people organised car-pooling in order to get to work but were faced with violent clashes with racist groups, such as the KKK. Cars were attacked and sometimes destroyed simply because the black people refused to use the racist bus service. Eventually the campaign succeeded and the white priority system on the Alabama buses was outlawed. In terms of changing laws, this was a very small step, but more importantly it made black people realise that they could do something about the racism in America- all this stemmed from Rosa Parkes’ refusal to let a white man have her seat on the bus.

In the early 1950s, the Brown vs. Board of Education hearing was held. A young 3rd grade schoolgirl named Linda Brown, of Kansas, complained that she had to walk one mile to her black-only school, when the nearest white-only school was just a few blocks away from her home. Her father, Oliver Brown attempted to enrol her at this white-only school but, inevitably, failed. He went to the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) for help, at this time, the NAACP was eager to challenge the notoriously racist education system in the South. In an initial hearing Marshall Thurgood, a black Supreme Court judge ruled that segregation in schools was acceptable as long as they all got equal funding and support. However, the NAACP gathered evidence to show that black and white only schools were by no means equal and in 1958, the Supreme Court ruled segregation in schools illegal. However, the Court also ordered changes to take place “with all deliberate speed” meaning that the Southern states could make the changes in their own time, as opposed to ‘immediately’. The first back students to enter a mixed school became known as the ‘Little Rock Nine’. Nine black students enrolled at Little Rock High School, Arkansas in 1958 and were greeted with an unimaginable amount of hostility, both verbal and physical. The Arkansas governor, Orvil Faubus sought the banning of these 9 students but President Eisenhower took control of the Arkansas National Guard to protect them. The hostility towards these students was mediated across the USA and many saw what the extent of the racist hostility in America really was, giving publicity to the growing movement campaigning for equal rights.

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Martin Luther King Jnr was arguably the most famous face of the Civil Rights Movement, at 26 he had served a year as the pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He was well educated becoming a Doctor of Theology at Boston University, after achieving this he returned South as the Civil Rights Campaign grew steadily larger. At the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he was selected to be president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, having been dedicated to Civil Rights for most of his life and excellent at public, Baptist preacher. King urged other civil rights activists ...

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