In 1870, black people gained the right to vote. Some ex-slaves became politicians in the southern state governments. Troops from the north occupied the south to enforce these rights.
In the south, a white supremacy group called the Ku Klux Klan was formed that discriminated against black people. The Klan aimed to frighten and kill blacks so that they didn’t take up the benefits of their freedom. The Klan didn’t want blacks to vote or get an education because then blacks remained second class citizens who couldn’t question their treatment. Employees of the Freedmen’s Bureau and teachers who educated blacks were also targeted by the Klan.
The oil industry in the south drew businessmen from the north to the south, as they wanted to invest. Northerners were willing to let whites control the south as long as the southerners allowed them to do business in the area. So, whites took the vote away from blacks and black politicians were sometimes thrown out of government buildings.
There was a big change in the south when most of the southern states enforced the ‘Jim Crow’ laws, setting up a system of segregation. These laws meant that everyday facilities were segregated to ensure that whites and blacks did not mix. This system of segregation was enforced by cruelty.
President Truman was the first President to try and improve the position. He believed that all people, regardless of their race, should be treated equally. Even though Truman held this belief, not everybody did and his Civil Rights Bill was rejected by Congress. His only success was in ending segregation in the US armed forces. As this was such a huge organisation it gave blacks some hope and changed many people’s way of life.
President Eisenhower, like Truman, hated discrimination against the blacks. He appointed liberal minded Earl Warren as Chief justice of the Supreme Court.
In 1952 the NAACP brought a case to court challenging the Education Board of Topeka on behalf of a girl called Linda Brown. Linda Brown was a young black girl who had a long and dangerous journey to get to her school rather than attending a nearby whites-only school.
Chief Justice Earl Warren announced in favour of Brown and the NAACP saying that segregated education could not be equal. Separate schools were declared illegal and southern states were ordered to set up integrated schools.
However, many southern states defied the court’s order. The test of the ruling came in 1957 when nine black children tried to enrol in an all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Riots broke out and Governer Faubus ordered the state national guard not to allow the nine pupils to enter the school. Many protesters demonstrated against the nine children being admitted to the school. President Eisenhower, after warning the people of Little Rock, sent federal troops to ensure that the pupils were allowed to enter the school.
President Kennedy was, like Truman and Eisenhower, unable to pass a Civil Rights Bill, Kennedy’s bill was rejected by Congress. He was however, successful in some smaller matters, he appointed blacks to do top jobs. He appointed the first black federal judge, black ambassador and the first black commander of a US warship. This showed that Kennedy had faith in the blacks ability to do top jobs. He also showed his support of Civil Rights by sending federal marshalls to protect a coloured student who tried to enrol in the all-white University of Mississippi.
Martin Luther King was a national campaigner for Civil Rights in America. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. Being from the south he knew about discrimination against black Americans from an early age.
King studied theology and while at university became interested in Ghandi’s beliefs. Gandhi’s success in India inspired King and he began to think that the only was for blacks to achieve equality was through non-violent, peaceful protest.
King became a national figure when he played an important role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott was a protest against segregation on the buses, the black people of Montgomery were refusing to use the buses until they were desegregated. In 1956 the government passed a law which made it illegal for buses to be segregated.
After the success of the bus boycott, King and two other ministers organised a Civil Rights conference in Atlanta, Georgia. There it was decided to form the SCLC – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organisation which would use non-violence to fight for Civil Rights. The formation of the SCLC showed that the black church, a powerful organisation in the south, was fully involved in the Civil Rights campaign.
King wrote a book called ‘Stride Toward Freedom’ after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it described the boycott and King’s views on non-violence and peaceful protests. A small group of black students from North Carolina read his book and decided to take action. They started a sit-in in a local store that refused to serve black people. In the days that followed other black people joined them. This form of protest was then copied by many others in the south.
Within months of the sit-ins restaurants, lunch counters, parks, churches, libraries and theatres were desegregated.
Another thing that martin Luther King encouraged was selective buying. He told blacks to reward companies who were sympathetic to Civil Rights by buying their products. The principle of selective buying was to punish companies who kept their workforces segregated by not buying their goods.
King also travelled the country making speeches to encourage people to get involved in the Civil Rights movement. He realised that only a new Civil rights laws would force whites in the south to treat blacks as equals. He campaigned endlessly, in 1957, martin Luther King spoke to a crowd of 40 000 people at a ‘freedom march’ in Washington. Again, in August 1963, a quarter of a million people marched into Washington to demand a new civil rights law.
