How did the social, economic and political status of black Americans vary across the United States in 1945?
The aim of the civil rights campaigners was to overcome the widespread discrimination and injustice facing Americans. Since the early 20th century the geography of Afro-American society had changed drastically, they were no longer just concentrated in the Old South and engaged in subsistence agriculture. Education was still segregated but had expanded dramatically, with schools, colleges and universities all across the Old South. A small black middle class had emerged in some cities.
However most of the black people lived in the South and suffered much poverty and oppression. White supremacy and hatred of the blacks still dominated the South and segregation was taken for granted by whites with the ‘Jim Crow’ laws making the blacks second-class citizens. Black people were banned from all but the lowest status occupations, they had to live in the worst residential areas and were made to go to separate schools and universities to the whites. Segregation also occurred in public places like hotels and restaurants by whites only signs, and if facilities like rest rooms existed for them, they were invariably worse than those of the whites. This was the same situation that applied to buses and trains; blacks were required to give up their seats for whites.