In the Deep South, in states like Mississippi and Texas, and also the north black people would not get paid equally. They would be the ‘last to be hired, first to be fired’. This was because of the prejudice middle class white employers who would hire white people over black people just because of their race, not their ability to do their job. This meant that black people would find it very hard to find a job. Trade Unions bosses wanted black people to come and work for them because they thought that they would depress wages. They thought that black people did not expect the same wage as a white person especially in the north because the chances are the person had been working in the south for a minimal wage. They thought that black people would be prepared to settle for less money. If black people were promoted to higher positions then white people would often walk out I protest.
In the south, the NAACP fought a court battle to get ‘separate but equal’ education for children. In Clarendon County in South Carolina an average of $179 was spent on each white child and only $43 was spent on black children. Black teachers also received half the pay of white teachers. The NAACP sued on behalf of the black children.
The economic status of black Americans was similar in the south and the north. Black Americans in both parts of the United States received lower wages than whites and less money spent on them at school, also their chance of getting a job was lower because of discrimination.
The social status includes transport, housing, leisure, education and segregation.
In the north in theory, black Americans wouldn’t expect to meet as much prejudice outside the workplace as they encountered inside because they were able to share transport and eating facilities with whites (in the south you could not). Some northern people who were not prejudiced could show their friendship more easily than southern white people could (southern white people were under pressure to conform to the general mood of segregation or else it would be seen as letting their race down). Black people were allowed to vote. However, in practice, life was very different. There was limited mixing of races. Blacks and whites were not living happily next door to one another or attending the same equal schools because the different races would congregate in different areas. For example, the black district in New York was Harlem. This was repeated in many other cities also. Housing conditions for the black people was very poor. Black areas were often seen as ghettos; this meant that many failed to break out of the cycle of poverty. This is when poverty has affected the same family and many generations for years. Poor education (because black schools had poor facilities compared to white schools) led to low paid jobs or unemployment which meant living in run down areas of town which meant that their children would have to go to a poor school and so the cycle would start again. To sum up, black African-Americans were subjected to discrimination that was ‘de facto’ (actual position in reality/informal discrimination) rather than ‘de jure’ (official position in law/formal discrimination).
The result of all this was increased racial tension in the north, especially as black people were without much hope of regular employment because of the prejudice they faced, and they also lived at the poorest end of the community. Because of this tension people resorted to violence and crime, for example Malcolm Little in New York. There were also serious race riots in Detroit in 1943 sparked off by an argument between two motorists, one black and one white. Twenty five black people and nine white people were killed. Fifteen of the black people died at police hands.
In the south, there was segregation and racism. Few black Americans could vote and southern politicians were allowed to make racist comments and governors, state officials and police were all racist so therefore biased. Civil Rights protests were wrongly linked to communist activities of the Cold War. ‘Prejudice against Negroes’ was a common southern white attitude; it was the norm. In the south the KKK (Klu Klux Klan) was still present and lynching still occurred although it was not as common.
White southerners used the old argument that imposing civil rights upon them was an unacceptable breach of their freedom to determine their own policies at state level rather than have them imposed by the Federal government. However, at the 1948 election they said that the call of ‘states rights’ was less powerful than in the 19th century.
The political status of black Americans includes voting rights, standing for election and discrimination.
Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia maintained segregation most rigidly. Only a few black Americans could vote and southern politicians would increase their racist comments when it came to election time. However, in 1944, the courts outlawed ‘white primary’ in the state of Texas. ‘White primary’ was the idea that white people were the only ones allowed to choose the Democratic Party candidates. The result of the court case was that black people could vote, for which their choices were important and they could get elected for some things. Also the number of elected voters rose.
The NAACP registration drives met with heavy resistance in Mississippi and Alabama; in Mississippi 95% of black workers were employed by white people and sharecroppers could be easily evicted and jobs lost if they attempted to register.
In the Deep South few black people could take any legal action against a white person; some did but always lost their case as the white person would always win over them.
In both the north and the south, the Second World War had had an impact on black Americans. Because of the taste of racial integration they had had in Europe in the war, many black Americans returned home looking for similar integration. Those who had stayed at home also felt this way. The membership of the NAACP rose from 50,000 to 200,000 during the war and it now had over 1500 branches and was represented in nearly every state of the Union. This shows that black Americans actually wanted the change. White people were becoming more aware of how black people were being treated in the south where violence against them was greater and where discrimination was more systematic.
Harry Truman knew that change was needed. He set up the Commission on Civil Rights in 1946. He said that the basic requirements of all American citizens were homes, jobs, education, and the right to vote. At this time none of these rights for black people were equal to that of white people. Truman outlined civil rights as a moral issue.
Generally, black American citizens in the north had a higher status than black citizens in the south. They had more employment opportunities and were able to work in industries like steel and iron rather than just farming in the rural south. Black people in both the north and south were faced with discrimination however and were often the ‘last to be hired, first to be fired’. Segregation was also an issue, mainly in the south. In the south blacks and whites could not share any facilities whereas in the north they could. In the south the separate facilities were not of equal standard and the white facilities were far superior to that of the black facilities. The status of black Americans was changing after 1945; white liberals were becoming more and more aware of the black people’s difficulty.
In conclusion, I think that northern black Americans received a far higher status that that of the black southerners, however both were treated badly. It was unfair and morally wrong but black people were gradually gaining the rights that they deserved so that they could be equal to white people.
