Black Civil Rights

1
Black Civil Rights
2
Overview

• Early racial relations
• Civil War and Reconstruction
• Jim Crow
• The Modern Civil Rights Movement

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Early Race Relations

• Slavery
• In the Constitution
• Article I, section 9 (importation of slaves
  protected until 1808 tax on importation capped
  at 10)
• Article IV, section 2.3 (Fugitive slave law)
• No mention made of federal power to end slavery
  but...

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Early Race Relations

• Supreme Court rulings raised concerns among
  slave states, in particular
• McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
• Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)

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Early Race Relations

• Article IV, section 3.1 provides new states may
  be admitted to union
• By ratification of the Constitution, every state
  from Delaware south was a slave state, all north
  were free
• except for New Jersey, which ended slavery in
  1804

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Civil War

• Increasing criticism, primarily in North, of
  practice of slavery
• As US expanded westward and new states admitted
  to the union, slave/free issue continually
  bubbles below surface of national politics
• Election of Abraham Lincoln (Republican) in 1860
  election leads to secession of Southern states
  from Union
• Lincoln order Union troops to secure the South

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Civil War

• Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
• frees slaves in Confederacy and in those parts of
  the country in open rebellion
• specifically exempts border states and areas
  currently occupied by Union army
• 13th Amendment (1865)
• offically ends slavery in US

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Civil War

• 1864 Presidential Election
• Lincoln runs on national unity ticket that
  includes Andrew Johnson as VP

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Civil War

• 9 April 1865 Lee surrenders to Grant
• 14 April 1865 Lincoln is assassinated
• Johnson becomes new President
• The last Confederate armies surrender in June
  1865
• Question becomes how to rebuild the Union coming
  out of the bloodiest war in US history (over
  600,000 deaths)

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Reconstruction

• 2 Phases of Reconstruction
• Presidential Reconstruction (1865-1866)
• Readmit confederate states
• No Confederate officials eligible to serve in
  government
• Confederate states redraw constitutions to take
  account of 13th amendment
• Introduction of Black Codes

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Reconstruction

• Republican Congress passes Civil Rights Act
  (1866) over Johnson veto
• House moves to impeach Johnson, Johnson survives,
  but is much weakened as president
• Enter Congressional reconstruction period
  (1866-1877)

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Reconstruction

• Union army occupies south
• 13th Amendment (1865)
• 14th Amendment (1868)
• 15th Amendment (1870)
• Civil Rights Enforcement Act (1870)
• Civil Rights Act (1872) anti KKK act
• Civil Rights Act (1875) private discrimination
  outlawed

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Reconstruction

• First black political leaders elected to Congress
• Hiram Revels (MS) first black senator
• 6 blacks elected to serve in House in 41st and
  42nd Congress

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Reconstruction

• 1876 Presidential Election
• Rutherford B. Hayes (R)
• Samuel Tilden (D)

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1876 Presidential Election
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Reconstruction

• In exchange for Hayes winning electoral college
  vote, Republicans agree to end occupation of the
  South
• 1877 Reconstruction essentially ends with end of
  occupation
• Southern governments and vigilante groups move to
  disenfranchise black voters

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Rise of Segregation

• Voter intimidation (e.g., KKK activity)
• Change voting requirements
• poll tax, literacy test, white primaries,
  grandfather clause
• Civil Rights cases (1883)
• Supreme Court invalidates the 1875 Civil Rights
  Act
• Plessy vs Ferguson (1896)

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Plessy vs Ferguson

• The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was
  undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of
  the two races before the law, but in the nature
  of things it could not have been intended to
  abolish distinctions based upon color, or to
  enforce social, as distinguished from political,
  equality, or a commingling of the two races upon
  terms unsatisfactory to either. -- Justice
  Henry Billings Brown

Homer Plessy
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Plessy v. Ferguson

• "We consider the underlying fallacy of the
  plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption
  that the enforced separation of the two races
  stamps the colored race with a badge of
  inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason
  of anything found in the act, but solely because
  the colored race chooses to put that construction
  upon it.

Justice Henry Billings Brown
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Jim Crow
21
Jim Crow
Jim Crow statutes by state
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Jim Crow

• For black civil rights leaders, segregation posed
  difficult questions of strategy and how to combat
  legal (de jure) inequality

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Response to Segregation

• Booker T. Washington and Accomodationism
• Take whatever opportunities white America
  provides and do best you can until conditions
  change

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Response to Segregation

• W.E.B. Dubois and the founding of the NAACP
• Legal strategy of challenging the separate but
  equal provision

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Separate, but Equal?
Classroom in black school Seat Pleasant, Maryland
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Separate, but Equal?
Black school, Camden, MS
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Separate, but Equal?
Black school, Louisa County, VA
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Response to Segregation

• Key desegregation cases
• Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938)
• mandated creating separate black law school or
  admitting blacks to white school
• Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
• mandated that separate black schools be equal to
  white law schools

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Response to Segregation

• McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher
  Education (1950)
• integration has to be equal cannot maintain
  segregation within a school

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Response to Segregation

• 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, KN
• Supreme Court rules that separate but equal
  violates the 14th Amendment as it denies some
  citizens equal protection of the laws

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Response to Segregation
Little Rock, Arkansas September 1957
Federal troops protected 9 blackstudents going
to Central Highin Little Rock throughout
1957academic year
32
Response to Segregation
Little Rock opted to close all 3 public high
schools for 1958 academic year rather than
integrate
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Modern Civil Rights

• Emergence of Modern Civil Rights Movement

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Modern Civil Rights

• In wake of Brown v. Board of Education,
  combination of further legal challenges,
  political mobilization, civil disobedience
  (peaceful and other)

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Modern Civil Rights

• Key Legislation
• 1964 Civil Rights Act
• Barred discrimination in public accomodations
• Desegregated public school and facilities
• Civil Rights Commission expanded
• Equal Emploment Opportunity Commission
• No discrimination in workplace based on race,
  color, religion, gender, or national origin.

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Modern Civil Rights

• Key Legislation
• 1965 Voting Rights Act
• Outlawed discrimination in voter registration
• Authorizes federal government to administer voter
  registration in counties or subdivisions held to
  discriminate on voter registration efforts

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Lingering Segregation

• A Realtor should never be instrumental in
  introducing into a neighborhood a character of
  property or occupancy, members of any race or
  nationality, or any individual whose presence
  will clearly be detrimental to property values in
  the neighborhood.
• (Association of Real Estate Boards, National
  Realty Code, Article 34)

official policy throughthe 1960s
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Fair Housing Act

• 1968 Civil Rights Act
• No discrimination in housing
• No discrimination in mortgage lending
• Penalities imposed on anyone interfering with
  individual civil rights workers

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Race and Urban Populations
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Race and Urban Populations
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Race and Urban Populations

• Overall data
• Not just higher percentage of blacks in cities,
  but economic situation within those cities
• 1970 27 of census tracts in urban areas were
  poverty, and 6 of these were extreme poverty
• 1990 39 of census tracts in urban areas were
  poverty, and 14 of these were extreme
  poverty
• Improvement in 1990s though
• Poverty rate higher than that of suburbs
• 2000 16.1 (urban) 7.8 (suburban)
• 2005 13.9 (urban) 9.6 (suburban)
• figures from US Bureau of Census
• Geographic Distribution of Urban Populations by
  Race

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Race and Urban Populations

• Concentration of blacks in poverty areas
• 1980
• 2.0 of all U.S. non-Hispanic white poor people,
• 21.1 of all U.S. black poor people
• 15.9 of all U.S. Hispanic poor people lived in
  ghettos. Thus, over two-thirds of the ghetto poor
  are black and Hispanic.
• 1990 71 of low-income, black, central-city
  residents lived in poverty neighborhoods
• 40 of low-income, white, central city residents
• 2007 Poverty Rates by race/ethnic origin

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Effects

• Most children living in high-poverty areas attend
  racially segregated schools

• Impact on education?
• Recent test score data, graphic data

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Effects

• Employment
• Unemployment rates by race
• Inner city unemployment
• 2 to 3 times higher than national average
• Impact of low employment/joblessness?
• Incarceration Rates (map)
• Incarceration Rates (table)
• Life Expectancy
• Infant Mortality

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Prospects?