Segregation in America

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Segregation in America

• Civil War-1950s

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What Does America Mean?

• the land of the free, and the home of the
  brave?
• one nation, indivisible, with liberty and
  justice for all?
• all men are created equalthey are endowed by
  their Creator with certain unalienable
  Rightsamong these are Life, Liberty and the
  pursuit of Happiness?

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The American Dream

• What every American strives to achieve
• Each individual creates his own American dream
• Political, social, economic equality
• Minority groups have struggled to achieve this
  equality

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Citizenship The Vote

• 1789 Only white, adult, property-owning,
  non-Catholic/Jewish males can vote
• Early 1800s white, property-owning adult males
• 1850s all white males
• Civil War Ends (1865) African Americans gain
  rights
• -13th Amendment Abolished slavery
• -14th Amendment Equal protection under law
• -15th Amendment The right to vote

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Social Discrimination Jim Crow Laws

• State laws designed to
• 1) separate the races in society
• 2) prevent African-Americans (Jim Crow) from
  gaining power
• Still legal until 1964-65

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Vaudeville comedian in Blackface.
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Actual Jim Crow Laws

• Mississippi Separate free schools shall be
  establishedunlawful for any colored child to
  attend any white school, or any white child to
  attend a colored school.
• Alabama unlawful for a negro and white person
  to play together or in company with each other at
  any game of pool or billiards.
• Georgia Restaurants shall serve either white
  people exclusively or colored people exclusively
  and shall not sell to the two races within the
  same room
• Georgia unlawful for any amateur white baseball
  team to playwithin two blocks of a playground
  devoted to the Negro race, unlawful for any
  amateur colored baseball team to play baseball
  within two blocks of any playground devoted to
  the white race.

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• Mississippi Any person guilty of printing,
  publishing or circulating matter in favor of
  social equality or of intermarriage between
  whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a
  misdemeanor.
• Virginia Any public hall, theatre, opera house,
  motion picture show, or place of public
  entertainment which is attended by both white and
  colored persons shall separate the white race and
  the colored race.
• Mississippi The prison warden shall see that the
  white convicts shall have separate apartments for
  both eating and sleeping from the negro convicts.
  
• Florida All marriages between a white person and
  a negro, or between a white person and a person
  of negro descent to the fourth generation
  inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited.

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SEGREGATION

• separation in public of different types of
  people
• Jim Crow Laws kept blacks and whites segregated

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Supreme Court CasePlessy vs. Ferguson (1896)

• Question Are separate public facilities for
  blacks and whites Constitutional?
• Decision Separate but EqualIf separate public
  facilities are equal for both races, its
  Consitutional
• This set a precedent (standard)all court cases
  that challenged segregation had to follow
  Separate but Equal doctrine

Homer Plessy
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Effects of Plessy Decision
COLORED

• Southern states separated all facilities Whites
  Only or Colored
• Whites-only received more state funding
• Colored schools, hospitals, restaurants poor,
  run-down

WHITES ONLY
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Economic DiscriminationSharecroppers

• Post-Civil War Freedmen (former slaves) had no
  land, no job, no educationonly knew farm work
• Sharecropping Most rural blacks rented land
  from whites, who charged them for
• -rent -tools -seed -mules -house
  -clothes
• Whites purposely charged more rent than
  freedmen could afford
• Economic discrimination Blacks forced to farm
  for landlord to pay off debt they owed

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Political Discrimination Voting Restrictions

• Disfranchisement After 1890, Southern states
  passed laws to deny African-Americans the
  franchise (ability to vote).
• 1) Poll Tax whites could afford to pay, but not
  African-American sharecroppers
• 2) Literacy Test Voters had to read part of the
  state constitution to prove they could read
• Blacks got long, complicated sections
• Not banned by Congress until 1975.

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Supreme Court DecisionBrown vs. Board of
Education (1955)

• Question Are separate public schools equal?
• Decision "We conclude that the doctrine of
  'separate but equal' has no place.
• Separate educational facilities are inherently
  unequal."

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Effects of the Brown Decision

• S. Court ordered all public schools to integrate
  (admit all races) with all deliberate speed or
  else lose govt funding
• Ku Klux Klan membership rose, White Citizens
  Councils created to oppose
  integration
• S. states passed laws making integrated schools
  illegal in their state

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Central High School, Little Rock, AK (1957)

• 9 African-American students selected to attend
  class
• Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus sent Ark. National
  Guard to deny entry
• Pres. Eisenhower federalized Ark. Natl Guard
  sent Army to admit and to protect the students
  (Little Rock Nine)

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CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

• 1950s-1960s
• START Brown vs. Board of Education (1954, 55)
• END Civil Rights Act (64), Voting Rights Act
  (65)

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INTEGRATION!Professional Sports

• -1867 Major League baseball players
• voted not to integrate teams
• -Negro Leagues several leagues for
  African Americans. Faced discrimination low
  pay. In interracial exhibition games, Negro
  League teams won over 60 of the time.
• 1947 Jackie Robinson plays his first game for
  the Brooklyn Dodgers
• By 1959, all Major League clubs integrated

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INTEGRATION!Armed Forces

• President Harry Truman the first to integrate
  U.S. armed forces (1948 Executive Order 9981)
• Created a committee to investigate cases of
  unequal treatment based on race
• Caused Democratic Party to split
• 1948 Democratic National Convention Southern
  Democrats walked out, formed Dixiecrat Party

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Nonviolent Resistance

• Definition Peacefully resisting unfair laws in
  order to protest them
• Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. ? learned from Gandhi
• Became standard for protesting segregation in USA

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Civil Rights MovementKEY ORGANIZATIONS

• 1) SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference
  (Martin L. King, Jr.)
• Strategy Negotiation before direct protest
• Workshops on nonviolent resistance how to
  quietly endure physical violence

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1955-56 Bus Boycott

• Rosa Parks arrested for civil disobedience (Dec.
  1955)
• Boycott of the Montgomery bus system? organized
  by Dr. King/SCLC, lasted 381 days
• Economic protest 90 of bus companys riders
  were African American
• Forced company to integrate 1956
• 1956 Supreme Court declared segregation on buses
  unconstitutional

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Birmingham Childrens March, 1963

• Birmingham, AL aka Bombingham, most violently
  anti-integration city in US
• SCLC organized protest march planning to get
  arrested
• Overwhelmed city police, filled the jails
• City of Birmingham agreed to desegregate

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2) SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (Stokely Carmichael)

• Strategy direct activism
  (visible protests, sit-ins,
  jail not bail)
• Grassroots Movement starts with the people
• Involved youth, poor, women in civil rights
  movement
• Voter Education Project volunteers traveled to
  Southern towns to register Afr.Ams. to vote

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Sit-Ins Greensboro, NC (1960)

• 4 college students sat at lunch counter and
  refused to leave until they were served
• Movement spread to 9 other states
• One by one, Southern restaurants chose to end
  segregation in their stores

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3) CORE Congress of Racial Equality (James L.
Farmer)

• Strategy Interracial cooperation
• Freedom Rides1960 Supreme Court ruled
  against segregation on interstate buses and
  stations?volunteers rode buses to test
  it out
• Freedom Summer 1964 college students volunteered
  to ride buses and register voters
• 3 students, 2 white and from the North, brutally
  murdered by KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi

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Beyond the Civil Rights Movement
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Equality (?)

• JFK assassinated 1963 had been pushing Congress
  to pass a law guaranteeing civil rights to all
  Americans
• Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) succeeded JFK,
  influential in Congress, urged passing of law in
  JFKs memory
• Civil Rights Act 1964 segregation and racial
  discrimination illegal in all public businesses
• Voting Rights Act 1965 discrimination prohibited
  in voting processes

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Frustration

• 1964 Democratic National Convention Party
  refused to seat Mississippi Freedom Democratic
  Party, offered them 2 seats as delegates
• 1965-67 Race riots occurred in Los Angeles,
  Detroit, Philadelphia, and other cities
• Kerner Report, 1968 LBJ appointed a federal
  committee to study causes of riots
• the nation is rapidly moving toward two
  increasingly separate Americas.

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A New Strategy

• Stokely Carmichael (leader of SNCC) We been
  saying freedom for 6 years and we aint got
  nothin. What we gotta start saying now is Black
  Power.

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Black Power Movement

• Carmichael blacks need to focus on black
  nationalism and self-reliance
• Black Pride African and African-American culture
  separate from American culture
• Objected to term negro, preferred black or
  African-American

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• Black Panther Party formed in Oakland, CA 1965
  (B.P. Party for Self-Defense)
• -wanted black control of all institutions in
  black community
• -accepted violence as a reality for self-defense

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• Malcolm X spoke of need for blacks to exist
  separate from the white community, even form a
  new nation that protects their rights (Black
  Separatism)
• New strategy You dont need to work with the
  white community, you need to focus on protecting
  your own community

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