Mexican Americans
• Bracero Program: 1945 – 1964
• Operation Wetback (1954) – find & deport
illegal immigrants
• Supreme Court ruled that exclusion of
Hispanics from juries violated the
Constitutional guarantee of equal protection
Civil Rights
• Zinn page 449 – 457
• Although the 1960’s are usually considered
the decade of greatest achievement for Black
civil rights, the 1940’s and 1950’s were periods
of equally important gains. Assess the validity
of this statement.
“Or Does It Explode”
The black revolt of the 1950s and 1960sNorth and South-came as a surprise. But
perhaps it should not have. The memory of
oppressed people is one thing that cannot be
taken away, and for such people, with such
memories, revolt is always an inch below the
surface. For blacks in the United States,
there was the memory of slavery, and after
that of segregation, lynching, humiliation. And
it was not just a memory but a living
presence-part of the daily lives of blacks in
generation after generation.
-Zinn CH 17
“Or Does It Explode”
In the 1930s, Langston Hughes wrote a poem,
"Lenox Avenue Mural":
What happens to a dream deferred?
What is the dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
What happens when a dream
Or fester like a soreAnd then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar overlike a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
is deferred?
Emergence of Civil Rights
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Overcome political & social barriers
ALL southern states enforced Jim Crow Laws
Employment discrimination
Voting laws – enforced discrimination
1950’s created a movement of change!
– grassroots movement attracted national attention
– Supreme Court ruled for reform
– African Americans created organizations &
utilized civil disobedience
President TRUMAN: EO 9981
• October 29, 1947: The President's Committee on
Civil Rights condemns segregation wherever it exists
and criticizes specifically segregation in the armed
forces.
• July 26, 1948: President Truman signs Executive
Order 9981,
• establishes the President's Committee on Equality of
Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services.
Autherine Lucy and the University of
Alabama
• In 1952, Autherine Lucy accepted
to Univ of Alabama
• As an African-American, state law
prohibited her attendance
• Marshall and other lawyers
worked with Lucy to sue the
university -U.S. Supreme Court
ruled in 1955 Lucy could go to the
University of Alabama.
• February 1956, a mob of people
assembled on campus to stop
desegregation. Lucy is suspended.
University of Alabama students burned
desegregation literature.
1954: School Desegregation
•
1954 Brown v. Board of Education
• “Separate educational facilities are inherently
unequal” thus violated the 14th amendment.
• Unanimous Court headed by Chief Justice Earl
Warren
• Decision?
– "The Race Question," a 1950 statement published by
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), a specialized agency of the
UN. rejected race theories & 20th Century Eugenics
movement
– An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and
Modern Democracy (1944). This study of race relations,
funded by the Carnegie Foundation detailed obstacles to
full participation that African-Americans faced in 1940s
American society.
DECISION
• Educational psychologists: The "doll test" studies
– found contrasts among children attending segregated schools in
Washington, D.C. versus those in integrated schools in New York.
– Black children often preferred to play with white dolls over black
ones.
– When asked to fill in a human figure with the color of their own
skin, the children frequently chose a lighter shade than was
accurate.
– Children assigned "good" and "pretty" attributes to the white
dolls, and "bad" and "ugly" attributes to the black dolls.
– The Clarks testified as expert witnesses
– The Supreme Court viewed their work as evidence that the
children had internalized racism caused by being discriminated
against and stigmatized by segregation.
Eisenhower
• connect the issue with national security by pointing out
that the Communists around the world were using racial
discrimination in the U.S. as anti-American propaganda
• Blues guitarist J.B. Lenoir, recorded "Eisenhower Blues"
in 1954 - he laments the lack of social gain or economic
opportunity afforded
blackshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-gHnx1p6JY
• January 15, 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed
Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's
Committee on Government Policy to enforce a
nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment.
Eisenhower
• Mike Wallace & Thurgood Marshall interview
– did Eisenhower do enough?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoPLitU6jV
g
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach
Company, 1955
• Warren Court ruled that the non discrimination language of
the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act prohibited segregation
of black passengers in buses traveling across state lines.
• The case had grown out the frustrations felt by a Women's
Army Corps (WAC) private who experienced this form of
discrimination while traveling in uniform in the service of
her country.
• It was the first time the court applied the Brown v. Board
logic to the field of interstate transportation.
• The ruling was issued on November 7, but was made public
just one week before Rosa Parks refused to give up a bus
seat in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Murder of Emmett Till, 1955
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14-year-old Emmett Till, from Chicago, was murdered in
Mississippi where he had gone on vacation to visit
relatives.
Till entered the store and allegedly spoke or whistled
flirtatiously to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant
Till was never seen alive again. When his body was
found in the Tallahatchie River three days later, it was
apparent that the men had beat him and gouged out one
of his eyes. Then they shot him in the head, tied a
cotton gin fan to him with barbed wire so as to weigh him
down, and tossed him in the river.
After about an hour of deliberation the jury acquitted
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, A year later, protected by
double jeopardy, they admitted to killing him
Black reaction: made them realize for the first time that
they could be killed just for being black.
White Reaction: those who were indifferent to the plight
of African Americans were appalled by the brutality of
this particular murder.
Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956
Rosa Parks
• Parks was arrested and charged with violating
the segregation law.
• Four days later, Parks was tried for violating
that law, and for disorderly conduct.
• She was found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in
court costs. Parks appealed her conviction.
• Parks became the catalyst for the boycott of
the Montgomery buses.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Highlighted commitment
• Persistence
• Nov. 1956 – Supreme Court declared
Alabama’s bus segregation unconstitutional
1956: presidential election year
- segregation issue dominated
Democratic Party politics
• Eisenhower (R) v. Adlai Stevenson (D)
• Eisenhower: largely ignored the civil rights
issue, ended the Korean War and the nation
was prosperous
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC)
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - chairman of
organization (Atlanta)
• main task - gain footholds in the black
churches and communities across the South
• coordinate local protests against segregation
and disfranchisement
• CORE & NAACP: coordinated mass
movements
Ruby Bridges inspired the 1964 Norman Rockwell painting "The Problem We All Live
With": On November 14, 1960, the nation watched as six-year-old Ruby Nell Bridges
walked into William Frantz Elementary School and into history. A federal court ordered
the New Orleans school system to desegregate, making Bridges the first AfricanAmerican to attend the elementary school.
The Little Rock Integration Crisis, 1957
• On September 4, Arkansas Governor Orval
Faubus exercised his authority to deploy the
state National Guard to support segregationist
protestors who were physically blocking
access to the school.
• President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne
Division of the United States Army
President Eisenhower and Civil Rights
Legislation
• 1957 was a turning point for President
Eisenhower on the race issue
• leadership shown during the Little Rock crisis
• proposed to Congress the first Civil Rights Act
since Reconstruction
– The bill passed the House 270-97, and the Senate 6015. Eisenhower signed it on September 9, 1957.
– The goal of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 had been to
ensure voting rights for African Americans.
Civil Rights Act of 1957
• established the Civil Rights Section of the
Justice Department and empowered federal
prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against
interference with the right to vote.
• established a federal Civil Rights Commission
with authority to investigate discriminatory
conditions and recommend corrective
measures.
Sit-Ins
• 1958: a non-violent occupation of a place
• The first organized lunch-counter sit-in for the
purpose of integrating segregated establishments
began in Wichita, Kansas.
• The Greensboro Four
On February 1, 1960, four freshman students
from a College in North Carolina - sat down at a
"white's only" lunch counter inside a
Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina,
and ordered coffee.