A Second Reconstruction
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Evolution of movement:
NAACP lawsuits
Church leadership (SCLC)
Student activists (SNCC)
Black Nationalists/Power
(Nation of Islam, Black
Panthers, race riots)
1968: Martin and Bobby
I. Dividing Lines
• CRM not a single group: splintered, merged,
evolved, conflicting
A. Communism
• “Close ranks”: prove loyalty (a la WWI + II) gain
federal support (lesson of Reconstruction),
undermine Southern opponents (“outside agitators”)
• Problem: Communists most vehement + active for
racial equality (Scottsboro, organizing blacks, etc.)
• Problem: Vietnam
• Ali: "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong ...
They never called me nigger."
• King: “Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King?
Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and
civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the
cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear
them, though I often understand the source of their
concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such
questions mean that the inquirers have not really
known me, my commitment or my calling.”
B. Class
• Claudette Colvin (March 2) and Mary Louise Smith
(Oct. 21) vs. Rosa Parks (Dec. 1)
C. Race
• Martin Luther King (Dubois) vs.
Malcolm X (Washington)
– Later days move toward each other
• Post-1964: division w/in SNCC
(Stokely Carmichael, Black Power)
• Blacks and Jews: Jim Crow and
Egypt; key in creation NAACP;
quotas in colleges; 50% civil rights
lawyers + Freedom Summer
• BUT: decline anti-Semitism, class
divisions, Nation of Islam (Louis
Farrakhan)
• Key: 1950s MLK a dangerous radical
• Rise of Malcolm X MLK moderate
alternative
– Reform vs. revolution; reform to stop
revolution
– JFK (about Latin America): “Those who
make peaceful revolution impossible will
make violent revolution inevitable.”
– Malcolm X: “…you will never get real
freedom and recognition between Black and
White people in this country without
destroying the country, without destroying
the present political system, without
destroying the present economic system,
without re-writing the entire Constitution.
It’ll be a complete destruction of everything
that America supposedly stands for before a
White man in this country will recognize a
Black man as something on the same level
with himself.”
D. Gender
• Women’s (perceived) roles in CRM: sex and
typing
– Few leadership roles: Fannie Lou Hamer: leader
Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964)
– Ella Baker: “Participatory democracy”
countering “messianic style” imported from
black churches: “You didn't see me on
television, you didn't see news stories about me.
The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick
up pieces or put together pieces out of which I
hoped organization might come. My theory is,
strong people don't need strong leaders”
• “Black man’s hour”: 1964 Civil Rights Act
poison pill + EEOC NOW (1966)
E. Sexuality
• Bayard Rustin: founded CORE,
SCLC; molded MLK into nonviolent CRM leader; organized 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom
• Gay: fired from Fellowship Of
Reconciliation 1953; head of
NAACP (Roy Wilkins) fears former
CPUSA member + gay easy target:
FBI (photos + alleged relationship
MLK) + Strom Thurmond:
"communist, draft dodger and
homosexual“; 1960 resigns from
SCLC
II. The Beginning of the End of
Jim Crow
A. Factors for post-WWII movement:
• 1) 2nd Great Migration: out of Jim Crow South (but 1st?)
• 2) New Deal Coalition and jobs
– Unions and outsourcing, to Tennessee
• 3) WWII: ideology; 1950 deseg. Military (but WWI?)
• 4) Reemergence of NAACP: Legal Defense Fund—
Oliver Hill, “Mr. Civil Rights” Thurgood Marshall
(Washington and DuBois?)
• 5) Socio-economic: 1947-1951: average black income
rose more homeownership, more educated (black
college attendance 27,000 113,000 1930 to 1950)
growth black middle class higher expectations
B. 1954: Brown v. Board
• Amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs:
– Veteran groups calling for democracy as legacy of WWII
– Anti-Defamation League (Jews faced segregation in schools as well; quotas in
Ivy League schools to limit Jewish enrollment)
– Psychologists: segregation neg. self-esteem
• 2003: Gratz and Grutter v. Bollinger: military argued in favor of Michigan
affirmative action because need diversity in military
• 1954: districts ordered to immediately integrate rise KKK +
Southern Manifesto (90 Congressmen): “judicial usurpation,”
judicial activism
– Tom DeLay
• However…
• 1955: Brown II
– “clarification”: integrate “with all deliberate speed”
• Whenever the school districts got around to it
– Better w/o Brown? Truly separate + equal better than gloss of equality?
C. “A Gear Clicked in the Universe”:
Montgomery, Alabama: 1955
• Summer 1955: Emmett Till murder
• Dec. 5 Rosa Parks Bus boycott: 381
days of economic protest
• Persisted in face of threats of violence
• SCLC: Southern Christian Leadership
Conference
– Middle age ministers, moderate in goals
and methods
– Martin Luther King: charismatic, good
sense of media
– Boycott failed: Supreme Court action
forced deseg. (Browder v. Gayle)
D. Little Rock High
• 1957: Gov. Orval Faubus, Arkansas National
Guard to block integration by 9 black
students Ike sends 101st Airborne: lukewarm
on civil rights, but echoes of Civil War
– Violence against Little Rock 9: acid, lit dynamite
E. Greensboro, North Carolina
Feb 1, 1960: 4 college students sit-in at
Woolworth’s lunch counter (July: Woolworth’s
integrates) spread to other cities and types
(beaches, park benches, swimming pools,
libraries, museums) SNCC
Ike: “deeply sympathetic with the efforts of any
group to enjoy the rights of equality that they
are guaranteed by the Constitution”
III. The End of the Beginning
• A) 2001: Williams v. California: de facto vs. de jure
• "This is the Mississippification of California's schools, a
separate and unequal system for the have-nots that would
make Linda Brown shudder."
• In schools that are 96.4% minority (compared to 59%
statewide):
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As few as 13% of teachers have full credentials
Too few textbooks
Outdated textbooks
No access to library
No music or art classes
Too few guidance counselors
Heavy reliance on substitute teachers movies all day,
everyday
B. Voter Id Laws
• Republican National Lawyers Association
report: 311* acts of voter fraud* in the country
in the last 13 years
• 1947: NAACP (led by W.E.B. DuBois) went to
UN Human Rights Commission to get action
against US for voter suppression
• March 2012: NAACP went to UN HRC to get
action against US for voter suppression
C. The New Jim Crow
• Felony conviction disenfranchisement laws, barred
from food stamps, discrimination in hiring and
housing and education, excluded from juries (basically
all the limits on rights of Jim Crow)
• Stop and frisk programs
• 2009: 39.4% of prison + jail population black, 20.6%
Hispanic = 60% of incarcerated population
• Blacks and Hispanics represent 13.6% and 16.3% of
2010 population, respectively (29.9% of total)
• Black males 7x as likely to have a prison record as
white males
What if Germany had a prison
and death penalty system that
disproportionately affected Jews?