Truman
Eisenhower
Kennedy
Johnson
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The View from the Nation (top to bottom
approach) Steven F. Lawson
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Professor Emeritus of History, Rutgers University
B.A., 1966, City College of New York
M.A., 1967, Columbia University
Ph.D., 1974, Columbia University
Major publications include: Black Ballots: Voting
Rights in the South, 1944-1969; In Pursuit of Power:
Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, 1965-1982;
Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in
America Since 1941; and Debating the Civil Rights
Movement (with Charles Payne)
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The View from the Trenches (bottom to top approach)
Charles Payne
 Professor, Duke University, African and African American
Studies
 PhD, Northwestern University, 1976
 BA, Syracuse University, 1970
 Interests include urban education and school reform, social
inequality, social change and modern African American
history. He is the author of Getting What We Ask For: The
Ambiguity of Success and Failure In Urban Education (1984)
and I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in
the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement(1995). So Much Reform,
So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools
(2005); Teach Freedom: The African American Tradition of
Education For Liberation, 2006).
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Focus on the belief that the federal
government had an indispensable role in the
shaping of the civil rights movement
Belief that it’s impossible to understand how
African Americans achieved citizenship rights
without concentrating on what national
leaders in Washington, D.C. did to influence
those events.
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Focus is on powerful presidents, congressional
leaders, members of Supreme Court
Without their support, the struggle would have
lacked power and authority to defeat state
governments who were intent on keeping
African Americans in subservient positions
Civil rights movement also depended on the
presence of national organizations: NAACP,
SCLC
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Civil Rights also depended on the leaders of
these organizations: especially Martin Luther
King, Jr.
These groups could do what African
American residents of local communities
could not do alone: turn the civil rights
struggle into a national cause of concern and
prod the federal government into acting
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The story in Washington begins with World
War II and the presidencies of Roosevelt,
Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson
This is a story of executive orders ending
segregation in the military and housing; five
pieces of civil rights legislation and landmark
Supreme Court rulings
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This perspective or approach to the movement does not
mean to belittle African American creativity and
determination in the struggle
But it suggests that given the existing power relations
favoring whites—southern African Americans could not
possibly eliminate racial inequality without outside
federal assistance
At the same time, the federal government would shape
the movement by choosing whether and when to
respond to African American protests and to give its
support within African American communities
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This view believes that placing too much
emphasis on national leadership and national
institutions minimizes the importance of local
struggle
You lose sight of the enormous personal cost
It creates the impression that historical
change only resides with the power of elites—
usually white, male, educated and that nonelites lack any historical agency
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Heavy gender bias in the national approach;
on the local level, women provided a
disproportionate share of leadership in the
early 1960s
A top down perspective can lose sight of the
complexity of the African-American
community—its class, gender, cultural,
regional and ideological divisions
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This perspective believes that the
concentration on the period between 1955
and 1968 (Montgomery-Memphis
framework) underplays the importance of
earlier periods of struggle
This perspective believes that too much
attention has been given to legislative and
policy changes and there should be more
attention paid to the struggles and
experiences of individuals
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This perspective feels that too much
attention has been given to large scale
dramatic events. There should be more study
and understanding on the actual social
infrastructure of individuals and groups that
sustained the movement on a day to day
basis (i.e. the civil rights movement was
complex)
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New emphasis on the complexity of the
movement (there was more to the
Montgomery bus boycotts than Rosa Parks
and MLK)
New emphasis on the complexity of the
African American community
New emphasis on the role of women and
children in the movement
New emphasis on stretching the timeline
beyond 1955-1968
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NOW THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me as
President of the United States, by the Constitution and the statutes
of the United States, and as Commander in Chief of the armed
services, it is hereby ordered as follows:
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall
be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed
services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This
policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard
to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without
impairing efficiency or morale.
Harry Truman, July 26, 1948
April 15, 1947 first game as a Brooklyn Dodger at Ebbets
Field
 Branch Rickey, owner of Dodgers
 Robinson, 27 years old, son of Georgia sharecroppers and
grandson of slaves
 Won athletic scholarship at UCLA and lettered in baseball,
football, basketball, and track
 Second Lieutenant in segregated tank unit during World War
II
 Played for Kansas City Monarchs in Negro Leagues
 Promised Rickey that he would maintain self-control
 National League Rookie of the Year
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Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American
Major League Baseball player in 1947 for the Brooklyn
Dodgers
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Sept. 1953, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died. Eisenhower replaced him
with California governor, Earl Warren
For a decade African American lawyers had been filing legal
challenges to segregated public facilities hoping to erode “separate
but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Led by Thurgood Marshall
and William Hastie of NAACP’s Legal Defense fund. Had studied law
under Charles Hamilton Houston at Howard University
May 17, 1954 a united 9-0 decision of Supreme Court overturned
Plessy. Decision written by Warren.
“In the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’
has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Brown II required local school boards to draw up desegregation plans
with the approval of a federal district judge. Integration should
proceed “with all deliberate speed”
August 28, 1955--Chicago native Emmett Till, 14,
was murdered in Money, Miss., where he went to
visit his great-uncle.
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In Montgomery, Alabama during the fifties, on local buses, blacks
paid their fares in the front, got off the vehicle, and entered the
“colored section” through the rear door. They also had to relinquish
their seats to white passengers when the front section filled up.
December 1, 1955—Rosa Parks, a forty-two year-old black
seamstress, and member of the local NAACP, refused to give up her
seat to a white person and was arrested
Bus boycott organized by local clergymen and the Women’s Political
Council
Calling themselves the Montgomery Improvement Association, MIA,
they chose a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the
struggle for open seating in public transportation
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King was a newcomer to town, served as pastor of Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church. He was familiar with the works of
Gandhi and Thoreau
Viewed mass action and non-violent resistance essential
to fight against racial justice
November 1956, federal courts struck down Alabama
segregation law
Boycott had lasted 381 days
1957-King joined with other black ministers to form
Southern Chrisitan Leadership Conference (SCLC)
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Opposition to Brown decision was spreading
Eisenhower’s silence was interpreted as a sign that he
supported resistance to integrated schools
1956-more than 100 Congressmen from former
Confederate states issued a “Southern Manifesto” that
vowed to resist court-ordered integration “by all lawful
means.”
1957-Governor Orval Faubus began the confrontation
between national authority and “state’s rights” by
defying a federal court order to integrate the all-white
Central High School
Arkansas National Guard, and then a crowd of angry
whites, turned away the nine black students
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As T.V. scenes of mob violence in Little Rock flashed
around the world, Eisenhower had to take command
Vowing to use “the full power of the U.S….to carry out the
orders of the federal court”
Nationalized the Arkansas Guard and dispatched a
thousand fully equipped army paratroopers to surround
the high school and escort the black students to their
classes
Eisenhower became the first president since
Reconstruction to protect the civil rights of African
American through the use of military force