Equality in the USA – Revision Notes:

SIGNS OF CHANGE BY 1955:

How far is it accurate to say that the status of black Americans varied considerably in
1945?

Political:

Politically, blacks had no say in elections. They were prevented from voting by the “legal”
means of state laws that established the qualifications required to vote. These ranged from the
grandfather clause (you had to be able to prove the previous two generations had voted) to the
literacy clause (the ability to read).

Where blacks had the vote, they could still be prevented from voting by the mechanics of the
election e.g. the eight ballot box law required you to choose the correct ballot box out of a
choice of eight! Where all else failed, violence could be used to intimidate blacks and thus
prevent them from voting.

Politically, there were no laws preventing blacks from voting in the north, although poverty
sometimes prevented registration of the right to vote. When blacks voted, although they had
generally supported the Republican Party until 1932, they largely switched their allegiance
from 1936 to the Democratic Party.

Social:

The consequence of the Plessy v Ferguson case was the proliferation of segregation across
the South. The judges decided that segregation was lawful as long as black and white citizens
had access to facilities that were equally good. Transport, education, all public facilities were
segregated; even in death southern cemeteries provided segregation.

Segregation in the south was also an attitude of mind which governed even the smallest
aspects of behaviour, including how people stood, sat, ate, walked and made eye contact.
There were unspoken rules which governed the way that black and white people related to
each other. For example whites never called black men ‘Mr’ or black women ‘Mrs’. Black
and white children had learned this by the age of three or four.

Despite segregation white people often relied on black people for domestic help. Black
people were hired to bring up white children, to cook, to clean and top provide nursing care
for rich white people. There was a contradiction between them being seen as an inferior race
and the fact that the whites needed them in their family lives. Thus the stereotype of the
‘good old-time negro’ was invented. It meant that black people were happy to serve white
people and entirely satisfied with their role in a segregated society

In the north Blacks were subject to de facto discrimination i.e. although the laws did not
discriminate, the nature of black life in the cities led to the experience of discrimination.

Although there were no segregation laws in the north, blacks found themselves effectively
segregated in largely black communities (ghettos), such as Harlem in New York and Watts in
Los Angeles. 90% of the population of these ghettos was black. Hence, their children also
went to largely black schools, which were under-funded relative to white areas.

Economic:

Economically, blacks experienced great hardship. If they were employed as sharecroppers,

they had to work for a share of the crop, but needed to borrow money from the landowner to
pay for equipment and seed. These loans were charged at exorbitant rates of interest, which
often meant that the sharecropper was perpetually in debt.

Where blacks were employed in towns, they experienced the low wages that all southern
workers earned.

The consequence of economic hardship and discrimination was social deprivation: poor
housing, low living standards, poor health, and lower levels of educational provision.

In the period after the Civil War there began the process of migration from the south to
northern cities that seemed to offer more prospect of employment.

Economically, in the north, blacks experienced great hardship. Many of those who came from
the south were unskilled and where they found jobs, they were often menial. Those blacks
who acquired greater skills still found it difficult to improve their economic condition.

A strike was organised by 25,000 white employees at Packard in Detroit in 1943 because
three black employees had been promoted.

As in the south, economic hardship and discrimination led to social deprivation.

Violence:

Violence was widespread as a mechanism for keeping blacks in their place. Such violence
was random in order to increase the uncertainty and fear of the black population. In 1933, 24
blacks had died by lynching.

In the south the Ku Klux Klan saw them-selves as the defender of white supremacy. They
targeted black people who showed any signs of disrespect. This included black people who
were romantically involved with white people, black people who were growing prosperous,
and black people who were challenging the injustice of segregation

Violence and race riots occurred periodically in northern cities. These were generally
triggered by inter-racial conflicts. In 1943, for example, there were riots in New York and
Detroit.
To what extent had life improved for Black Americans in the years 1945-55?

Segregation:

The migration north continued unabated during the War - nearly three-quarters of a million
blacks made the journey from the south to the north. This intensified the problems faced in
the ghettos of the northern cities.
Truman established a committee to investigate race relations and to safeguard the rights of
minorities. The report of this committee published in 1947 was called ‘To Secure These
Rights’.

It called for many drastic changes to be made to the law e.g. to secure black voting rights, to
pass anti-lynching legislation and to end a range of segregated facilities. Limited action was
taken in the areas identified, but this report did put Civil Rights on the political agenda.

Truman was concerned that he might lose support from southern white Democratic party
supporters, so although he had initially been very enthusiastic about implementing the
proposals in ‘To Secure These Rights’, he had watered them down considerably by the time
of the 1948 Democratic Party National Convention (the meeting which selects the Party’s
candidate for the Presidential election.)

Thus, no significant civil rights legislation was implemented during the Truman presidency.

During 1945-55 Black Americans developed the tactics of direct action. This is a form of
protest that involves large groups of people and draws public attention to injustice.

The NAACP organised a series of protests in the southern state of Louisiana. For example
they picketed New Orleans’ four biggest department stores for refusing to allow black
customers to try on hats. In Alexandra in 1951 they protested at the fact that the local black
school would close during the cotton harvest so that the black children could work in the
fields. In 1953 they organised a boycott of a newly built school in Lafayette protesting that its
facilities were inferior to a local white school

Violence:

Lynching continued unabated in the south. In 1946, several war veterans were killed in rural
Georgia for voting whilst a soldier in South Carolina was blinded because he did not sit at the
back of a bus.

Employment:

Truman tried, but failed, to extend the funding for the Fair Employment Practices
Commission.

Truman continued Roosevelt’s policy of using Executive Orders to try to facilitate fair
employment practices for black Americans.

Transport:

The Supreme Court started to interpret the Constitution more liberally in the field of civil
rights. Thus, during the Truman presidency, it rulings in a number of cases appeared to
challenge Plessy v Ferguson e.g. 1946 Morgan v Virginia prohibited segregation on interstate
transport.

The Morgan v Virginia case did not lead to a change in practise. As a result in 1947 CORE
launched a Journey of Reconstruction. A mixed race team planned to travel by bus from the
northern to southern states; their aim was to draw public attention to the fact that many states
were not following the Supreme Court. Public attention was gained but it failed to achieve
change.

There were other Civil Rights Organisations. The United Defence League (UDL), the
Committee on Negro Organisation (CNO), the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO)
and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) also used the tactic of direct action in this
period

The UDL organised a week-long bus boycott in Louisiana’s capital Baton Rouge in June
1953.

Education:

Their first successful challenge to segregation in education came in 1950. The NAACP
argued that Sweatt was entitled to an education equal to that of whites at the Law school. The
courts decided that they did not have to integrate the white Law school and set up a law
school for blacks. The NAACP rejected this and went to the Supreme Court; they argued that
the new law school was inferior. The Supreme Court agreed and ordered the University of
Texas Law School to accept Sweatt as a student

1950 McLaurin v Oklahoma State University upheld the rights of black students to receive
equal Higher Education.

In 1954, this case came to the Supreme Court. It had been sponsored by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The lawyer used by the NAACP to
present this case was Thurgood Marshall, who was later to become the first black Supreme
Court justice.

The case revolved around whether the Board of Education for Topeka, Kansas had violated
the Fourteenth Amendment rights of Linda Brown by the failure to provide her with an
elementary education close to her own home. The nearest school to her home was an all-
white segregated school.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that segregation in education “deprive(s) children of
the minority group of equal educational opportunities.” This meant the reversal of the Plessy
v Ferguson decision in education.

Although Eisenhower ordered the integration of schools in Washington DC immediately, the

rest of the south was very much slower to follow suit.

Although Eisenhower ordered the integration of schools in Washington DC immediately

(after the Brown case), the rest of the south was very much slower to follow suit. Middle
class whites set up White Citizens Councils to demand that segregation continue in schools. It
caused a revival in the activity of the KKK and the Emmett Till case followed a year later. He
was a 14 year old black boy who was lynched and murdered. The two white men were found
not guilty by an all white jury.

After the Brown case Senator Harry F. Byrd called on white southerners to put up ‘massive
resistance’ meaning that white people of the south should defend segregation with all their
strength. He led 101 southern congressmen who signed the ‘Southern Manifesto’. They
argued that the Brown case was unconstitutional because the constitution did not mention
education. They called on the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’

In 1955, the Supreme Court followed up its earlier ruling with Brown II. This said that the
change to desegregated schools was to take place “with all deliberate speed.” Even this was
not sufficiently specific and many southern states continued to delay the implementation of
desegregation.

By 1957 only 750 of 6,300 southern school districts had desegregated

Eisenhower refused to comment on the Brown case. He criticised the ruling arguing that it
would do nothing to change the hearts and minds of southern white racists. He believed that it
was counterproductive. It had just infuriated white citizens and whipped up tremendous
opposition to Civil Rights. He claimed that his decision to make ‘Earl Warren Chief Justice
was ‘the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made’

Voting Rights:

Between 1940 and 1957 the CNO organised a voter registration campaign in the southern
state of Arkansas

Smith v Allwright (1944). This ruled that the Texan white primary was illegal because all
citizens had the right to vote, according to the 15th amendment. Consequently this outlawed
all white primaries across America. In Primary elections parties elect who will stand in
subsequent elections.

Public Opinion:

Black Americans were appalled at the rhetoric of the war with its focus on liberty and
equality seemed increasingly hypocritical when southern blacks could expect to be subjected
to discrimination and lynching. Black soldiers were struck by this contradiction and thus they
used the ‘Double V’ sign meaning they were fighting for two victories: victory overseas and
victory over racism at home

The courage of black soldiers changed the attitude of many white soldiers. Following the war
black heroes who had often risked their lives for their country expected recognition for their
achievements.

What caused seeds of change to develop between 1945 and 1955?

Impact of WWII:

Over 1.2 million black men joined the United States army during WWII. The experience
radicalised them. Northern blacks were often trained in the south and this was their first
experience of segregation. They were appalled at the rhetoric of the war with its focus on
liberty and equality seemed increasingly hypocritical when southern blacks could expect to
be subjected to discrimination and lynching. Black soldiers were struck by this contradiction
and thus they used the ‘Double V’ sign meaning they were fighting for two victories: victory
overseas and victory over racism at home
The courage of black soldiers changed the attitude of many white soldiers. Following the war
black heroes who had often risked their lives for their country expected recognition for their
achievements.

Segregation continued through the war and black soldiers had different canteens and were
transported to the battlefield in different vehicles. Many were denied the right to fight and
were employed as cooks and cleaners. Black soldiers who did make it to the front line were
given less training and the worse equipment

Black soldiers also experienced European society during their stays in Britain and France.
They experienced no formal segregation in either country and white people in Europe treated
them as heroes

The extermination of over six million Jews and other racist atrocities carried out by the Nazis
showed the dangers inherent in racism and in doing so convinced many people that racism
should be opposed in all circumstances

The migration north continued unabated during the War - nearly three-quarters of a million
blacks made the journey from the south to the north. This intensified the problems faced in
the ghettos of the northern cities.

In 1941, A. Philip Randolph called for a March on Washington to publicise the

discrimination experienced by black Americans in every aspect of their lives. Roosevelt’s
response to this was to issue Executive Order creating the FEPC. (Fair Employment
Practices). This prohibited discrimination in defence and federal employment practices.

Presidential Action:

There were limited advances in the cause of civil rights during Truman’s presidency.

In the Cold War Truman believed that America had a moral duty to fight Communism and
promote freedom but he recognised that America could not fight for freedom while
segregation oppressed black American’s in the south

Truman tried, but failed, to extend the funding for the Fair Employment Practices
Commission.

Truman continued Roosevelt’s policy of using Executive Orders to try to facilitate fair
employment practices for black Americans.

Truman established a committee to investigate race relations and to safeguard the rights of
minorities. The report of this committee published in 1947 was called ‘To Secure These
Rights’.

It called for many drastic changes to be made to the law e.g. to secure black voting rights, to
pass anti-lynching legislation and to end a range of segregated facilities. The report also
highlighted the racist violence widespread in the American police force. This included
‘bullwhipping’ which was the denial of medical treatment to black prisoners and in some
cases black prisoners being tied up and drowned.
Limited action was taken in the areas identified, but this report did put Civil Rights on the
political agenda. Truman was concerned that he might lose support from southern white
Democratic party supporters, so although he had initially been very enthusiastic about
implementing the proposals in ‘To Secure These Rights’, he had watered them down
considerably by the time of the 1948 Democratic Party National Convention (the meeting
which selects the Party’s candidate for the Presidential election.)

Thus, no significant civil rights legislation was implemented during the Truman presidency.

Lynching continued unabated in the south. In 1946, several war veterans were killed in rural
Georgia for voting whilst a soldier in South Carolina was blinded because he did not sit at the
back of a bus.

Eisenhower refused to comment on the Brown case. He criticised the ruling arguing that it
would do nothing to change the hearts and minds of southern white racists. He believed that it
was counterproductive. It had just infuriated white citizens and whipped up tremendous
opposition to Civil Rights. He claimed that his decision to make ‘Earl Warren Chief Justice
was ‘the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made’

Civil Rights Organisations:

The NAACP was created to fight for the rights of black people and to oppose discrimination
and racial hatred, mainly using legal methods; court cases which challenged the legal basis
for segregation. Their strategy was to challenge the ‘Jim Crow’ laws by appealing to the 14th
and 15th amendments. In practise they provided funds and experienced lawyers.

Their first successful challenge to segregation in education came in 1950. The NAACP
argued that Sweatt was entitled to an education equal to that of whites at the Law school. The
courts decided that they did not have to integrate the white Law school and set up a law
school for blacks. The NAACP rejected this and went to the Supreme Court; they argued that
the new law school was inferior. The Supreme Court agreed and ordered the University of
Texas Law School to accept Sweatt as a student

In 1954, the Brown case came to the Supreme Court. It had been sponsored by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The lawyer used by the NAACP to
present this case was Thurgood Marshall, who was later to become the first black Supreme
Court justice. The case revolved around whether the Board of Education for Topeka, Kansas
had violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of Linda Brown by the failure to provide her
with an elementary education close to her own home. The nearest school to her home was an
all-white segregated school.

There were other Civil Rights Organisations. The United Defence League (UDL), the
Committee on Negro Organisation (CNO), the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO)
and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) also used the tactic of direct action in this
period

The UDL organised a week-long bus boycott in Louisiana’s capital Baton Rouge in June
1953. Between 1940 and 1957 the CNO organised a voter registration campaign in the
southern state of Arkansas
Work of the Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court started to interpret the Constitution more liberally in the field of civil
rights.

Smith v Allwright (1944). This ruled that the Texan white primary was illegal because all
citizens had the right to vote, according to the 15th amendment. Consequently this outlawed
all white primaries across America. In Primary elections parties elect who will stand in
subsequent elections.

During the Truman presidency, it rulings in a number of cases appeared to challenge Plessy v
Ferguson e.g. 1946 Morgan v Virginia prohibited segregation on interstate transport.

1950 McLaurin v Oklahoma State University upheld the rights of black students to receive
equal Higher Education.

In the Brown case the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that segregation in education
“deprive(s) children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities.” This meant
the reversal of the Plessy v Ferguson decision in education.

In 1955, the Supreme Court followed up its earlier ruling with Brown II. This said that the
change to desegregated schools was to take place “with all deliberate speed.” Even this was
not sufficiently specific and many southern states continued to delay the implementation of
desegregation.

Tactics:

During 1945-55 Black Americans developed the tactics of direct action. This is a form of
protest that involves large groups of people and draws public attention to injustice.

The NAACP organised a series of protests in the southern state of Louisiana. For example
they picketed New Orleans’ four biggest department stores for refusing to allow black
customers to try on hats. In Alexandra in 1951 they protested at the fact that the local black
school would close during the cotton harvest so that the black children could work in the
fields. In 1953 they organised a boycott of a newly built school in Lafayette protesting that its
facilities were inferior to a local white school

The Morgan v Virginia case did not lead to a change in practise. As a result in 1947 CORE
launched a Journey of Reconstruction. A mixed race team planned to travel by bus from the
northern to southern states; their aim was to draw public attention to the fact that many states
were not following the Supreme Court. Public attention was gained but it failed to achieve
change.

White Resistance:

Although Eisenhower ordered the integration of schools in Washington DC immediately

(after the Brown case), the rest of the south was very much slower to follow suit. Middle
class whites set up White Citizens Councils to demand that segregation continue in schools. It
caused a revival in the activity of the KKK and the Emmett Till case followed a year later. He
was a 14 year old black boy who was lynched and murdered. The two white men were found
not guilty by an all white jury.

After the Brown case Senator Harry F. Byrd called on white southerners to put up ‘massive
resistance’ meaning that white people of the south should defend segregation with all their
strength. He led 101 southern congressmen who signed the ‘Southern Manifesto’. They
argued that the Brown case was unconstitutional because the constitution did not mention
education. They called on the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’

How far is it accurate to describe black Americans as second-class citizens in the years 1945-55?

(30 marks)

Black citizens of the USA were certainly treated as second class in the years 1945-55. They were
discriminated against in work, education, living standards and their status as human beings. They
could be attacked and subjected to violence without the law protecting them. Therefore they had no
rights as citizens. In the years after the war they did gain some improvements and began to protest
for more, but by 1955 this was not enough to make a difference.

Black Americans were subjected to segregation. The ‘Jim Crow’ laws meant that they had to use
separate diners, separate schools and separate transport. This was legal because of Plessey-vs-
Ferguson, where the Supreme Court said that separate facilities were acceptable if they were equal,
but of course they weren’t. Many states spent four or five times as much on white schools as on
black. On buses the black citizens had to sit at the back, and even then they had to give up their
seats if a white person wanted it. This sparked off the first big protest against segregation, when
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery. She was arrested, and the
NAACP started a bus boycott that led eventually to desegregation and the emergence of Martin
Luther King as a Civil Rights leader.

Segregated schools were particularly bad because lack of education affected the work that black
people could do. They were mostly limited to menial jobs, were paid less than white people and
were more likely to be unemployed. In the north they worked in factories, but in the south many
were share-croppers. This meant that they had to share their crop with the landlord in place of rent,
and to pay for seeds, tools etc. Often the prices were set so high that they never got out of debt.
Some attempts to improve black schools were made by the NAACP, who got a Supreme Court
decision in the case of Linda Brown to say that separate was not equal, and that schools should be
desegregated, but little happened by 1955. Even after that progress was slow, and in 1957 the
President had to send troops to Little Rock to make sure that black students were allowed into the
High School.

Another way in which black people were treated as second class was by being denied the vote. In
theory they had had the vote since the American Civil War, but in practice ways were found to stop
them voting. Some states had ‘grandfather clauses’ to stop them registering, or they were set
impossible tests like having to recite the Constitution or say how many bubbles there were in a bar
of soap. This meant they were powerless to help themselves by voting for politicians who would
improve matters, and even in the north, where they could vote, it didn’t help because they were
such a minority there and also tended to be crowded into small areas.
The worst thing for black Americans was that they were subjected to violence if they tried to protest.
Some of this was organised, by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, who carried out targeted campaigns
against any leaders or protesters. Lynchings were common, and the bodies were often mutilated and
left as a warning to others. Sometimes the violence was random, or a reaction to a ‘sassy nigger’ like
Emmet Till. He lived in the north, but when he visited relatives in the south he wolf-whistled at a
white woman, and was beaten up and deliberately drowned. This violence was possible because the
courts were sympathetic and white juries (as they always were) would not convict anyone of a crime
against a black person. It is therefore right to say that black people were treated as second class
citizens in 1945-55, in spite of some attempts to change things. President Truman desegregated the
armed forces and employed some black people, but change was slow. There was often a difference
between the law and reality - black soldiers from the desegregated army were beaten up when they
got back home. Black people were treated as inferior, with men called ‘boy’ or ‘uncle’, not men.
They were mistreated politically, socially culturally and economically, and denied the rights that a
citizen should have

Assessment commentary:

Assessment at this level might helpfully start by noting what the focus of the question is. The extent
to which the candidate understands, and responds to, that question is likely to be the most important
single factor which determines a level. In this case, the focus relates to a judgment about the status
of black US citizens in the first ten years of the period under study.
Delegates are asked to evaluate this answer on this basis – judging the relevance of the answer to
the question’s focus and then determining how much relevant material has been used to support any
case made and how detailed and specific this material is. Also, is the answer properly planned and
coherent? Finally, what comments might be made about the effectiveness of communication on offer
here?