Lecture 11

MAKING A DREAM COME TRUE: THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois  addressing the terms on which blacks could or
should enter into mainstream white society.

 Washington  agitation for social equality = “the extremest folly” + urged blacks to cultivate “friendly
relations with the Southern white man”
 Du Bois  a more militant stance, calling for civil rights for blacks + the right to equal participation in higher
education and liberal learning.

1941: President Roosevelt  the Fair Employment Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in the national
defense industry  the first federal law to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment
discrimination in the U.S.

1946: President Harry S. Truman establishes the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, which declares racial
discrimination a national problem.
: U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in interstate bus travel  Freedom Riders travel through the South to
test this decision and are often attacked on highways and in bus stations by angry segregationists.

1948: President Truman orders the integration of all the U.S. armed forces.
: Supreme Court rules that federal and state courts cannot enforce laws which bar persons from owning
property based on race.

Desegregating Schools

1952: Thurgood Marshall1 presented six cases to the Supreme Court challenging “the separate but equal” doctrine
in the field of public education.

Brown v. The Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954)

After hearing arguments related to all of these cases, the Court  all school segregation violated the Fourteenth
Amendment.
 In a unanimous opinion written by Earl Warren, the Supreme Court found that “in the field of education the
doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place”  ruled that segregation in public schools denies black
children “the equal protection of the laws guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment.” The decision overturned
the doctrine of “separate but equal” facilities by acknowledging that “separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal.”  desegregation to proceed with “all deliberate speed”. However, the southern states
initially refused to obey the dictates of Brown.
 1957: President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce the right of nine black children to attend
Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
1
One of the most famous lawyers for NAACP, to become a Supreme Court Justice in 1967.
1
 1962: James Meredith, a black student, enrolls at the U of Mississippi under protection of federal troops.
 1963: President Kennedy sends federal troops to enforce right of black students to enroll at the U of Alabama.

TOWARDS GREATER EQUALITY

The Court soon made it clear that the principle of Brown – equal opportunities and protection of the laws –
went far beyond school segregation. The Supreme Court led by the new Chief Justice Earl Warren laid the legal
foundations for a multiracial society in which civil rights are guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.

1955: a bus boycott was launched in Montgomery, Alabama, after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, was
arrested on Dec. 1, for refusing to give up her seat to a white person  the Montgomery buses desegregate.

1957: Congress passes a Civil Rights Act creating the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a CR Division in the
Department of Justice.

1961: President Kennedy establishes the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

1963: 250,000 people attended the march on Washington, D.C. urging support for civil rights legislation.
 The event was highlighted by Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, in which he urged Americans
to “make real the promises of democracy.” Key concept: the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind. Key
strategy: nonviolence (civil disobedience)

The Civil Rights Act (1964): the most important piece of civil rights legislation in the nation’s history. Despite
opposition from southerners, the bill was signed into law on July 2, 1964, by the new president, Lyndon B.
Johnson, who proved to be an effective practical politician.
 Its 11 titles outlawed voter discrimination, without, however eliminating literacy tests (I), as well as
discrimination in accommodation and other public facilities (II, III), in public schools (IV), as well as in
employment and unions (VII). 2
 Banned use of federal funds for schools or programs which discriminated (VI).
 Barred federal courts from sending civil rights cases back to state or local courts with segregationist judges and
all-white juries (IX).
 It expanded the CR Commission (est. by the CRA of 1957) with additional powers and procedures aimed to
protect citizens, regardless of race or gender, against discrimination. 3

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated devices such as literacy tests that aimed to prevent African-Americans
from voting. The act contained a “trigger” mechanism: if statistics suggested that a county was not allowing blacks
to vote, then the federal government stepped in and guaranteed blacks the right to register and vote.

1967: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court Justice.

2
In the late 1970s courts established that sexual harassment is also prohibited under Title VII of this act. Title VII has been
supplemented with legislation prohibiting pregnancy, age, and disability discrimination.
3
For instance, airlines were told they had to hire men as well as women for jobs as flight attendants. A nursing school was told
it could not turn down an applicant simply because he was male.

2
 In the Loving v. Virginia case, the Supreme Court voids all existing miscegenation laws. By the 1960s, the
statutes forbidding interracial marriage had survived mostly in the southern states. After Loving, they vanished
entirely from the law.

1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by a sniper as he stands on a balcony in Memphis, TN, where he has
gone to support a strike of sanitation workers. Urban riots erupt across the country.

 In Jones v. Mayer (1968), the U.S. Supreme Court prohibits all discrimination in rental and sale of housing.
 The Fair Housing Act is enacted, covering three-quarters of all housing transactions and barring landlords
from refusing to sell or rent on basis of race, ethnicity, religion, or gender.

1971: the Supreme Court finally declares gender discrimination to be unconstitutional (Reed v. Reed).

1972: Equal Opportunity and Employment Act (EOEA) is passed, encouraging preferential hiring and
promotion of minorities and women4.

1978: Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke legalizes the concept of “reverse
discrimination.”5

1989: Douglas Wilder of Virginia is the first African-American to be elected state governor.

1991: The Hill-Thomas Hearings, conducted by the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Anita
Hill’s allegations of prior sexual harassment by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, are televised
nationally from 11 October to 13 October. Thomas about the hearings: “a national disgrace ... a high-tech lynching
for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves.”  two days later confirmed
as the second African-American Supreme Court justice.

1992: Riots break out in south-central Los Angeles, following a jury’s acquittal of white L.A. police officers who
had been videotaped in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION (AA) AND “REVERSE DISCRIMINATION”

 affirmative action was considered necessary to make up for decades of prior discrimination.

1965: President Johnson issued an executive order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action to
recruit, hire and promote more racial minorities + in another executive order, Johnson added women to the
groups covered by previous antidiscrimination orders.

After the passage of the EOEA in 1972, AA became one of the most divisive issues of the 1970s and 1980s:

4
On September 24, 1965 President Johnson issued an executive order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action to
recruit, hire and promote more racial minorities; two years later, in another executive order, Johnson added women to the
groups covered by previous antidiscrimination orders. After the passage of the EOEA in 1972, AA became one of the most
divisive issues of the 1970s and 1980s.
5
Discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, especially when resulting from policies established to
correct discrimination against members of a minority or disadvantaged group.
3
  Colleges and employers: preferred treatment to minorities, either by actively seeking minority applicants or
by setting up a quota of jobs or school spaces reserved for women and minorities.
 Opponents of AA: an individual (e.g. a white male college applicant) should not be penalized for society’s
discriminatory practices, both past and present, with which he has nothing to do + they ask “why should the
individual minority member benefit today for what was done to his or her ancestors decades ago?”

The question came to the Supreme Court in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978).