US History (Juliette Bourdin)

AFRICAN AMERICANS

The African American history and experience have occupied a particular place in the
national narrative, as African Americans were initially brought to the New World as slaves and
endured the hardships of the “peculiar institution” (as slavery was called by Southern planters)
until it was finally abolished in 1865.
Though they were not immigrants and though they were supposedly free and equal after the
abolition of slavery, African Americans still did not enjoy the same rights and privileges as other
American-born citizens—they remained second-class citizens for a very long time, and the struggle
for equality is not over yet.
This lesson will first provide a general historical background about the second half of the 19th
century, before focusing on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and Black revolt
and Affirmative Action policies.

I- General historical background until the early 20th century

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was the culmination of a long struggle
that lasted a century and a half.
From the 1820s to the 1850s, abolitionism progressively gained momentum in the North of
the United States and kept dividing the American society. The widening gap between the North and
the South over the issue of slavery eventually led the country to a bloody Civil War (1861-1865).
After the war, three key amendments were passed:
 The 13th amendment (1865) abolished slavery.
 The 14th amendment (1868) gave legal rights to all men regardless of race.
 The 15th amendment (1870) gave Black men the right to vote.
 For the first time, African Americans had citizenship rights

The Civil War was followed by the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877).

With the defeat of the South, Blacks finally had access to freedom and were given civil
rights through these three new amendments to the constitution. During that period, they managed to
gain access to land and to education, and some were given political appointments, which
represented the roots of a black bourgeoisie.
Economically, however, most of the former slaves had to face severe hardships. The great
majority ended up as sharecroppers on their former master’s land, and their working and living
conditions were not that different from before: They worked land that they did not possess and
had to give a portion of their crop to the owner. Often, they ended up with large debts, especially as
they also had to borrow money from the same owner to buy tools and seeds.
However, the African Americans’ new power was strongly resented by southern Whites,
who saw it as an infringement on their privileges. They soon tried to return to something closely
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 2

resembling the former situation, even though slavery itself was now out of the question. Former
slaveholders used everything from persuasion to violence to force African-Americans back into an
inferior position.
Among other things, they adopted Black codes, which varied from state to state and
restricted the movement and freedom of Blacks, who would still have to carry passes, respect a
curfew, live in houses provided by a landowner, were still excluded from most job opportunities,
etc. Whites also intimidated Blacks through violence. In fact, the Ku Klux Klan was created as
early as 1866; its members assassinated, lynched and raped Blacks long after it was officially
dismantled in 1870-71.
Socially then, African Americans were still mostly at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
After the end of Reconstruction, the system seemed to return to a status quo ante and
segregation increased. Jim Crow laws (i.e., segregation laws) were passed that set up the
separation of Blacks: They had separate facilities and, for example, could not sit in the same part of
a train or in the same restaurant; they had different entrances into public buildings and separate
public toilets; and so on and so forth. A system of segregation was thus established.
This was challenged in 1896 through the Plessy v. Ferguson case examined by the U.S.
Supreme Court. It concerned segregation on trains, but the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine
“separate but equal”—even though Blacks legally had equal rights, they had separate schools,
separate churches, etc. The black and white communities lived side by side but not together, and
African-Americans were definitely considered as inferior. Citizenship meant different things for
Whites and Blacks in the South, and Whites had regained control of legal, social and economic
institutions by refusing some key elements of citizenship to African Americans and by controlling
them through violence and terror. Once again, the justice system was controlled by southern
Whites, and Blacks were rarely listened to or given a fair hearing when complaining of injustice or
intimidation. Not all Americans approved of racial segregation—Justice John Harlan, for instance,
dissented in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, declaring that “Our Constitution is color-blind.”
Nevertheless, the bottom line is that, by the 1900s, African Americans were, in effect,
disfranchised and had lost their political rights in all southern states (except Tennessee).

II- The Civil Rights Movement to 1968

In the case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine
and, therefore, validated segregation from a constitutional point of view. In the following decades,
the African American community tried to organize the best it could, particularly after World War II.
While the U.S. was immersed in a dangerous Cold War that divided the world, the country also
experienced turmoil at home, as African Americans started to rebel against injustice. For decades,
African Americans—either individually or collectively—had tried to resist discrimination until,
finally, the Civil Rights Movement shook the nation’s history and gave way to what has been
named the “Second Reconstruction” of the 1950s and 1960s.
Like the First Reconstruction (which occurred after the Civil War), there were some great
leaps forward, but also some failures that fueled the frustration of many and eventually found a
more violent expression through the rise of the Black Power movement.
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A- The NAACP and the Brown decision

In 1909, African-Americans and liberal white intellectuals founded the NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People), whose aim was to protect and expand the
civil rights of African-Americans. To reach that goal, the NAACP used both political and legal
strategies. In 1939, for instance, it created the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) to help
African-Americans support their cause in court, and it particularly tried to attack the legal structure
of racial segregation.
From 1940 to 1961, Thurgood Marshall was the director of the LDF, and, thanks to him, 29
cases were won at the Supreme Court. His greatest achievement was the Supreme Court decision
in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) which declared racial segregation in public schools
unconstitutional. Marshall was then chosen to be an associate justice at the Supreme Court.
Since then, the NAACP has continued to pay particular attention to nominations at the U.S.
Supreme Court, because the highest court has played a pivotal role in the history of African
Americans.
In the South in particular, the “separate but equal” doctrine was applied at all levels, also in
schools. In fact, blacks and whites were clearly separated, but certainly not equal. In delivering
the unanimous opinion of the court in Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Earl Warren
declared: “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has
no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” In short, the Brown decision
overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Thurgood Marshall Chief Justice Earl Warren

However, it proved very hard to enforce the desegregation of schools in the South. Many
states strongly resisted school integration; for example, in a county of Virginia, it was decided to
close all public schools rather than implement school integration. This, in turn, encouraged even
more the Civil Rights movement.
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 4

Southerners indignantly denounced the Brown decision as a violation of state rights and as
an attempt to revolutionize their social system. In the Upper South and the border states a start
was made on desegregating the schools, at least in big cities like Washington, Baltimore, and St
Louis, but in the deep South there was determined resistance from militant White Citizens’
Councils. White resistance to school integration was such that, in 1955, the Supreme Court
specified that the states should desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” But these terms were still
too vague to end that resistance rapidly.
President Eisenhower had avoided expressing an opinion on the Court’s decision and resisted
suggestions that he should use federal power to implement it. But, in September 1957, he was
forced to act when mob violence and the obstructionism of Governor Orval Faubus frustrated
the operation of a gradual desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. Yet, during the rest of
Eisenhower’s presidency, the pace of desegregation remained slow. White parents transferred their
children to private schools or refused to send them to school at all, and some southern communities
even abolished their public school systems. Commonly, they found ways of evading rather than
directly challenging desegregation, as laws made it possible to reject black applications to
particular schools on grounds other than race.
Efforts to remove obstacles to black voting in the South were similarly unproductive. Indeed,
by 1956 the number of Southern blacks registered to vote had risen to 1,200,000—twice the figure
of 1947—but this was still only about 25% of those eligible.
In August 1957, Congress attempted to provide a remedy by passing the first Civil Right Act
since reconstruction. It established a Civil Rights Commission to investigate denials of the
franchise and empowered the Justice Department to sue on behalf of black voting rights.
In 1960, a second Civil Rights Act extended these provisions, but neither measure proved
effective. In the Deep South, state officials continued to prevent most qualified blacks from voting.
As for the Brown decision, in 1968, that is to say 14 years later, less than 20% of black
students were going to integrated schools. So, finally, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation
must end “at once” (in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, Virginia).

The “Warren Court”

Under the leadership of Earl Warren, Chief Justice from 1953 to 1969, the Supreme Court displayed a
driving concern for civil rights and individual liberties:
 The Brown Decision on desegregation in 1954 was followed by other rulings against racial
discrimination in voting, public parks, and housing.
 In Yates v. United States (1957), the Court held that mere membership of the Communist
party, or even the advocacy of the theoretical possibility of violence, were not sufficient for a
conviction on a charge of conspiracy to overthrow the government by force.
 In two rulings in 1962 and 1963, it declared that prayers and bible readings in public schools
violated the constitutional principle of the separation of Church and State.
 The Warren Court also in effect wrote a new code of criminal procedure. A series of cases
beginning with Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), and culminating in Miranda v. Arizona (1966),
established the right of suspects both to remain silent and to consult a lawyer (at public
expense if necessary) before being interrogated.
 No less significant were the Court’s decisions in Baker V. Carr (1962), and Reynolds v. Sims
(1964). By insisting upon the equalization of electoral districts, these ended the long standing
rural dominance of state legislatures.
 Finally, the Court took an extremely liberal position in cases involving censorship and
obscenity. While these examples of judicial activism were applauded by liberals, they were
fiercely condemned by conservatives who objected not only to their specific implications but
also to the court’s taking the lead in social reform.
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 5

In 1964, the famous American painter Norman Rockwell drew a powerful and insightful
painting entitled The Problem We All Live With, which was a visual commentary about the Civil
Rights Movement and the extremely difficult desegregation process at a time when the country was
celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Brown decision.
Rockwell chose to represent the true story of six-year-old pupil Ruby Bridges, who, on
November 14, 1960, had to be escorted by U.S. marshals on her first day of school to an all-white
school in New Orleans that was forced to integrate Black students.

Norman Rockwell, The Problem We All Live With (1964)

For an 8-minute explanation of the painting, see “Painting Tour: “The Problem We All Live With” (1964)” provided by
the Norman Rockwell Museum on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Trz-ijBYg

B- Martin Luther King and nonviolent activism

Meanwhile Southern Blacks themselves had begun to fight discrimination. This was partly
because of the encouragement afforded by the Brown decision, but other factors played a key role:
 World War II experiences had left many blacks, especially younger ones, disinclined to
accept inequality any longer.
 The spread of TV in the 1950s revealed to them for the first time how affluent white
middle-class America was and, thus, how deprived they themselves were.
 Moreover, the emergence of independent black African states proved a tremendous
stimulus to racial pride.
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 6

The outcome was a series of demonstrations against segregation laws. The most
celebrated began in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, when 50,000 black residents
boycotted the city buses after Rosa Parks, an active member of the NAACP who had refused to
give her seat to a white man, was arrested. The movement was led by a young black Baptist
minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had embraced the Gandhian ideal of civil disobedience
through passive resistance.
Despite mass arrests and widespread intimidation, the boycott was maintained. Black
residents elected King president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement Association. The
boycott continued until December 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s
segregation laws were unconstitutional, and that the Montgomery bus system had to be
desegregated. In the meantime, Martin Luther King had become a major figure on the national
stage.

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted at the police station after her arrest Rosa Parks,
for disobeying the bus driver’s order to move to the back of the bus. with Martin Luther King in the background

After the victory in Montgomery, Martin Luther King and other black ministers from the
South decided to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. And
two years later, in 1959, King went to visit India and grew more convinced that Gandhian
nonviolence was the right strategy for the struggle of African Americans.
In parallel, African American college students started a series a sit-in protests which were
encouraged by Martin Luther King and eventually resulted in the creation of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Though approached by King and the SCLC,
student activists wished to remain an autonomous student-led movement.
In 1961, activism took the form of “Freedom Rides,” i.e., a group of blacks and whites rode
together on buses throughout the South to protest against segregation. They were met with violence
by segregationists, particularly in Alabama, where such violence was renewed in Birmingham,
Alabama, in 1963, when Martin Luther King and the SCLC launched mass demonstrations against
segregation, knowing that the local white police usually resorted to violence. When images showing
the police attack peaceful demonstrators with dogs and fire hoses were broadcasted on television,
the outrage both within and outside the U.S. was such that the campaign eventually proved effective
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 7

against Jim Crow laws. Indeed, President John F. Kennedy decided to act promptly and pushed for
the adoption by Congress of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made it illegal “for an
employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against,
any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, or to classify or refer for
employment any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
Aware that injustice concerned not only racial segregation but also economic opportunities,
King continued to lead peaceful mass demonstrations, whose peak was the March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. There, in the capital city of the country, on the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech
before an enormous crowd of more than 250,000 people. Unsurprisingly, he was chosen as “Man of
the Year” by Time Magazine for the year 1963, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Yet, not all African Americans agreed with King’s nonviolent strategy. Malcolm X, for
instance, advocated self-defense and black nationalism—a message that appealed much more to
African Americans from the Northern urban areas. Likewise, King was also criticized by Stokely
Carmichael, who also advocated a much more assertive “Black Power.”
Not only was Martin Luther King challenged by other African American leaders, but he was
also criticized by national political leaders and targeted by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover,
especially because King publicly denounced the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
In late 1967, King launched a Poor People’s Campaign, which focused on unresolved
economic issues that affected the Black community. In 1968, while supporting striking sanitation
workers in Memphis, he delivered his final address “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” The next
day, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King delivering his famous
August 28, 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream”

Martin Luther King

being chosen as
“Man of the Year”
by Time Magazine
for 1963
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 8

III- Black Revolt and Affirmative Action

Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights legislation, together with the Supreme Court’s desegregation
and reapportionment1 decisions, enabled black Americans to make substantial progress in the
direction of equality. Yet, far from satisfying blacks, these gains served only to increase their
frustration and bitterness. This was not surprising since neither the right to vote nor legal
guarantees of equality of opportunity did anything directly to ameliorate their economic condition:
 The black unemployment rate was still twice the national average.
 Nearly a third of the black population lived below the poverty line.
 Black schools and black housing were almost universally inferior.
 And while black purchasing power had increased, the economic gap between the races had
hardly narrowed at all.

A- Black revolt

By the middle of the 1960s, many black Americans had become critical of both the aims
and methods of the civil rights movement. There was a shift away from the moderation of the
NAACP and of Martin Luther King towards the militancy of black nationalist groups. The most
important of these were:
 the Black Muslims;
 Malcom X, who broke with the Black Muslims to found his own Organization for Afro-
American Unity but was assassinated in 1965;
 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led Stokely Carmichael;
 and the Black Panthers, with Eldridge Cleaver, who was the “minister of information” of
the Black Panther Party.

Malcolm X Stokely Carmichael The Black Panthers

1 In French, “redécoupage electoral.”

US History (Juliette Bourdin) 9

“Black Power” was the slogan adopted by the black nationalists, and black power advocates
agreed in demanding separatism rather than integration. The Vietnam war still further intensified
black militancy, because blacks were doing a disproportionate share of the fighting; though
making up only 11% of the population, they constituted 18% of the American forces in Vietnam.
The smoldering discontent of the black ghettoes burst forth in the most destructive urban riots
since the Civil War:
 The first major outbreak, in the Watts district of Los Angeles in August 1965, left 34 dead,
injured more than 1000, and destroyed property worth $35 million.
 Renewed riots followed in 1966, notably in Chicago.
 The summer of 1967 witnessed major racial disturbances in more than 100 cities, the worst
taking place in July in Newark (New Jersey), and in Detroit (Michigan).
o During 5 days of rioting in Newark, 26 people were killed and 2,000 injured.
o In Detroit, the death-toll reached 43 and property damage amounted to half a billion
dollars.
Order was restored only when thousands of paratroops and national guardsmen were sent
in. Then in April 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther King at Memphis, Tennessee set off a
new wave of violence all over the country.
After the 1967 riots, President Johnson set up a commission of inquiry (Kerner Commission).
Its report, published in March 1968, blamed the troubles on “pervasive discrimination and
segregation in employment, education, and housing,” and concluded that further strife could be
avoided only by massive government efforts to create jobs, improve schools, and clear the slums.
But although Congress passed an Open Housing Law prohibiting racial discrimination in the
sale or letting of housing, almost nothing was done to implement the Commission’s
recommendations. Many whites, frightened by the urban riots and by the militancy of black
nationalists, became indifferent or hostile to black demands. Plus, inflation and the needs of the
Vietnam War shrank the resources available for social programs.
To sum up, taking the period as a whole, blacks made enormous gains:
 Between 1960 and 1969, the number of blacks below the poverty line fell from a half to a third.
 Black educational achievements, as measured by years of schooling, and the proportion of
high-school graduates going on to college, almost caught up with those of whites.
 A sizeable black middle class emerged.
 Politically too, blacks made great strides. During the 1960s and 1970s black mayors were
elected in many major cities (L.A., Washington, Detroit, Atlanta and New Orleans).
And yet, while old taboos vanished and long-established barriers were swept away, progress was
less impressive than it seemed:
 Even in boom times, the mass of blacks formed a depressed urban proletariat which was
becoming more and more segregated residentially.
 The white-black income gap once again began to widen.
 Unemployment amongst blacks once more crept up to twice the level for whites (among black
youth it exceeded 30%).
 By 1980, the situation had become so bad that the unemployment-rate for black college
graduates was higher than for white high-school dropouts.
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 10

B- Affirmative Action

Meanwhile, there was growing controversy over the policy of “Affirmative Action,” a policy
laid down by President Johnson in 1968. In an effort to reduce past discrimination, Johnson had
required all government contractors, including colleges and universities receiving federal funds, to
give preferential treatment to blacks and other minorities (and after 1971 to women).
Whites who resented what they called “reverse discrimination” challenged the policies in
the courts, and in two leading cases the Supreme Court handed down sharply contrasting decisions:
 In the Bakke Case of June 1978 (Bakke v. University of California), the courts dismayed
blacks by holding that universities could not set aside explicit quotas for racial minorities and,
thus, exclude white applicants who might be better qualified, but it added that it was
constitutionally permissible for race to be considered along with other factors in deciding on
admissions.
 A year later in the case of United Steel Workers of America v. Weber, the court decided that
employers could give preference to blacks in training programs for better jobs, provided that
white workers were not displaced or absolutely excluded from advancement and so long as
affirmative action was abandoned once the racial balance had been corrected.
Bill Clinton altered the outlook of the Supreme Court in 1993 when Byron R. White, a
conservative, retired. Clinton appointed a much less conservative justice in the person of Ruth
Bader Ginsburg. After the 1994-1995 term had produced conservative rulings that placed limits on
Affirmative Action and school desegregation, in United States v. Virginia, the court held that the
Virginia Military Institute could not exclude women, because to do so would violate the
constitutional guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.” Thus separate but equal was
unconstitutional whether based on race or gender.
In the 1990s, Republican politicians and conservative activists lobbied hard against
affirmative action, helping the adoption of Proposition 209, a 1996 California initiative to abolish
racial and gender preferences, and backing the Regents of the University of California who, in
1995, voted to end affirmative action in hiring and admissions.
That same year, President Bill Clinton tried to stake out a middle ground on the issue, arguing
that affirmative action was a flawed though necessary response to centuries of discrimination
against women, blacks, and other groups.
Many in the civil rights community went further in their defense of affirmative action, arguing
that white males still held a disproportionate number of powerful positions in society, and that laws
and programs mandating preferences were one way to combat that imbalance. These supporters also
argued that racism and sexism were still rampant, and that affirmative action was a small but just
part of national social policy.

Conclusion

Taking the long view, even though things are certainly not perfect for African Americans,
their political and economic situation has nonetheless undoubtedly improved in these past 50 years.
They have enjoyed a much more visible presence at the political level, for instance:
 In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American governor.
US History (Juliette Bourdin) 11

 In 1991, Clarence Thomas became the second African-American Supreme Court Justice (after
Thurgood Marshall).
 In 1992, Carol Moseley-Braun became the first African-American (female!) Senator.
 In 2000, almost 9,000 blacks were in office in the U.S.
 In 2001, there were 484 black mayors.
 Of course, there was the historic election, on November 4, 2008, of Democratic Senator
Barack Obama, who became the first African American to be elected President.
 And very recently, Kamala Harris was the first woman of both Asian and African descent
to be elected vice-president of the United States.

Likewise, African Americans have gained wider visibility in the culture at large, for
instance with people like basketball superstar Michael Jordan, TV celebrity Oprah Winfrey,
writer Toni Morrison, actors Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington, or Samuel L. Jackson, etc.
These past years, African Americans have denounced police violence, notably since 2013
when the movement called “Black Lives Matter” started to gain prominence in the U.S., after
George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin. Even
more recently, there were major demonstrations throughout the country after George Floyd was
killed by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. This time, many people from other
communities joined the African Americans in their demonstrations against police brutality and
racial injustice.