I | INTRODUCTION |
African American
History or Black American
History, a history of black people in the United States from their
arrival in the Americas in the 15th century until the present day. In 2000, 34.7
million Americans, about one out of every eight people in the United States,
were black. Although blacks from the West Indies and other areas have migrated
to the United States in the 20th century, most African Americans were born in
the United States, and this has been true since the early 19th century. Until
the mid-20th century, the African American population was concentrated in the
Southern states. Even today, a little over half of all African Americans live in
the South. Blacks also make up a significant part of the population in most
urban areas in the eastern United States and in some mid-western and western
cities as well.
II | AFRICAN HERITAGE |
Africans and their descendants have been a
part of the story of the Americas at least since the late 1400s. As scouts,
interpreters, navigators, and military men, blacks were among those who first
encountered Native Americans. Beginning in the colonial period, African
Americans provided most of the labor on which European settlement,
development, and wealth depended, especially after European wars and diseases
decimated Native Americans.
African workers had extensive experience in
cultivating rice, cotton, and sugar, all crops grown in West and North Africa.
These skills became the basis of a flourishing plantation economy. Africans were
also skilled at ironworking, music and musical instruments, the decorative arts,
and architecture. Their work, which still marks the landscape today, helped
shape American cultural styles. They brought with them African words, religious
beliefs, styles of worship, aesthetic values, musical forms and rhythms. All of
these were important from the beginning in shaping a hybrid American
culture.
III | THE SLAVE TRADE |
Portuguese traders brought the first
African slaves for agricultural labor to the Caribbean in 1502. From then until
1860, it is estimated that more than 10 million people were transported from
Africa to the Americas. The great majority were brought to the Caribbean,
Brazil, or the Spanish colonies of Central and South America. Only about 6
percent were traded in British North America.
The Portuguese, Dutch, and British
controlled most of the Atlantic slave trade. Most Africans taken to North
America came from the various cultures of western and west central Africa. The
territories that are now Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria were the origins of
most slaves brought to North America, although significant numbers also came
from the areas that are now Senegal, Gambia, and Angola. These areas were home
to diverse linguistic, ethnic, and religious groups. Most of the people enslaved
were subsistence farmers and raised livestock. Their agricultural and pastoral
skills made them valuable laborers in the Americas.
To transport the captured Africans to the
Americas, Europeans loaded them onto specially constructed ships with platforms
below deck designed to maximize the numbers of slaves that could be transported.
Africans were confined for two to three months in irons in the hold of a slave
ship during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean called the Middle Passage. The
meager diet of rice, yams, or beans and the filthy conditions created by
overcrowding resulted in a very high death rate. Many ships reached their
destinations with barely half their cargo of slaves still alive to sell into
forced labor in the Americas.
The first Africans brought to the English
colonies in North America came on a Dutch privateer that landed at Jamestown,
Virginia, in August 1619. The ship had started out with about 100 captives, but
it had run into extremely bad weather. When the ship finally put into Jamestown,
it had only 20 surviving Africans to sell to the struggling colony. Soon many of
the colonies along the Atlantic seaboard started importing African slaves. The
Dutch West India Company brought 11 Africans to its garrison trading post in New
Amsterdam (known today as New York City) in 1626, and Pennsylvanians imported
150 Africans in 1684.
IV | SLAVES IN COLONIAL AMERICA |
A | Occupation of Slaves |
The vast majority of Africans brought to
the 13 British colonies worked as agricultural laborers; many were brought to
the colonies specifically for their experience in rice growing, cattle herding,
or river navigation. For example, South Carolina planters drew upon the
knowledge of slaves from Senegambia in West Africa to begin cultivating rice,
their first major export crop. In the South, slaves grew tobacco in Maryland,
Virginia, and North Carolina, and rice and indigo in South Carolina and Georgia.
In the North, slaves also worked on farms.
African Americans, slave and free, also
worked in a wide variety of occupations. They were household workers, sailors,
preachers, accountants, music teachers, medical assistants, blacksmiths,
bricklayers, and carpenters, doing virtually any work American society
required.
B | Slave Populations |
By 1750 there were nearly 240,000 people
of African descent in British North America, fully 20 percent of the population,
though they were not evenly distributed. The greatest number of African
Americans lived in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina because large
plantations with many slaves were concentrated in the South. Blacks constituted
over 60 percent of the population in South Carolina, over 43 percent in
Virginia, and over 30 percent in Maryland, but only about 2 percent in
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In the Northern colonies,
enslaved people were much more likely to work in households having only one or a
few slaves.
Virtually all colonies had a small number
of free blacks, but in colonial America, only Maryland had a sizeable free black
population. Over the generations of enslavement, at least 95 percent of Africans
in the United States lived in slavery. But even as early as the 1600s, some
gained their freedom by buying themselves or being bought by relatives. Since
slavery was inherited through the status of the mother, some blacks became free
if they were born to non-slave mothers. Others gained their freedom from bondage
for meritorious acts or long competent labor.
C | Slavery versus Indentured Servitude |
Slavery was the most extreme, but not the
only form of unfree labor in British North America. Many Europeans and some
Africans were held as indentured servants. Neither slaves nor indentured
servants were free, but there were important differences. Slavery was
involuntary and hereditary. Indentured servants made contracts, often an
exchange of labor for passage to America. They served for a limited time,
commonly seven years, and generally received 'freedom dues,' often land and
clothing, upon finishing their indenture. Although some slaves gained freedom
after a limited term, others served for life, and a second generation inherited
the slave status of their mothers. Gradually by the 18th century, colonial laws
were consolidated into slave codes providing for perpetual, inherited servitude
for Africans who were defined as property to be bought and sold.
In their day-to-day lives, slaves and
servants shared similar grievances and frequently formed alliances.
Advertisements seeking the return of slaves and servants who had run away
together filled colonial newspapers. When a slave named Charles escaped in 1740,
the Pennsylvania Gazette reported that two white servants, a 'Scotch man'
and an Englishman, escaped with him. Sometimes interracial alliances involved
violence. During Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, slaves and servants took up arms
against Native Americans and the colonial government in Virginia. In 1712 New
York officials executed Native Americans and African American slaves for
plotting a revolt, and in 1741 four whites were executed and seven banished from
colonial New York for participating with slaves in a conspiracy. People in
similar circumstances—poor and unfree whites, Native Americans, and
blacks-formed alliances throughout the colonial era.
V | AMERICAN REVOLUTION |
A | Black Participation in the War |
After the British defeated the French in
the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the British began to change their
relationship with their American colonies. They started to increase taxes,
demanded that the colonists help pay for British soldiers stationed in the
colonies, and controlled the colonial trade opportunities more carefully. Most
colonists were outraged, particularly about the new taxes. They felt that Great
Britain did not have the right to tax them, since it did not allow them
representatives in Parliament.
Colonists, both black and white, worked
together to fight what they saw as British injustices. Interracial mobs rioted
against the Stamp Act of 1765 and other despised regulations imposed on the
colonies throughout the 1760s. American protests targeted British officials and
soldiers. In 1770 Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave of mixed African and Native
American descent, led an interracial crowd of sailors and laborers in attacking
the British guard at Boston's customs office. They threw snowballs, chunks of
ice, and stones; in response, the soldiers fired into the crowd, wounding six
and killing Attucks and four others. For rebellious Americans, the Boston
Massacre, as this event was named, symbolized Britain's armed determination to
deprive them of their rights.
When the American Revolution began in 1775,
all but 25,000 of the 500,000 African Americans in British North America were
enslaved. Many were inspired by American proclamations of freedom, and both
slaves and free blacks stood against the British. The black minutemen at the
Battle of Lexington in 1775 were Pompy of Braintree, Prince of Brookline, Cato
Wood of Arlington, and Peter Salem, the slave of the Belknaps of Framingham,
freed in order that he might serve in the Massachusetts militia. Prince
Estabrook, a slave in Lexington, was listed among those wounded in this first
battle of the war. African Americans also served in the Battle of Bunker Hill,
where former slave Salem Poor received official commendation as 'a brave and
gallant soldier.'
At first General George Washington refused
to recruit black troops. It was the British who made the first move to enlist
blacks. In November 1775 Lord Dunmore, the British colonial governor of
Virginia, issued a proclamation that all slaves belonging to rebels would be
received into the British forces and freed for their services. Tens of thousands
of slaves escaped from Southern plantations, and over a thousand fought for the
British. Tye, 'a Negro who [bore] the title of colonel' led one interracial
guerrilla band in New Jersey. In the South, such bands, called banditti, burned
and looted plantations, stole horses, and liberated slaves, some of whom became
British soldiers.
The demands of war eventually changed
Washington’s mind, and he began to recruit black soldiers. Before the war was
over, more than 5000 African Americans from every state except Georgia and South
Carolina served in the Revolutionary army. Slaves, many serving in their owner's
place, were promised freedom in return for their service. There were several
black regiments like the Rhode Island Regiment and Massachusetts' 'Bucks of
America,' but most African Americans served in integrated units, the last
integrated American army units until the Korean War in the 1950s.
Thus, African Americans in search of
freedom from slavery served on both sides during the Revolution. As a result of
the Revolution, the population of free blacks in the United States
increased-from about 25,000 in 1776 to nearly 60,000 when the first federal
census was conducted in 1790.
B | The Ideals of the Revolution |
Slavery was important to American patriots.
It was the opposite of liberty and served as a benchmark against which they
measured their own freedom. They continually warned that they would not be
denied their rights, saying they must not be the 'slaves' of England. The ideals
of the Revolution emphasized the incompatibility of slavery in a free land, and
slaves petitioned for their freedom using the words of the Declaration of
Independence.
African Americans hoped that men who wrote
such lofty words as “all men are created equal” would realize the immorality of
continuing to enslave their fellow countrymen. 'We expect great things,' one
group wrote, 'from men who have made such a noble stand against the designs of
their fellow men to enslave them.'
However, the American Revolution and the
American colonies’ fight against British oppression did not bring slavery to an
end. The words slave and slavery did not appear in the
Constitution written in 1787, but the framers of the Constitution struck a
compromise allowing the slave trade to continue until 1808. Slavery remained
important to the economy of the new nation, and after the Revolution, it became
more concentrated in the South.
VI | THE CONCENTRATION OF SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH |
In the North the rhetoric of the Revolution
proved a powerful argument against slavery. Starting with Vermont in 1777, one
Northern state after another either abolished slavery outright or passed gradual
emancipation laws that freed slave children as they reached adulthood. Although
abolition faced stiff opposition in areas of New York, Rhode Island, and New
Jersey, where slavery was most economically significant, by the mid-1820s
virtually all the slaves in the United States were in the Southern states. These
states were becoming more dependent on slave labor as cotton became an important
plantation crop.
In 1793 the invention of the cotton gin, a
simple device that revolutionized the processing of raw cotton, dramatically
increased the profitability of cotton cultivation. More slave labor was
dedicated to cotton production; slave prices increased, and the value of cotton
rose sharply. In addition, slavery spread southward and westward into the vast
area acquired from France through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. By 1815 cotton
was America's most valuable export, and the economic and political power of
cotton-growing states, often called the 'Cotton Kingdom,' grew
correspondingly.
The need for slave labor, and thus the price
of slaves, was much higher in states in the lower South, such as Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, than in the states of the upper South, including
Virginia and Maryland. The result was a thriving domestic slave trade that
devastated many slave households. Teenage boys and young adult men were
especially desirable laborers for the new areas, and slave families in the upper
South lost sons, brothers, and young fathers to the cotton plantations of the
lower South. At the time of the Revolution, most slaves were held along the
southeastern seaboard, but by 1860 the greatest concentrations of slaves were in
the lower South.
The lives of slaves were greatly influenced
by where they lived and worked. In Southern cities, slaves provided household
services, labored for small businessmen and merchants, and sometimes worked as
municipal garbage workers or firefighters. Both in cities and on plantations,
skilled slaves did the carpentry, built and sometimes designed the buildings,
crafted ornate furnishings, prepared elaborate meals, supplied music for
planters' formal balls and parties, and provided services ranging from
veterinary care to folk medicine for both whites and blacks. Plantations
employed small numbers of slaves as household servants and some as skilled
workers. Most slaves, however, worked in the fields. Plantation life, especially
in the lower South, was hard and dangerous, but because of the larger numbers of
slaves, it offered greater opportunities for establishing slave families and
communities.
As the South expanded westward and as
tobacco and rice cultivation gave way to cotton, the way slaves worked changed.
In the 18th and 19th centuries slaves working on plantations in the Sea Islands
of South Carolina and Georgia often labored under the task system. Typically, a
slave was given a task each day and worked until that task was completed. Once
the daily task was finished, the rest of the day was the slave’s own. The work
was extraordinarily hard, but the worker exercised some control over the pace of
work and the length of the workday.
On large 19th-century cotton plantations,
slaves usually worked in groups called gangs headed by slave drivers. The
driver, who was generally a slave selected for intelligence and leadership
ability, directly supervised the field laborers. Gangs worked the crop rows,
plowing, planting, cultivating, or picking, depending on the season. Unlike
those under the task system, these slaves had little control over their work
schedule beyond the rhythm of the work songs that regulated the pace of their
work.
The vast majority of white Southerners could
afford no slaves and struggled for basic self-sufficiency, but many slaveholding
planters were rich and politically powerful. By the 1850s there were more
millionaires in the plantations from Natchez, Mississippi, to New Orleans,
Louisiana, than in all other areas of the nation combined. By 1860 the 12
richest counties in the nation were all located in the South. The Southern
economy depended on slavery, and by 1860 the U.S. economy depended on the
Southern cotton that accounted for almost 60 percent of the value of all the
nation's exports.
VII | FREE BLACK POPULATION |
A | Discrimination Faced by Free Blacks |
The first federal census in 1790 recorded
nearly 60,000 free blacks, compared to more than 690,000 who lived in slavery.
Although most African Americans lived in the South (about 90 percent), 27,000
lived in the North. South and North, free blacks tended to concentrate in urban
areas, since cities afforded employment opportunities, greater freedom of
movement, and larger concentrations of people to support churches, schools, and
other organizations.
However, African Americans faced many
obstacles and prejudices not encountered by whites, even in areas where slavery
had been abolished. They were barred from most educational institutions, limited
to the least desirable residential and farming areas, often prohibited from
practicing trades and opening businesses, and generally segregated in public
conveyances and public worship. Except in a few New England states where their
numbers were small, black voting was restricted. In many states, especially in
the Midwest, they could not serve on juries or testify against whites in
court.
Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa
prohibited black immigration, and Illinois threatened bondage for blacks who
attempted to locate there permanently. In 1807 Ohio passed a series of 'black
codes' requiring free blacks to post a $500 bond assuring their good conduct and
self-support before they could settle in the state. Although these restrictive
laws were irregularly enforced, free blacks lived under their constant
threat.
African Americans' job opportunities were
always restricted, and poverty was a continuing problem. Ironically, black
skilled artisans were more likely to find employment in the South than in
Northern cities where they faced competition from European immigrants. Most free
black men in the North worked as servants, as day laborers finding temporary
work where they could, or as sailors aboard trading ships or whalers. Black
women most often worked as maids, laundresses, or cooks in homes, hotels,
restaurants, or other businesses.
B | Free Black Communities |
As early as the 1780s, African Americans
in Northern cities established hundreds of mutual aid societies, churches, and
fraternal organizations. Cooperative organizations provided benefits for burials
and support for widows, orphans, the sick, and the unemployed. This aid was
generally denied to blacks by white charitable societies. One of the first
examples was the Free African Society, which was founded by Richard Allen and
Absalom Jones in 1787. The same year Prince Hall organized the African Masonic
Lodge in Boston, and lodges of Prince Hall Masons were soon found in
Philadelphia, New York City, and throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Churches were among the first black
organizations established; they were the central institutions serving the
community's sacred, social, and political needs. Despite white opposition, some
independent black churches were organized in the South, generally with both
slave and free members but with free ministers. In the 1770s David George
founded the Silver Bluffs Church near Augusta, Georgia, and George Liele and
Andrew Bryan established the forerunner of the First African Baptist Church in
Savannah, Georgia.
In Philadelphia during the 1790s Jones
and Allen established Saint Thomas African Episcopal Church and the Bethel
African Methodist Episcopal Church respectively. Mother Bethel, as it was
commonly called, was one of the country's largest Methodist congregations, with
1300 members by 1810. In 1816 black Methodists from the Middle Atlantic states
formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church and named Richard Allen the first
bishop of this association. Other early black churches included New York's
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1796) and the Abyssinian Baptist Church
(1808), and Boston's African Baptist Church (1805).
C | Early Abolitionist Efforts |
By the 1830s, black communities had many
groups organized specifically to oppose slavery and promote racial advancement.
Schools and literary societies were common in the urban North, and virtually all
black organizations were dedicated to abolishing slavery. In 1830 communities
began sending delegates to an annual national Negro convention where they
discussed strategies for abolition and racial advancement.
Although African Americans also worked
with white allies in integrated antislavery organizations, they were determined
to let their own voices be heard. They published political and historical
pamphlets such as David Walker's militant Appeal to the Colored Citizens of
the World (1829). In 1827 John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish founded the first
black owned and operated newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in New York. Ten
years later Cornish became editor of the New York newspaper, Colored
American.
Continuing discrimination and legal
restrictions on social and political rights prompted some African Americans to
leave the United States. Some emigrated to Africa, going to places such as the
British African colony of Sierra Leone and Liberia, an area settled by freed
American slaves. Other destinations included the West Indies, Mexico, or Europe.
Paul Cuffe, a wealthy African American and Native American sea captain and
shipbuilder from Massachusetts, promoted colonization in Sierra Leone and took a
group of black settlers there in 1815. In 1816 the American Colonization Society
was formed to resettle free blacks and freed slaves in Africa. White
slaveholders were among its leaders, and most African Americans were suspicious,
rejecting their overtures. Still, by 1827, the Society had taken over 1400
volunteers, mostly free blacks from the upper South, to Liberia.
African Americans were also likely to
seek fuller freedom and safety from kidnapping or reenslavement by emigrating to
Canada where slavery was abolished in 1833. The vast majority, however, remained
in the United States, tied to their homes by kinship and a sense of entitlement.
They hoped to gain citizenship rights and were committed to fighting for the
freedom of those still enslaved.
VIII | ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT |
The antislavery cause gained much more
visibility in 1831 when white Boston newspaper editor William Lloyd Garrison and
his newspaper, The Liberator, joined African Americans in
demanding the immediate abolition of slavery. Though he was a pacifist, in 1831
Garrison published in his paper excerpts from Walker's Appeal, including
its call for slave revolt. That summer a revolt led by Nat Turner, a
slave, killed more than 50 whites in Virginia and increased slaveholders'
conviction that such antislavery propaganda was dangerous. Southern states and
local areas offered rewards for Walker, Garrison, and Garrison’s publisher and
newspaper agents, and prohibited the paper's circulation. Later that year,
Walker died suddenly at his shop in Boston; many suspected foul play.
A | Antislavery Societies |
In 1833 Garrison’s supporters, both
blacks and whites, organized the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). In less
than a year, this society had established 47 local chapters in ten states.
Members worked to convince Americans that slavery was immoral and argued for
immediate emancipation. They also provided aid to campaigns to end
discrimination and programs to educate blacks. Their attempts to win over major
religious denominations and Congress met with little success. Their speakers
were denied access to many churches and meeting houses, and for almost a decade
(1836-1845) Congress employed a 'gag rule,' refusing to hear their antislavery
petitions. Racial fears and public antagonism prompted mob attacks on
antislavery speakers and interracial gatherings.
Members of the AASS contended that the
Constitution was a proslavery document. Therefore, they argued that slavery
could not be fought with political strategies; it must be destroyed through
moral arguments. Other members of the AASS wanted to work through political
parties, even if it meant striking compromises with proslavery forces. They were
also uneasy about Garrison's attacks on most churches for failing to speak out
against slavery and his insistence on the full participation of women. In 1840
some abolitionists withdrew from the AASS and formed the American and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society. They announced their support for a new political party
called the Liberty Party, which was founded in 1839.
Many other activists eventually
supported working through political organizations to abolish slavery, including
the most famous antislavery orator, Frederick Douglass. Douglass had escaped
from slavery in 1838 and worked passionately for the antislavery cause. He
joined other men and women, such as Sojourner Truth and Charles Lenox Remond,
who traveled throughout the North testifying against slavery and organizing
moral and political opposition. Abolitionist women commonly organized fairs and
concerts to raise funds for antislavery work.
B | Underground Railroad |
Many members of interracial antislavery
societies added their efforts to the work of black churches and other black
organizations in a vast informally organized network known as the Underground
Railroad. The Underground Railroad helped shelter and transport fugitive slaves
who had escaped from the South. Most escaped slaves remained in Northern
communities, but some fled to black settlements in Canada, where they would be
safe from recapture. Although most slaves found aid from the Underground
Railroad only when they reached the North, some were aided by such 'conductors'
as Harriet Tubman who ventured into the South to lead people to freedom. Through
this underground, fugitives from slavery also escaped to freedom in the West
Indies, Mexico, and Native American territories in Florida and the West.
Abolitionist networks were also
activated in cases like the Amistad case. In 1839, 53 captured Africans
being transported to Havana, Cuba killed the crew of the ship, the
Amistad, and captured the vessel. Attempting to return the ship to
Africa, they were eventually taken into custody by American officials off the
coast of Long Island, New York, and charged with piracy and murder. Antislavery
forces convinced former President John Quincy Adams to defend them and
publicized their plight in newspapers and public meetings. Black communities and
antislavery activists mobilized to raise funds, producing a play in New York,
selling portraits of the leader of the captured Africans, Joseph Cinque, and
holding antislavery events. After appeals, the Supreme Court finally freed those
Africans who survived their two-year imprisonment on the grounds that they had
been kidnapped in an illegal slave trade and had acted in self-defense.
During the 1840s black abolitionists
became increasingly impatient with their slow progress and determined to widen
the antislavery struggle. New Yorker David Ruggles called for slave uprisings in
the pages of the Liberator in 1841. Black leaders began to more openly
support violence to protect fugitives from being returned to slavery. But the
growing power of the proslavery forces was signaled at the end of the decade
when Texas joined the Union as a slave state.
IX | THE CRITICAL DECADE OF THE 1850S |
Growing conflict between Southern
slaveholding interests and Northern antislavery activists prompted Congress to
negotiate the Compromise of 1850. The act satisfied the antislavery factions on
some points such as admitting California as a free state and abolishing slave
trading in the nation's capital. However, it appeased the proslavery factions by
including a new law to protect slaveholders' recovery of escaped slaves.
A | Fugitive Slave Act |
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was much
stronger than an earlier 1793 fugitive slave law. Armed with a legal affidavit
describing the fugitive, a slaveowner or his representative need only convince a
federal commissioner that a captive was his property. No court or trial was
necessary, and no defense was guaranteed. Particularly infuriating to blacks and
other abolitionists was the provision that compelled bystanders to assist in
captures or face fines and imprisonment.
Antislavery forces organized vigilance
committees to protect fugitive slaves from the increased danger, and many were
rescued from slavecatchers. For example, abolitionists spirited William and
Ellen Craft out of Boston and sent them to England; a group of blacks burst into
a Boston hearing room, freed Shadrach Minkins (known in Boston as Fred Wilkins)
and carried him to Canada; a crowd in Syracuse overwhelmed jail guards and freed
Jerry McHenry. There were also many unsuccessful rescue attempts, such as the
cases of Thomas Sims in 1851 and Anthony Burns in 1854, both of whom were
returned to slavery after reaching Boston. Such events generated public sympathy
for the antislavery cause. Resistance to the federal law in Boston was so strong
that 2000 soldiers were required to escort Anthony Burns to the ship that
returned him to Virginia.
B | Dred Scott Case |
Black anger and pessimism increased in
1857 when the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case. Scott, a slave,
had sued for freedom based on his having lived with his master for two years in
the free territory of present-day Minnesota. In a major victory for
slaveholders, the Court not only refused Scott’s petition for freedom but
declared that blacks were not American citizens. Further, it decided that
Congress could not bar slavery from the Western territories.
Such developments in the 1850s led blacks
to become more militant and fueled renewed interest in emigration among a
minority of African Americans. Converts to militant black nationalism included
Martin R. Delany who led an exploratory expedition to Africa in 1859.
When white abolitionist John Brown laid
plans to ignite and arm slave uprisings, he found many black supporters. Five
African Americans were among the 18 men whom Brown led in a raid on the federal
arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859. Although the
raid failed and Brown was hanged, black community gatherings commemorated John
Brown's martyrdom, and many considered Harpers Ferry the first skirmish in a war
against slavery.
X | THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR |
At the start of the American Civil War
(1861-1865), most white Americans in the North were not willing to fight to end
Southern slavery. They fought instead to preserve the Union and prevent slavery
from spreading into the Western territories. Many opposed expanding slave
territory because they believed that slaves were unfair competition to free
labor.
Many Southerners fought to protect and
expand slavery because they believed that limiting slavery would lead to its
destruction. Even most Southerners who did not own slaves considered slavery the
essential foundation of 'the Southern way of life.' 'This country without slave
labor would be completely worthless,' one soldier from Mississippi argued. Even
though most owned no slaves, they would 'fight forever,' an Alabama soldier
vowed, 'rather than submit to freeing Negroes among us.'
African Americans hoped the Civil War would
bring about the abolition of slavery. In anticipation, they formed military
units in many Northern cities in the 1850s.
War finally came in the spring of 1861, and
eleven Southern states seceded from the Union and formed their own nation, the
Confederate States of America (or Confederacy). The black military units offered
their service to the United States, but the federal government initially refused
to accept African American troops. Lincoln feared that doing so would encourage
the slaveholding border states to join the Confederacy. As casualties mounted
during 1862, however, U.S. military commanders sometimes recruited black
soldiers without explicit authority. Finally in July 1862 Congress gave the
president authority to use black troops.
In the South slave labor on farms and in
factories freed more whites to fight in the war. The slaves, however,
demonstrated their desire for freedom by escaping from Confederate plantations
by the tens of thousands. In the beginning of the war, some Northern commanders
returned slaves to their masters, and others forced escapees to work for the
U.S. Army. Then, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln turned U.S. war aims toward
slavery's destruction by issuing his Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves
held by those Southerners still in rebellion.
During the war, African American soldiers
who served in the Union Army were paid less than white soldiers and suffered
racist treatment. Confederates declared they would not treat captured black
soldiers and their white officers as legitimate prisoners of war. Instead they
threatened to treat captured black soldiers as runaway slaves and to execute
their white officers. At Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Confederate forces commanded by
Nathan Bedford Forrest, later an organizer of the Ku Klux Klan, murdered
hundreds of captured black soldiers in 1864. 'Remember Fort Pillow' became a
rallying cry for black soldiers who became more determined to defeat the
Confederacy.
By the end of the war, the United States had
depended on the services of over 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, 24 of whom
received the Medal of Honor.
In April 1865 the Union defeated the
Confederacy, and slavery came to an end. President Lincoln acknowledged the
critical role black troops had played in winning the war. A few days later, on
April 15, Lincoln was assassinated, and Vice-President Andrew Johnson of
Tennessee became president. In December of that year the states ratified the
13th amendment that formally abolished slavery. However, the U.S. victory and
the end of slavery did not bring complete freedom to Southern blacks. Instead,
the process of rebuilding the Union, known as Reconstruction, began.
XI | RECONSTRUCTION |
Even before the war ended, the government
had begun discussing how to deal with the aftermath of the war. In March 1865
the U.S. War Department established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands, commonly called the Freedmen’s Bureau. The bureau was headed by
Union General Oliver Otis Howard and furnished food and medical supplies to
former slaves. It also established schools and helped former slaves negotiate
fair wages and working conditions.
But when the war ended, the national
government had not yet determined how best to reunite the country. Views on how
to treat the defeated Confederacy varied. Some people felt that the South could
be reconciled with the Union by simply acknowledging the abolition of slavery,
while others were convinced that the region’s social, economic, and political
systems would have to be thoroughly reconstructed.
President Johnson, a Democrat from
Tennessee, advocated leniency for the South. He granted amnesty freely to
Southern whites, and his only requirement for readmitting a state to the Union
was the adoption of a state constitution that outlawed slavery and disavowed
secession. Encouraged by Johnson, Southern planters maintained much of their
political power and passed black codes to restrict blacks’ land ownership and
freedom of movement.
People in the North became upset by the
ease with which the Southern planters were reestablishing their dominance.
Republicans in Congress fought with the president to change his Reconstruction
policies. After the Democratic Party suffered a major defeat in the elections of
1866, the Republican Party took charge of Reconstruction, pursuing a more
radical course. Congress passed the 14th Amendment in 1866 (ratified by the
states in 1868). It extended citizenship to blacks and protected their civil
rights by forbidding the states to take away “life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.”
In March 1867 Congress passed the
Reconstruction Act which was strengthened by three supplemental acts later the
same year and in 1868. The Reconstruction acts divided the former ten
Confederate states into five military districts, each headed by a federal
military commander. This created a federal military occupation of the former
Confederate states. (Tennessee was exempt because it had ratified the 14th
Amendment and was considered reconstructed.) Before applying for readmission to
the Union, the Southern states were required to ratify the 14th Amendment and
revise their constitutions to ensure that blacks had citizenship rights,
including the right to vote.
In 1870 the states ratified the 15th
Amendment. This amendment prohibited the denial of the right to
vote based on race. Finally, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which
forbade racial discrimination in “inns, public conveyances on land or water,
theaters, and other places of amusement.”
Federal occupation temporarily extended
democracy in the South, assuring former slaves the vote and thereby enabling
them to elect black leaders to political office. In states with the largest
black populations, African Americans and their white Republican allies
established and improved public education for white and black students, ended
property qualifications for voting, abolished imprisonment for debt, and
integrated public facilities.
In 1868 John W. Menard became the first
African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana,
where nearly 50 percent of the population was black. Congress refused to seat
Menard, but others followed. In 1870 Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the
first black person to sit in the U.S. Senate. In all, 20 blacks from Southern
states served in the U.S. House of Representatives and 2 in the U.S. Senate
during Reconstruction.
In addition, hundreds of African Americans
were elected to state and local offices in the South. In South Carolina, African
Americans were almost 60 percent of the population, and at times they held the
offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and speaker of
the house. Although no state elected a black governor, Louisiana's lieutenant
governor, P.B.S. Pinchback, who had once been denied a seat in the U.S. Senate,
served as acting governor after the white governor was removed from office on
charges of corruption.
Southern Democrats were determined to
restore conservative Southern government. They charged Republican officials,
especially blacks, with corruption. They cited rising taxes as evidence of
wasteful spending. In reality, however, taxes rose as services such as public
education were instituted for the first time or expanded in the South. The
political corruption that characterized this era was led primarily by Northern
business interests exploiting the government for their own ends, not by black
Southern politicians.
To regain power in state governments,
Southern Democrats used violence to keep black voters away from the polls.
Throughout Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups
conducted terrorist attacks on African Americans and their allies to limit
Republican political power and restrict black opportunities. Hundreds of blacks
were killed for attempting to vote, for challenging segregation, for organizing
workers, or even for attending school. In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant
declared martial law in nine South Carolina counties because of the
proliferation of lynchings and beatings. In 1873 white terrorists massacred more
than 60 blacks on Easter Sunday in Colfax, Louisiana, and killed 60 Republicans,
both blacks and whites, during the summer of 1874 in nearby Coushatta. They
killed 75 Republicans in Vicksburg, Mississippi in December 1874.
Even as Reconstruction ended, blacks
continued to make some gains. In 1877 former slave and abolitionist, John Mercer
Langston, became U.S. minister to Haiti, and Frederick Douglass served as
federal marshal of the District of Columbia. During the late 1870s and the
1880s, several additional black colleges founded in the South joined Howard
University in Washington, D.C., Morehouse College in Georgia, and Morgan State
University in Maryland in broadening educational opportunities for black
students. In 1888 Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C., opened as the first
African American bank in the United States, and others followed in Richmond,
Virginia; Birmingham, Alabama; and elsewhere in the South.
XII | EROSION OF BLACK RIGHTS |
Reconstruction came to an end gradually,
as Democrats took over state governments from Republicans. In the last three
states, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, Reconstruction ended as part of
an apparent political compromise. Both Democrats and Republicans claimed victory
in those states in the elections of 1876. However, leaders of the national
Republican Party agreed to recognize Democratic claims to state offices in
return for receiving the electoral votes of those states for Republican
presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, who thereby won the election.
After 1877 Democratic governments were in
power in all the Southern states, and they continued taking away black rights.
This was done in many different ways—laws that enforced the separation of blacks
and whites, the sharecropping system that kept blacks economically dependent on
whites, and the increased disenfranchisement of blacks. Northern whites were
tired of spending time and money on the South. As a result, the discrimination
and oppression of the African Americans in the South went largely
unchallenged.
A | Emigration from the South |
By the late 1870s much of the optimism
of emancipation had faded to the reality of the post-Reconstruction South.
Thousands of blacks, landless and poor, decided to leave the South. In 1878 over
200 blacks sailed from Charleston harbor for Liberia in Africa. Many others
decided to move west to the new territories that had been opened to settlement.
In the 'Exodus of 1879,' sometimes called the Exoduster Movement, almost 20,000
blacks left Mississippi and Louisiana for the frontiers of Kansas, Nebraska,
Colorado, and Oklahoma. They established a number of all-black towns like
Langston, Oklahoma, and Nicodemus, Kansas, planted farms, settled in cities, and
worked in mines.
Some blacks, especially those with
Native American ancestry, found homes with Native American nations, and a few
followed in the footsteps of black explorer and mountainman James Beckwourth,
who had traveled throughout the West. In 1856 Beckwourth had
published his memoirs entitled Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth,
Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer. Some African Americans went west with the
U.S. military, as part of the all-black Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Units that
Native Americans called Buffalo Soldiers. Others went with wagon trains or as
cowboys, moving cattle to market.
B | Jim Crow Laws |
The 1880s witnessed a profusion of
segregationist legislation, separating blacks and whites. The system of Southern
segregation was often called the Jim Crow system, after an 1830s minstrel show
character. This character, a black slave, embodied negative stereotypes of
blacks. One after another, Southern states passed laws segregating blacks and
restricting African American rights in almost every conceivable way. For
example, Tennessee initiated segregated seating on railroad cars in 1881.
Florida (1887), Mississippi (1888), and Texas (1889) followed. In Alabama, laws
prohibited blacks and whites from playing checkers together; in Louisiana,
statutes ordered that there be separate entrances for blacks and whites at
circuses. All Southern states prohibited interracial marriages.
Conditions for blacks in the South
deteriorated further when the Supreme Court ruled against federal guarantees of
African American rights. In 1883 the Court declared the Civil Rights Law of 1875
unconstitutional. In a series of cases, the Court also drastically undermined
the 14th Amendment's protection of black citizenship rights and narrowed federal
protection of the right to vote guaranteed by the 15th Amendment. Finally in
1896 the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was
legal.
C | Sharecropping |
Reconstruction failed to eliminate black
economic dependency largely because it did not provide African Americans with
the land they needed to be independent. During the war, former slaves believed
that they had earned the right to abandoned or confiscated Confederate lands
through generations of uncompensated labor. Holding land might bring economic
independence, and initially, it seemed as if the government might support their
claim.
In January 1865 Union General William T.
Sherman had issued Special Field Order No. 15, setting aside abandoned lands on
the sea islands and the coastal region of South Carolina and Georgia for
exclusive use of the region's freed population. Former slaves were given
temporary titles to 40-acre plots of land with the promise that the titles would
be made permanent by appropriate legislation. However, President Johnson
reversed Sherman's order and ordered the abandoned plantations to be returned to
their former owners.
By the 1880s a majority of former slaves
had become sharecroppers, often working land that belonged to their former
masters for a share of the profits. As Republicans in the South were
driven from office or killed by terrorists, sharecroppers were left without
protection and were frequently cheated by white landowners. Laws forced debtors
to work the land until debts were paid, and landowners often manipulated credit
to insure that sharecroppers ended each year in debt. Those who questioned the
landowner’s accounting might be arrested for bad debt. Those convicted were
often leased out to work on the same plantation, but without wages. Landowners
in need of laborers might have local police invoke vagrancy laws against blacks
who refused low-paying jobs.
D | Increased Disfranchisement |
White Southerners also increased their
domination in the South by denying blacks the right to vote. Because the 15th
Amendment to the Constitution prohibited denying the right to vote based on
race, white Southerners developed other ways to disfranchise blacks. Beginning
in Mississippi in 1890, they passed laws making it more difficult to vote, such
as those that required a person to pay a poll tax or pass a literacy test. These
laws discriminated against blacks who were often poor and illiterate, and many
were removed from the voting rolls. Officials exempted poor whites who could
pass the 'good conduct test' by having a person of good standing in the
community vouch for them. After 1898, Southern states adopted 'grandfather
clauses,' which allowed illiterate and propertyless men to vote if their
grandfathers had been eligible to vote prior to the abolition of slavery in
1865. Almost no blacks could meet this requirement.
Perhaps the most effective barrier to
black political power was the white primary election. The primary determined the
candidates who would run in the general election, but since the Democratic Party
was the majority party, the candidates that it nominated in its primary always
won the election. Primaries were the real election. Beginning in the 1890s
Democrats were able to bar blacks from voting in the primary on the pretext that
the party was a private club and thus not subject to federal laws prohibiting
discrimination.
As Democrats reasserted political
authority in the South, African Americans had few legal or humanitarian
protections. Throughout Reconstruction, blacks were hanged without formal charge
or trial. The reported lynchings increased from about 50 a year in the early
1880s, to about 75 a year in the mid-1880s, and averaging well over 100 a year
during the 1890s. Between 1890 and 1900 more than 1200 African American men and
women were lynched in the United States. Thus, by the end of the 19th century,
Southern black people lived under the constant threat of terrorism, were denied
access to public facilities supported by their taxes, were relegated to the
worst schools, and labored under an unjust economic system enforced by
discriminatory laws.
XIII | AFRICAN AMERICAN RESPONSES |
A | Rise of Populism |
In the 1890s black farmers and white
farmers, joined by common poverty and unjust treatment from wealthy planters and
business interests, attempted to construct an interracial political alliance.
This populist movement (see Populism) organized a political party, the
People’s Party, and recruited blacks, some of whom were still voting in the
mid-1890s. The party advocated political equality, and white populist leaders
such as Georgia’s Tom Watson spoke out against the poll tax and other measures
that discriminated against blacks. African Americans saw the populists as
potential allies against the racism that threatened their rights, and many
risked their lives to campaign for populist candidates. Black minister H.T. Dole
gave 63 speeches on behalf of Watson; in Georgia, 15 black populists were killed
during the state elections of 1892. Some white populists saw African Americans
as allies in their campaign to take power from Southern Democrats and elected
blacks to positions in the People’s Party.
But the appeal of white supremacy was
too strong. This coalition fell apart after 1896 as a result of intimidation and
racist appeals to whites. The Ku Klux Klan's racist beliefs that all whites were
superior to all blacks meant that whites were never at the bottom of society. In
the end these beliefs were far more appealing than the prospect of an
interracial political alliance.
B | Racial Accommodation |
African Americans debated the best
response to the rising tide of racial discrimination. Black educator Booker T.
Washington reacted to this erosion of rights by advocating a policy of racial
accommodation. Washington, who had been born into slavery, believed that protest
aiming for social integration and political rights was doomed to failure in the
South. Instead, he urged blacks to acquire occupational skills for economic
advancement. He argued that African Americans were the backbone of Southern
labor and urged sympathetic whites to encourage manual and agricultural
education for blacks to strengthen the Southern economy. With the financial
support of wealthy white businessmen, he established the Tuskegee Institute (now
Tuskegee University) in Alabama in 1881 to educate black workers.
Washington's school was remarkably
successful, considering the racially hostile atmosphere. His accommodationist
stance made him one of the most influential African Americans among powerful
whites during the late 19th and early 20th century, but many blacks resented his
seeming willingness to accept without protest the deprivation of African
American rights.
Many college-educated blacks disagreed
with Washington and pursued equality through political and social protest. Ida
B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, William Monroe Trotter, and W.E.B. Du Bois were
among those who established such all-black groups as the African American
Council, the Niagara Movement, and in 1909, the interracial National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They demanded their civil
rights and worked against the Jim Crow system of segregation through the courts
and, where possible, through politics.
XIV | BLACK CULTURE IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY |
During the last quarter of the 19th
century, black urban societies in the South grew as many agricultural workers
sought work and the relative safety of the city. Black women in particular found
jobs as domestics in the homes of the growing white middle class. A few African
Americans found work in the new Southern textile mills and tobacco factories,
but most of those jobs were reserved for whites. Generally, Southern blacks in
the cities, like those in rural areas, teetered on the edge of poverty, although
such Southern cities as Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New Orleans, Memphis, and
Atlanta had small but significant black middle class communities.
As black urban communities grew, they
offered a broader range of social institutions and educational opportunities.
Cities attracted many blacks who had been educated at Howard, Fisk, Atlanta,
Hampton, and other black colleges established during the 19th century. The
growth in the size and literacy of the urban black populace stimulated cultural
and intellectual activity. Blacks published newspapers and magazines in all
substantial African American communities.
The composers Scott Joplin and W. C. Handy
and the poet-novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar were among the black artists who
achieved prominence at the turn of the century. Many other lesser-known
musicians and writers combined Western musical styles with rhythmic and melodic
forms rooted in Africa and in slavery to create American jazz. This musical
style reflected African notions of improvisation and community and developed
distinctive regional styles, from the Dixieland popular in New Orleans and the
western South to the more sophisticated sounds that became the cool jazz of the
southern Atlantic states. As blacks migrated to the West and the North, they
carried these regional musical styles with them.
XV | THE GREAT MIGRATION |
During the first decade of the 20th
century, the infestation of Southern cotton crops by insects called boll weevils
diminished production and curtailed the need for farm labor. Growing
unemployment and increasing racial violence encouraged blacks to leave the
South. Soon after, in 1914, World War I broke out in Europe. Although the United
States did not enter the war until 1917, its factories supplied the combatants.
American industry needed labor, and the war slowed European immigration. In
response, Northern manufacturers recruited Southern black workers to fill
factory jobs. From 1910 to 1930 between 1.5 million and 2 million African
Americans left the South for the industrial cities of the North. By 1930 more
than 200,000 blacks had moved to New York, about 180,000 to Chicago, and more
than 130,000 to Philadelphia.
The sudden influx of newcomers to
established Northern black communities brought not only new vitality but also
new problems. Tensions grew between long-time black residents and the new
emigrants, who were generally poor and sometimes illiterate. Cheap taverns and
dance halls sprang up to cater to them, and they established new churches (often
storefront quarters) that rivaled older more traditional black churches.
As black communities in Northern cities
grew, black working people became the clientele for an expanding black
professional and business class, gaining in political and economic power. This
new black leadership replaced traditional leaders whose status often depended on
their connection to influential whites. New leaders were more likely to have
power based in the black communities and were freer to express a sense of racial
pride and solidarity with working class African Americans.
Under these conditions, many social
conflicts gradually gave way to an increasing sense of racial pride and social
cohesion. While Jim Crow laws and political terrorism continued to discourage
blacks from voting in the South, African Americans in Northern cities became an
important political force. Black fraternal orders, political organizations,
social clubs, and newspapers asserted an urban consciousness that became the
foundation for the militancy and African American cultural innovations of the
1920s.
XVI | WORLD WAR I |
With America’s entrance into World War I
the military needs drained manpower from Northern industries. Increasing job
vacancies enticed more black migrants to urban industrial centers, and for the
first time, substantial numbers of black women held industrial jobs. Thousands
of black women worked in industrial plants producing goods for the war effort
and for a growing domestic consumer market. Most appreciated the higher pay and
greater autonomy compared to domestic work. As black communities in the North
grew, so did opportunities for blacks, more of whom became politicians,
newspaper publishers, real estate brokers, insurance agents, lawyers, and
teachers, serving the black communities.
African Americans also went to war;
approximately 400,000 black soldiers served in the armed forces. Over half of
the African American men who served in the war were stationed in France. They
served in segregated units, and most were assigned as cooks, laborers, cargo
handlers, or to other noncombat support positions, but some black regiments saw
extensive combat duty. Some black regiments were recognized for their
achievements; the entire 369th regiment—along with some members of the 370th,
371st, and 372nd regiments—was awarded the Croix de Guerre by France for
distinguished service.
Despite their demonstrated military
proficiency and bravery, black soldiers were insulted and harassed by white
soldiers. Some American military officials attempted to establish the Jim Crow
system in France. General John Pershing, commander of the Allied forces, issued
a document called 'Secret Information Concerning the Black American Troops.”
This document warned French military leaders against treating black soldiers as
equals, but French people were unconcerned about such American practices and
often welcomed black soldiers as heroes.
Most black leaders supported America's
involvement in the war, but not all agreed. Labor leader A. Philip Randolph and
socialist Chandler Owen vigorously opposed World War I and were sentenced to
over two years in jail for publishing their views. Leaders were united, however,
in the view that blacks' wartime sacrifices entitled them to first-class
citizenship. At the end of the war, African Americans were determined to demand
respect from the nation for which they had fought.
XVII | THE POSTWAR YEARS |
As African American veterans returned
home, white opposition to wartime gains intensified. In 1917 a white mob invaded
the black community in East Saint Louis, Illinois, and killed hundreds of
African Americans. During the same year, the U.S. Army summarily court-martialed
a group of black soldiers and hanged 13 without the benefit of an appeal after a
black battalion rioted in reaction to white harassment in Houston, Texas. After
the war, many black soldiers in uniform were attacked or killed by whites
attempting to enforce racial domination. During the 'Red Summer' of 1919,
antiblack riots occurred in scores of cities including Longview, Texas;
Washington, D.C.; and Chicago, Illinois. These attacks continued into the 1920s
and made African Americans even more determined to militantly defend their
rights.
College-educated blacks were still few in
number, but they generally provided articulate political and cultural
leadership. Black leaders were united in believing that blacks’ wartime
sacrifices entitled them to first-class citizenship. Younger African Americans
exemplified a militant “New Negro” who demanded respect and full equality from
America and refused to take no for an answer.
The most popular militant black leader
during this period was a Jamaican immigrant named Marcus Garvey who established
the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), an international
organization, in 1914. The UNIA had two to four million members at its height.
Garvey was an outspoken critic of racial injustice, who appealed to black pride
and identified with black working classes and the poor. His public appearances
in New York's Madison Square Garden and elsewhere attracted tens of thousands of
people.
Garvey was also highly critical of what
he considered elitist middle class black leadership. He was particularly opposed
to the integrated NAACP and to W.E.B. Du Bois, the editor of its Crisis
magazine. In return, black civil rights leaders sharply criticized Garvey. His
popularity and militancy also led to his surveillance by the U.S. government. In
1922 Garvey was arrested for mail fraud in connection with a steamship line he
had established to pursue trade with Africa. His subsequent conviction and
imprisonment, and his deportation in 1927, sent the UNIA into rapid
decline.
A | The Harlem Renaissance |
Marcus Garvey’s career was part of the
growth in racial pride and awareness that characterized the 1920s. During this
period Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City, became the North's largest and
the world's best-known African American community. It was the home of the Harlem
Renaissance, a black cultural community of intellectuals, poets, novelists,
actors, musicians, and painters. This community included Alain Locke, a Harvard
graduate and Rhodes scholar, who was one of several black academics who promoted
African American and African culture. Other important figures were Zora Neale
Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay. Their work was publicized by white
patrons and black newspaper and magazine editors and found a wide audience in
the United States and Europe. Although Harlem was the most widely known center
of U.S. black culture, the cultural renaissance flourished in other cities with
substantial black populations such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington,
D.C.
The growth of black communities in the
North also led to greater black political influence. Black politicians were
elected to many state and local offices in the North. In 1928 Chicago's Oscar
DePriest became the first African American from outside the South to serve in
Congress. Political organizations represented the interests of both the emerging
black middle class and those of less affluent blacks, an example of the racial
pride and unity with which African Americans met white racism.
B | The Great Depression |
The African American cultural
renaissance lost momentum in the 1930s as people focused on the Great
Depression, a worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929. Even before the
depression, unemployment and poverty among blacks were high, but the economic
downturn devastated black communities. The economy was bad for everyone—17
percent of whites could not support themselves by 1934. Yet, 38 percent of
African Americans were unable to support themselves by that year because large
numbers of blacks were often fired to make room for unemployed white workers.
African Americans lost their jobs at a much higher rate than whites and remained
out of work longer. In some black communities 80 percent of the people were on
relief, receiving surplus food, clothing, and other aid from the government, and
black unemployment ranged as high as 60 percent.
These statistics translated into a
falling standard of living for African Americans that was more drastic than for
their fellow white citizens. The median annual black family income in Harlem
dropped by nearly half between 1929 and 1932, and wage levels were lower for
blacks than for whites. Businesses took advantage of the situation. One
Philadelphia laundry, for example, advertised for black female workers at $9 to
$10 weekly and for white female workers at $12. At the same time, Harlem
landlords could charge rents of $12 to $30 a month, higher than comparable
housing elsewhere, because Harlem was one of the few places where blacks could
live.
But since the depression hit both
blacks and whites, it made interracial action and reform more feasible.
Unemployed veterans of World War I, both black and white, organized the Bonus
Expeditionary Force to protest economic conditions. About 20,000 veterans took
part in the Bonus March on Washington in the spring and summer of 1932,
demanding early payment of their veteran's benefits. In the South, black and
white tenant farmers and sharecroppers worked together to demand fair treatment
and a greater share of farm profits. A few blacks were drawn to the Communist
Party when it recruited their support and ran a black candidate, James Ford, for
vice-president in 1932, 1936, and 1940.
The labor movement was another area
where blacks and whites worked together. All-black organizations, such as the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, led by A. Philip Randolph, worked with the
industrial unions that joined the interracial Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) to forge a new, more militant labor movement. Labor unions
played an important role in forming the National Negro Congress, headed by
Randolph, which was organized to promote black economic interests.
XVIII | THE NEW DEAL |
To counteract the effects of the Great
Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a domestic program called
the New Deal. Roosevelt's New Deal was a series of government programs designed
to adjust the economy in ways that would increase employment. First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt encouraged the organization of a 'Black Cabinet' composed of notable
African Americans to help shape New Deal programs.
Generally these black advisers were not
politicians but community leaders, such as educator Mary McLeod Bethune, social
worker Lawrence A. Oxley, and poet Frank S. Horne. Some held official positions
in the Roosevelt administration. William H. Hastie, dean of the Howard
University Law School, was appointed assistant solicitor in the Department of
the Interior and later became aide to the Secretary of War. Ralph Bunche worked
in the State Department, and Bethune was director of the Division of Negro
Affairs of the National Youth Administration. By the mid-1930s, Roosevelt had
appointed 45 African Americans to serve in his New Deal agencies.
The New Deal had mixed results in
the black community. Federal relief programs provided financial aid to
desperately poor blacks, jobs for many, and government-financed housing. Some
black workers benefited from administration efforts to protect industrial
workers when New Deal policies guaranteed unions the right to strike. Many more
benefited from consumer strikes and boycotts that black leaders organized to
force white businesses to hire black workers. In New York, Chicago, Washington,
D.C., and other cities, thousands of blacks participated in “Don’t Buy Where You
Can’t Work” campaigns. In New York’s Harlem, for example, boycotts led to many
more clerical, sales, and executive jobs for African Americans. Working together
during the New Deal strengthened long-standing alliances between blacks and
white liberals. These alliances were a foundation for subsequent civil rights
reforms.
Yet, New Deal programs maintained racial
segregation, especially in the South, and by the end of Roosevelt's second term,
black unemployment was still extremely high. Further, the Roosevelt
administration was reluctant to confront the legal segregation faced by Southern
blacks, and New Deal programs did not help those hurt by the decline in
agricultural prices. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) aided farm
owners but did little for farm workers, some of whom were fired when the federal
government provided financial incentives to cut farm production.
The Social Security Act brought
assistance to many workers, but it excluded farmers and domestics—65 percent of
all African American workers. Similarly, the bulk of black workers were not
covered by National Recovery Administration codes (see National
Industrial Recovery Act). Additionally, many federal housing programs
perpetuated residential segregation. Roosevelt also declined to support proposed
federal legislation against lynching and did little to relieve discrimination
against blacks in federal relief programs.
One of the most dramatic developments
that took place during the 1930s was the realignment of black voters. Blacks in
large numbers switched their votes to the Democratic Party, deserting the
Republican Party, the party of Lincoln that blacks had supported since
Reconstruction. This shift took place partly as a result of blacks’ involvement
in labor unions that generally supported the Democrats, and partly in response
to Republican efforts to attract Southern segregationists. By the 1934
congressional elections, two years after Roosevelt won the presidency, most
blacks voted Democratic for the first time.
During the 1930s, the NAACP led a
vigorous legal battle against discrimination, concentrating on ways to end legal
segregation, especially in education. The legal strategy for this battle was
formulated by Charles Houston, former dean of the Howard University Law School,
and Thurgood Marshall, a former student of Houston’s. The NAACP focused on the
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision which had allowed
separate facilities for blacks as long as they were equal to those provided for
whites. Since they were almost never equal, the NAACP attempted to force
Southern states to make them so.
The NAACP gained an initial
victory in 1938 when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the admission of a black man
to the University of Missouri law school because the state had failed to provide
such facilities for blacks. The next year, attacks on legal segregation were
intensified as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was created, and Marshall became its
director.
Blacks and their white allies
demonstrated their determination to fight segregation when the Daughters of the
American Revolution refused to allow internationally acclaimed black singer
Marian Anderson to appear at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. In protest,
civil rights advocates arranged for Anderson to give an outdoor concert at the
Lincoln Memorial. The symbolism was clear to over 75,000 blacks and whites who
attended the concert on Easter Sunday 1939.
XIX | WORLD WAR II |
In the late 1930s and the early 1940s, the
attention of African Americans focused on events in Europe—rise of dictators,
Germany's invasion of Eastern Europe, and Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. Blacks
protested Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and raised funds for Ethiopian relief.
Black newspapers ran stories about the invasion, and the Pittsburgh
Courier sent its own correspondent to North Africa to cover the
story.
African Americans were also quick to
recognize the danger of Nazism and its theories of Aryan superiority. To many,
it resembled the segregationist rhetoric of the American South. At the Berlin
Olympics of 1936, black track star Jesse Owens carried the pride of nonwhites as
he symbolically confronted Hitler's theories. In races against Germans and other
Europeans, Owens won four gold medals.
By the end of 1940, France had fallen to
Hitler's forces, and Germany, Italy, and Japan had formed an alliance. Within a
year, Japan had moved into China and Southeast Asia. The United States imposed
trade sanctions on Japan, but these failed to restrain Japan’s expansion. On
Sunday morning December 7, 1941, Japan attacked American forces stationed at
Pearl Harbor and other U.S. military facilities on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands.
A black mess attendant aboard the USS West Virginia, Dorie Miller, was
among those later cited for distinction during the battle. In the heat of
battle, he pulled his wounded captain to safety. Although he had never fired a
machine gun before, Miller shot down as many as four attacking planes, for which
he later received the Navy Cross for heroism.
When the war began in Europe in 1937,
there were only about 5000 black enlisted men and fewer than a dozen black
officers in the regular army. Before the war ended in 1945, more than a million
black men and about 4000 black women had served in the armed forces. Nearly half
served abroad, most in Europe and North Africa, but thousands also served in the
Pacific. African Americans served in all branches of the military during the
war.
In 1941 the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the
first black combat unit in the Army Air Corps, was established in Tuskegee,
Alabama. More than 600 black pilots trained for this highly decorated unit. They
completed more than 500 missions in the first year of America's involvement in
the war. Over 80 were decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross for combat
over France, Germany, North Africa, and Eastern Europe.
Yet even as blacks participated in the war
abroad, black military troops suffered all too familiar discrimination at home.
In 1941, 100 African American officers were arrested for protesting the
whites-only policy of the officer's club at Freeman Field in Indiana. In 1943
William Hastie, aide to the U.S. Secretary of War, resigned his office to
protest racial discrimination in the armed forces.
By 1940 American factories were hiring new
workers for war production, finally relieving the depression's stubborn
unemployment. But blacks benefited less than white workers from rising
employment and increased wages. Discrimination in employment and wage policies
continued to create disadvantages for black workers.
Early in 1941, A. Philip Randolph met with
Roosevelt administration officials to demand equal employment for blacks in
industries working under federal government defense contracts. He threatened to
lead 100,000 African Americans in a march on Washington, D.C., to protest job
discrimination. Negotiations were heated, but finally Roosevelt issued Executive
Order 8802 forbidding discrimination based on race, creed, color, or national
origin in the employment of workers for defense industries with federal
contracts. The order also established a Fair Employment Practices Committee
(FEPC) to oversee the implementation of the order. Roosevelt's actions
immediately opened thousands of steady well-paying jobs to black workers and
encouraged a new surge of migration from the South to Northern cities.
The need for labor opened factory work to
women and drew large numbers from the domestic jobs many had taken during the
worst days of the depression. Working in war industries, black women found that
the pay was better and the work was generally less physically demanding than
domestic work. Also many black women who had lost domestic jobs to white women
during the 1930s now returned to take those jobs as whites left them. African
American men and women fully engaged in the war effort were determined to pursue
a 'Double V Campaign,' victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at
home. Consequently, the pace of civil rights protest quickened during the
mid-1940s.
XX | POSTWAR CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVITIES |
The struggle against Hitler's theories of
racial supremacy spurred some whites in the United States to accept racial
equality. This acceptance was strengthened by the writings of numerous scholars,
including the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, author of An American Dilemma:
The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Other scholarly and literary
publications increased whites' understanding of the black experience, notably
the novel Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright; Black Metropolis
(1945), an important sociological study by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton;
and From Slavery to Freedom (1947) by historian John Hope Franklin.
Drawing on increasingly liberal racial
attitudes, the interracial Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), formed in 1942,
conducted nonviolent sit-ins and demonstrations in Chicago, New York, and other
Northern cities throughout the 1940s. These sit-ins challenged racial
segregation and had some success at integrating public accommodations such as
restaurants. Supreme Court rulings in the 1940s struck down many methods of
segregation. In 1944 the court outlawed Southern Democrats' white primaries,
striking down their argument that the party was a private club and primary
elections were open to club members only. In 1946 it ruled that segregation in
interstate bus travel was unconstitutional, and in 1947 it disallowed racial
discrimination in the federal civil service.
The late 1940s also saw the color barrier
fall in many areas of society that had been all white. One of the most dramatic
instances occurred in 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers,
becoming the first black to play major league baseball in the 20th century. In
1949 Wesley A. Brown became the first African American to graduate from the U.S.
Naval Academy.
Following the war, the GI Bill, funded by
the government, gave new educational opportunities to veterans and promised
greater economic prosperity. Blacks were determined to be included. Thousands of
black veterans enrolled in technical training or colleges and universities,
financed by government benefits. These black veterans paved the way for ongoing
increases in African American college enrollments. The number of African
American college students increased from 124,000 in 1947 to 233,000 in
1961.
African Americans continued to migrate from
the rural South to the urban North to improve their economic status. From 1948
to 1961, the proportion of blacks with low incomes (earning below $3,000 a year)
declined from 78 percent to 47 percent; at the same time the proportion earning
over $10,000 a year increased from under 1 percent to 17 percent. Although black
income improved, it remained far below that of whites. Black median income in
1961 was still lower than white median income had been in 1948.
Whites reacted violently to the wartime
movement of blacks to urban areas in the North and the West. By the late 1940s,
as the black percentage of city populations increased, more and more whites
moved to the new suburbs that often restricted black residence. Conflicts
between black workers and white workers over housing and jobs developed in some
cities. In Detroit in 1943, for example, 25 blacks and 9 whites died in a race
riot before federal troops restored order.
XXI | THE COLD WAR |
The growing black population in Northern
cities provided decisive support for liberal Democratic candidates who in turn
backed civil rights reforms. Race became an important issue in postwar politics.
In 1947 the NAACP presented a petition to the United Nations (UN). It documented
the history of racism in America and was discussed for two days by the UN Human
Rights Commission. President Harry S. Truman created a Presidential Commission
on Civil Rights. In response to pressure by black leaders, President Truman
issued executive orders designed to eventually desegregate the armed forces and
prevent discrimination in federal employment.
Southern Democrats were angered by
Truman’s actions and by Northern Democrats’ adoption of a strong civil rights
plank in the 1948 Democratic Party platform. They split from the Democratic
Party and formed the States’ Rights Party, whose members were known as
Dixiecrats. African American influence on national politics was clear in 1948
when Truman was elected president after receiving only a minority of white
votes.
The Cold War, which began during the
Truman administration, also became a factor in postwar race relations. During
the Cold War, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) engaged in an intense economic and political struggle for the allegiance
of people around the world. As part of the Cold War, the United States began a
campaign against Communism, the economic system of the USSR, both at home and
abroad. The anti-Communist campaign had a mixed impact on black America.
In the world arena, the United States
presented itself as the champion of freedom and democracy against the
totalitarianism of Soviet Communism. The United States was embarrassed by its
denial of rights to African Americans. Supporting black rights and appointing
African Americans to prominent governmental positions bolstered America's
claims.
At home, however, the campaign against
Communism resulted in efforts to identify and prosecute Communists. From 1951 to
1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his Senate subcommittee investigated
allegations of Communist activities. McCarthy charged many accomplished
Americans with disloyalty, including black singer Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du
Bois. Such activities made it harder for people to express political dissent and
to support progressive organizations for labor and black rights.
XXII | THE BROWN DECISION |
During the 1940s and 1950s, NAACP lawyer
Thurgood Marshall directed a carefully constructed legal campaign against
Southern segregation laws. These laws separated blacks and whites in such areas
of public life as schools, restaurants, drinking fountains, bus stations, and
public transportation. The NAACP focused on segregation in education, and won a
number of court victories, culminating in the Supreme Court's ruling in 1954 in
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This ruling declared
that separate facilities were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional,
thus reversing the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling.
However, President Dwight D. Eisenhower
did not support a strong federal role in enforcing desegregation, an attitude
that encouraged Southern resistance. State troopers were used in Texas to
prevent integration; people who supported integration risked losing their jobs;
and segregationists set off bombs in Tennessee and Alabama. In a 'Southern
Manifesto,' 101 congressmen vowed to resist integration.
Meanwhile, after three years of
negotiation, the black community and the school board in Little Rock, Arkansas,
devised a plan to enroll nine black students at Central High School. When the
plan was implemented in the fall of 1957, Governor Orval Faubus used the
National Guard to block the black students from entering the school. The public
outcry forced Eisenhower to act. He put the National Guard under federal
direction and sent federal troops to enforce the Brown decision and protect the
students from white mobs. Nevertheless, the following year, Faubus closed all of
Little Rock's high schools rather than integrate them. Ten years after the
Brown decision, less than two percent of Southern black children attended
integrated schools.
Whites in many areas of the South
organized private white schools rather than accept integration. In 1959
officials in Prince Edward County, Virginia, moved white students and state
education funds to hastily organized white private schools. For four years,
until privately funded black schools could be organized, black students in the
county had no schools. Finally in 1963 the county complied with court rulings
and reopened the public schools. During the early 1960s, it was necessary to
maintain federal troops and marshals on the University of Mississippi campus to
ensure the right of a black student to attend classes.
XXIII | THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUAL RIGHTS |
The Brown decision energized
other action in the Southern civil rights movement. One critical effort began in
Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, when a black activist named Rosa Parks
was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the
back of a city bus. Parks’s actions were backed by the local NAACP, which
organized a boycott of the city’s buses. It asked a 26-year-old minister named
Martin Luther King, Jr. to be the spokesperson for the boycott organization. The
black community faced threats and violence but continued the boycott for more
than a year until the Supreme Court demanded the integration of Alabama buses.
In 1957 a group of ministers led by King formed the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) to continue organizing nonviolent actions against
Southern segregation.
Inspired by the bravery of students
integrating Central High School in Little Rock, in February 1960 four black
college students in Greensboro, North Carolina took seats at the “whites-only”
lunch counter in Woolworth's department store and waited to be served. They were
refused service, but their sit-in continued. A few days later the number of
students 'sitting-in' had grown to 150. Whites harassed and violently attacked
the students, and the events were covered by newspapers and television. This
coverage brought the demonstrators national attention, and protests spread
quickly. During that year, 75,000 students—both black and white—staged sit-ins
in 75 localities. Over 5600 protesters were arrested, 2000 of them for picketing
outside Northern stores that had segregated Southern branches.
In April 1960 Ella Baker, the executive
director of SCLC, convened a meeting of student leaders to try to coordinate
these local spontaneous demonstrations and establish a relationship with the
students. The students formed a separate organization called the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), with its own leadership. SNCC adopted
the commitment to nonviolence at the urging of King and other civil rights
activists and worked with other civil rights organizations.
A | Freedom Rides |
In May 1961 SNCC and CORE set out to
test compliance with a Supreme Court ruling that prohibited segregation in
facilities for interstate travel. To do so, they revived a protest strategy CORE
had used in 1947. They organized what became known as the Freedom Rides—bus
trips throughout the South that attempted to desegregate buses and bus stations.
After informing federal authorities of their plans, the Freedom Riders—seven
blacks and six whites—set out from Washington, D.C., aboard two buses. Along the
way, the freedom riders encountered violent resistance from whites. In South
Carolina, whites beat and kicked two riders. In Alabama, whites attacked and
burned one bus and severely beat riders in both buses, leaving one man
permanently paralyzed. The riders ended their protest in Birmingham, Alabama;
they were unprotected by the police and were unable to find a bus driver willing
to continue the trip.
Then Diane Nash, a SNCC member,
recruited other freedom riders, eight blacks and two whites, to try to complete
the ride. Again they met with violence. This time the riders attracted more
attention from the media, and White House officials ordered their protection by
federal marshals and national guardsmen. Riders were nevertheless arrested and
imprisoned in Mississippi for entering a “whites-only” waiting room.
B | Nonviolent Protests |
Throughout the South, various types of
nonviolent protests took place. Activists boycotted stores that refused to hire
blacks, marched in protests against discrimination, and worked to change laws
that enforced segregation. In 1963 more than a million demonstrators were
involved in massive protests, and many demonstrators were attacked by whites
determined to maintain racial dominance.
In the spring of 1963 SCLC began a
campaign in Birmingham, Alabama to try to end segregation. The local police
force responded with violence, turning fire hoses on demonstrators and attacking
them with dogs. Federal troops were sent to quell the violence. In reaction to
the attacks on the demonstrators, President John F. Kennedy introduced civil
rights legislation designed to end segregation in public facilities.
The growing power of the civil rights
movement was demonstrated on August 28, 1963 when more than 200,000 peaceful
demonstrators marched on Washington, D.C. Protest leaders called for
congressional action in civil rights and employment legislation, and Martin
Luther King, Jr., electrified listeners with his 'I Have A Dream' speech. In
November, President Kennedy was assassinated, and in the aftermath of this
tragedy, the civil rights bill that had languished in Congress was passed in
June 1964. Six months later, Martin Luther King, Jr., became the youngest person
ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
C | Voter Registration |
Beginning in 1961 SNCC and CORE
organizers undertook a dangerous campaign in Mississippi, attempting to register
black voters despite intense white resistance. By 1962 Robert Moses, a black
Harvard-educated schoolteacher, had assembled a staff of organizers to work with
local residents. To bring attention, and perhaps some protection, to their
efforts, the workers organized the Mississippi Summer Project, also known as the
Freedom Summer project. They recruited and trained over 1000 Northern
volunteers—including African American and white students. These volunteers
helped people to register to vote and ran freedom schools providing basic
education and African American history. Within the first two weeks, two whites,
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and one black, James Chaney, were
murdered. Fear and danger followed the remaining volunteers that summer.
The Summer Project increased the
number of black voters in Mississippi. It also led to the creation of the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a political party open to all
races. The MFDP unsuccessfully challenged the seating of an all-white
Mississippi delegation at the Democratic national convention. However, voting
registration efforts were helped by a series of marches to demand black voting
rights in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The protests and the violence that
accompanied them prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to introduce new
voting-rights legislation. Passed that summer, its impact was dramatic: in
Mississippi, the percentage of blacks registered to vote increased from 7
percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1968.
D | Black Power and Black Pride |
Years of Southern civil rights
activism had increased black pride and militancy throughout the nation. The
achievement of legislation for integration and voting rights focused attention
on the remaining barriers to black freedom and opportunity—economic deprivation
and continuing white resistance. Under the strain of constant attacks, black
leaders such as SNCC chairperson Stokely Carmichael began to question the
commitment to nonviolence and to argue for all-black leadership.
They were impressed by Malcolm X, the
Northern leader of the Black Muslim organization who advocated black pride and
armed self-defense. In 1966, the year after Malcolm's assassination, Carmichael
raised the cry for black power. Many traditional civil rights leaders were
appalled by the slogan. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood the slogan's appeal
but feared its explosive potential and tried to emphasize black power's
connotations for black pride and self-esteem. The slogan, however, resonated in
the Northern inner cities. There housing discrimination restricted blacks’
choices, and judging from poverty and unemployment rates, African Americans had
never recovered from the Great Depression.
In August 1965 racial violence erupted
in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in response to the lack of economic
progress and conflicts with white police. In the summer and fall of 1966, 43
cities experienced racial violence. That October, two black college students,
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, organized the Black Panther Party in Oakland,
California to promote community service and armed self-defense for inner-city
residents. One of its first actions was to establish patrols in black
communities to monitor police activities and protect residents from police
brutality.
The Black Panthers enjoyed wide appeal
among young men in the Northern cities. The party quickly became a target for
repression that included undercover informants and surveillance by the
police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As Martin Luther King,
Jr., began to speak out against American involvement in the Vietnam War
(1959-1975) and to emphasize the need for economic changes, he too became a
target for government surveillance and harassment. In the summer of 1967, major
race riots erupted in Newark, Detroit, and other American cities. Often this
violence was attributed to tensions between black residents and white police
accused of brutality. In February 1968 the presidentially appointed Kerner
Commission reported that America was becoming 'two societies, one white, one
black—separate and unequal.' In April, King was assassinated in Memphis, and the
wave of racial violence that followed seemed to confirm those conclusions.
While black leaders were debating the
effectiveness of nonviolent strategies, the nation was becoming more involved in
the Vietnam War. The war led to divisive national debates. In 1965, when
President Johnson ordered air raids over North Vietnam, the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party denounced the war and declared that black men should not submit
to a war for freedom abroad when they did not have freedom at home. Many older
civil rights leaders warned against alienating the Johnson administration by
opposing the war, since Johnson had supported civil rights. Younger, more
militant blacks were more likely to oppose the war; they joined the public
demonstrations that became more frequent as troop levels in Vietnam escalated
and as the number of black soldiers and casualties became proportionately higher
than for whites.
XXIV | THE STRUGGLE FOR ECONOMIC EQUALITY |
During the late 1960s and 1970s, civil
rights activists began to concentrate on eliminating the remaining barriers to
black freedom and opportunity. Although segregation by law (de jure segregation)
in the South had been defeated, segregation by custom (de facto segregation)
still remained. In the South, legal segregation had been supplemented by
customary racial segregation, but even in the North where there generally were
no segregation laws, custom enforced racial segregation.
African Americans had been barred from
many restaurants, movie theaters, nightclubs, and other public accommodations by
customary practice. Generally, landlords in white neighborhoods would not rent
to black tenants, forcing them to pay higher rents in the only housing available
to them in black neighborhoods. Banks denied financing, and real estate agents
refused to show houses in traditionally white areas to blacks even if they could
afford them.
Discriminatory hiring practices confined
most black workers to the least secure, lowest paying jobs regardless of their
qualifications. Those few opportunities open to black professionals like
doctors, lawyers, and teachers were in positions and institutions serving the
black community. As a result of limited opportunities, by the beginning of the
1960s, more than half of African Americans had incomes below the poverty
line.
A | The Poor People’s Campaign |
SCLC leaders focused on the issues of
poverty and discrimination, continuing the Poor People's Campaign that Martin
Luther King, Jr., had begun. The Poor People’s Campaign sought the passage of
federal legislation that would provide full employment, establish a guaranteed
income, and promote the construction of low-income housing.
In May 1968 Ralph Abernathy, who had
been King’s lieutenant, established an encampment called Resurrection City on
the Mall in Washington, D.C. It drew 2,500 mostly black and Native American
temporary residents, nearly twice the number that organizers had planned on.
Within a month, mud and unsanitary conditions produced by heavy rains reduced
the encampment to fewer than 300 people. In June 1968 an interracial group of
50,000 marched in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate their support for the Poor
People’s Campaign. They were ultimately unable to gain the sympathetic attention
of Congress and the country. At the end of the month, the demonstrators were
ordered to evacuate, and on June 24th the police evicted the 100 who refused to
leave amid clouds of teargas.
B | Busing |
As civil rights leaders turned their
attention to de facto segregation in the North, they devised a different
strategy for improving educational opportunities for black students. Since
schools were supported by property taxes, there were great differences in
resources available for education between poorer inner cities and wealthier
white suburbs.
Integrationists in some metropolitan
areas devised temporary plans to bus children to schools outside of their
neighborhoods as a way to integrate urban schools. Busing had been used for many
years to maintain segregated school systems in the South, but whites opposed
this new form of busing vehemently. They challenged the legality of busing in
the courts, but these challenges were unsuccessful. The Supreme Court declared
busing for educational integration constitutional, and many state and local
courts ordered cities to develop busing plans.
These plans had their greatest effect
on working class ethnic neighborhoods near inner cities. The newest,
best-equipped schools, which were predominately in affluent white suburbs, were
less likely to be affected. Busing raised parents’ concerns about having their
children attend school far from home. Although they welcomed the opportunities
better schools provided, black parents, whose children were most often bused,
worried about the students’ adjustment to a strange and often hostile school
environment. These concerns and continued opposition from many whites ensured
that busing remained controversial through the 1990s.
XXV | CONSERVATIVE BACKLASH |
Antipoverty programs and civil rights
gains had positive effects: The black middle class grew and black unemployment
shrank to under 7 percent in 1968 and 1969. In the early 1970s, however, rising
inflation and an economic downturn caused widespread economic uncertainty among
African Americans. To deal with difficult economic issues, a new generation of
black leaders established new organizations. In 1971 Jesse Jackson founded
Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) in Chicago to work for the
economic advancement of poor people, and in 1973 Marian Wright Edelman began the
Children’s Defense Fund, an organization that lobbies for children’s rights and
welfare.
The contracting economy also provoked
white opposition to programs that had benefited African Americans. White
reaction to expanded black economic and educational opportunities was often
harsh; white protestors burned buses, harassed black school children, and
supported local politicians who opposed black equality. A surprising number of
Northern voters supported the independent presidential candidacy of
segregationist George Wallace in 1968 and 1972.
In response the campaign and then the
presidency of Republican Richard M. Nixon turned away from civil rights. Nixon
nominated people opposed to busing as judges on the Supreme Court, thereby
beginning a shift to conservatism on the court. Yet, the nation's ambivalence
was apparent in 1977 when 'Roots,' the serialization of Alex Haley's story of
generations of his African and African-American family, became the most popular
television program in history and transfixed 130 million viewers.
A | The Carter Years |
When Georgian Jimmy Carter was elected
president in 1976, he appointed more blacks to influential positions in the
federal government than any president before him, and he seemed to have a deep
personal commitment to racial equality. However, the economic situation
deteriorated under his presidency. The Congressional Black Caucus labeled
Carter's federal budget favoring military spending over domestic funding for
social relief programs 'an unmitigated disaster' for black people. Black
unemployment had remained in double digits since the mid-1970s, twice the rate
for whites.
B | The Reagan Years |
The hostile reaction among social and
economic conservatives to black progress continued to grow during the 1980s. In
the presidential election of 1980, most blacks saw little alternative to
supporting Carter over the Republican Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a conservative
whose tax cutting, antispending policies as governor of California had caused
hardship among the state's poorest citizens.
Reagan spoke to the racial and gender
stereotypes of many conservative white Americans when he criticized those on
welfare as taking advantage of taxpayer's money. He was committed to a smaller
federal government and fewer federal resources for the poor. On election day, 90
percent of the black vote went for Carter, but Reagan won by a comfortable
margin, especially in the South, where only Carter's home state of Georgia went
Democratic.
During the Reagan administration,
defense spending increased, federal tax revenues declined, the national debt
reached an all time high, and governmental support for social programs dwindled.
For African Americans, the consequences of these changes were alarming. To
protest Reagan’s policies, 300,000 members of labor and civil rights groups
organized Solidarity Day in Washington, D.C., in 1981.
By the end of the decade, the after-tax
income of the richest one percent of Americans had increased by 87 percent,
while the income of those at the bottom of the economy diminished. Black
unemployment also grew during the 1980s; by 1990, more than one in every four
adult black men between the ages of 24 and 54 were out of work. The rate was
much higher for young black men in the inner city, and overall black
unemployment was two-and-a-half times higher than white unemployment. In 1983
black unemployment stood at a record high of almost 21 percent. Correspondingly,
the overall black poverty rate rose so that by 1989 almost one-third of all
black Americans were below the poverty line, more than three times the rate for
whites.
Rising unemployment and increasing
poverty had tragic consequences for many African Americans. The percentage of
black families headed by single women increased, and single-parent black
households were almost twice as likely to fall below the poverty line as those
with two parents and thus two incomes. The crime rate in America rose, and the
effect was magnified in poor black communities. One study calculated that on any
given day during the 1980s, 23 percent of all black men in the United States
were under some form of judicial supervision. Military-style weapons and
powerfully addictive drugs made gang violence more deadly and swelled the
numbers of young people killed in the inner city.
Not only did poverty and unemployment
and their deadly effects increase for black Americans, but the income gap
between them and white Americans grew dramatically. That gap had decreased
during the 1960s and early 1970s, but by 1984 the disparity had returned to the
level it had been in 1960. Yet, some middle class blacks had become more
economically secure, as the proportion of black households earning incomes of
$50,000 or more rose 46 percent during the 1980s.
XXVI | AFFIRMATIVE ACTION |
During the 1960s the Kennedy
administration devised a strategy to increase employment opportunities for
minorities they called affirmative action. Originally affirmative action
required contractors doing business with the federal government to take positive
steps to insure that employees were not discriminated against because of race,
creed, color, or national origin.
Later, President Johnson argued that
fairness demanded affirmative action to compensate for past racial injustice and
discrimination. His Executive Order 11246 signed in 1965 augmented the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, committing the federal government to seek not 'just equality
as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.' Two
years later, Johnson broadened his order to embrace gender equality as well.
During the late 1960s and 1970s, the public and private sectors devised plans to
increase the racial and gender diversity in work places and classrooms to bring
blacks into jobs and schools where they had previously been denied
admission.
By the late 1970s, the concept of
affirmative action in higher education was challenged in the Supreme Court by
Allan Bakke, a white student who had been denied admission to Davis Medical
School at the University of California. Bakke charged that he had been the
subject of 'reverse discrimination' because black students with lower academic
credentials had been admitted to the school. Advocates of affirmative action
pointed to the number of white students with academic records inferior to
Bakke's who had been admitted to the school under so-called legacy admissions
provided to the children of alumni. They argued that the university often
considered factors other than grades in its admissions decisions. The Court
ignored these arguments and ordered Bakke admitted. However, the Court upheld
the concept of affirmative action, ruling that race could be considered in
admissions in the interest of creating a racially diverse student body.
One year later the Court ruled that
labor unions and businesses could design special programs aimed at helping
blacks get jobs and promotions where it was shown that there had been 'manifest
racial imbalance.' In 1980 the Court approved Congress's right to impose goals
for minority representation as a means for increasing the number of minority and
female contractors doing business with the federal government and to counteract
past discrimination.
In the more conservative political
atmosphere of the 1980s, the federal government shifted its stand on affirmative
action and the protection of civil rights won in the 1960s. Under the
administration of President Ronald Reagan, the Justice Department announced in
1981 that it would no longer require federal contractors to maintain affirmative
action programs, nor would it enforce busing as a means of correcting
discrimination in public education.
The Supreme Court continued to send
mixed signals. In 1985 it declared that affirmative action programs designed to
bring more minorities and women into state employment were constitutional. But,
by the end of the decade, it had ruled against Richmond, Virginia's 'set aside
program' designed to reserve 30 percent of the city's public work for minority
contractors. It had not, however, specifically outlawed affirmative action
programs as a method to redress past racial inequities.
Throughout the 1990s, affirmative action
remained one of the nation's most divisive racial issues. Some people continued
to see it as reverse discrimination and used the language of the civil rights
movement to condemn the use of racial or gender preferences. California voters
rejected the affirmative action programs that had helped integrate the state's
university system. The state of Washington passed a similar initiative.
Affirmative action plans in other states and in private industry were also
attacked severely.
In 2003 the administration of President
George W. Bush presented arguments before the Supreme Court in support of
lawsuits that sought to end affirmative action programs at the University of
Michigan. The Court, however, rejected the arguments and reaffirmed the goal of
racial diversity in higher education. In its first major decision on affirmative
action since the 1978 Bakke decision, the Court upheld an affirmative
action program at the University of Michigan Law School, which considered race
as one of many factors in selecting applicants. Although the ruling restated the
diversity principle, the Court’s majority opinion in Grutter v.
Bollinger also noted that a permanent justification for racial
preferences should not be enshrined. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the
opinion, called for a reevaluation of the need for affirmative action in 25
years.
XXVII | POLITICAL AND SOCIAL GAINS |
Despite obstacles, African Americans
made political gains. By organizing at the state and local level, African
Americans were able to increase black political representation. By 1968 nine
African Americans, including the first black woman, Shirley Chisholm, had been
elected to Congress, the largest number since 1875. Twelve were elected in 1970,
and the following year they formed the Congressional Black Caucus for a stronger
voice in federal affairs.
Coalitions of blacks, Hispanics, and
whites in the Democratic Party brought an impressive number of African Americans
to office in many major cities. In 1970 Kenneth Gibson was elected mayor of
Newark; in 1973 Thomas Bradley was elected in Los Angeles, Maynard Jackson was
elected in Atlanta, and Coleman Young was elected in Detroit. In 1983 Harold
Washington was sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago, and black victories
continued in major and minor cities and in statewide elections in the 1980s,
1990s, and 2000s.
Meanwhile, the number of blacks in
Congress also grew. By 1994 the membership of the Congressional Black Caucus
stood at 40, including Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, the first black woman to
be elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1989 General Colin Powell became the first
African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and L. Douglas Wilder
was elected governor of Virginia, the first elected black governor in American
history. Powell later became the first black secretary of state in 2001 and was
succeeded by another black, Condoleezza Rice. In 2004 African American Barack
Obama of Illinois was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 2006 Massachusetts
elected its first black governor, Deval Patrick. The same year Minnesota voters
sent the first black Muslim, Keith Ellison, to the U.S. House of
Representatives.
One of the most hopeful signs of racial
progress during the decade was civil rights leader Jesse Jackson's run for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. Jackson was the first black man to
mount a serious campaign for a major party's presidential nomination. He won
Virginia's Democratic primary and 6.6 million primary votes nationally. Jackson
did not win the nomination, but he amassed 1,200 delegates at the Democratic
convention and was recognized as a major power in the party.
In 1983 Vanessa Williams became the
first African American to win the Miss America Contest, and The Color
Purple (1982) by black author Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for
literature. In 1993 Toni Morrison became the first African American to win the
Nobel Prize for literature. Such black performers and sports stars as Michael
Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Bill Cosby became national icons.
XXVIII | RACE AND CLASS |
Developments in the last decades of
the 20th century seemed to justify the title of one of the era's most
influential books, The Declining Significance of Race (1978), by William
Julius Wilson. It argued that economic class was beginning to replace race as
the determinant of individual opportunity for African Americans. Falling incomes
for many blacks accompanied rising financial and professional opportunities for
others. At the same time that inner city residents were facing growing
insecurity on the streets and in their homes, blacks were becoming more visible
and influential in city halls, state houses, and the halls of Congress.
Yet, public racial intolerance and
shocking acts of racial violence offered disturbing signs that race was still
very significant. A young black man was killed in 1986 in Howard Beach, a white
residential section of New York City. He was attempting to escape a mob that
challenged his right to be there. In a similar incident three years later, a
black teenager was killed by a white gang in the Bensonhurst section of
Brooklyn. Another divisive issue in the 1980s was white opposition to
legislation making the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a national holiday.
Then in 1991, video pictures of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King, a black
motorist stopped for a traffic violation, were broadcast on national TV. For
many, this was visual proof that police brutality continued against African
Americans. The acquittal of the white officers involved by an all-white jury
sparked national outrage and a race riot in Los Angeles.
XXIX | DIFFERING RACIAL PERCEPTIONS |
During the 1980s and 1990s a number of
publications and public debates documented the divergent ways blacks and whites
viewed race. They showed that blacks and whites saw the existence of racial bias
and the consequences of racial discrimination quite differently: many whites
believed that racial discrimination had declined, while many blacks believed
that more needed to be done to combat racial discrimination.
The extent of conflicting racial views
was revealed by the differing reactions to the murder trial of black sports
commentator and former football star O.J. Simpson in 1995. Simpson was accused
of murdering his estranged wife and her companion, and his lawyers presented a
defense that charged the Los Angeles police with racial bias. The televised
trial became a public spectacle dramatizing opposing perceptions of the legal
system. The jury’s not guilty verdict outraged most whites who saw it as a
miscarriage of justice and satisfied many African Americans who considered it a
justifiable indictment of police racism. Television recorded these contrasting
reactions to the verdict: a white crowd stunned, a black group elated.
The racial divide in America remained a
critical issue in the late 1990s. In 1995 Nation of Islam leader Louis
Farrakhan, perceived by many whites and some blacks to be a purveyor of
anti-Semitism, organized the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Although many
condemned Farrakhan as a black racist, the Million Man March brought hundreds of
thousands of black men to Washington to show black pride and solidarity.
Participants pledged themselves to work for positive change in their
communities. Two years later, a call for a Million Woman March brought tens of
thousands of black women to Philadelphia in a similar show of concern.
Race remained one of America's most
contentious issues. In 1997 President Bill Clinton asked Americans to come
together in frank discussions of race and led some of the conversations
personally. Suggestions that the president apologize for slavery received little
public support. Congress refused to support proposals for an African American
Museum on the Mall, in Washington, D.C. Arson claimed hundreds of black churches
in 1996 and 1997, but white churches and businesses provided aid for their
reconstruction. Such conflicting signs provided evidence that race was still
America's unresolved dilemma.
Some attempts to atone for America’s
racist past were made as the 21st century began. In 2001 and 2002 two men were
convicted on state charges for the bombing of a black church in Birmingham,
Alabama, that killed four young girls attending Sunday school. Previously, no
state charges had been filed in the case. In 2005 the United States Senate
formally apologized to lynching victims and their descendants, most of whom were
African American, acknowledging the Senate’s failure to pass federal
anti-lynching legislation. The same year a jury in Philadelphia, Mississippi,
convicted Edgar Ray Killen, a former Ku Klux Klan member, of manslaughter in the
1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Previously,
the men responsible for the murders had only faced charges of violating federal
civil rights laws. Killen’s trial represented the first time anyone involved in
the abduction and murders of the three civil rights activists had faced state
murder and manslaughter charges.
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