The road to the 1950s and 60s civil rights struggle was a long one. After African Americans began to lose rights in the latter nineteenth century, they turned to accommodation, a policy particularly associated with black leader Booker T. Washington. He advocated for African American to accept second-class political status in return for (limited) economic opportunities, on the assumption that once they had an economic base, they would earn political power. This did not work, and Supreme Court decisions (most notoriously Plessy v. Ferguson) legalized segregation. After World War II, black activists like Rosa Parks began to train at places like the Highlander School in Tennessee, and by the 1950s, black leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr, were rising up to protest the injustices against Southern African Americans that never seemed to change.
King and other leaders realized that asking for change or going along with white people in the hope they might be "nice" was a failed strategy. They adopted the non-violent protest methods of Mahatma Gandhi and began openly agitating for change. An impetus in the early 1960s was the 100 year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. African Americans, who were continuously segregated, denied the vote, and discriminated against, particularly in the South, felt that now was the time: they had waited long enough for promised equality.
World War II and the racist atrocities of the Nazis helped create an environment in which the white public was receptive to black equality. African Americans in the South were tired of riding in the back seats of buses, not being able to use the same water fountains as white people, not being able to sit at the same lunch counters, and in many, everyday ways being constantly humiliated and treated as second-class citizens. They began to protest in earnest at a time when the dominant society was open to hearing their voices.
Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the era of Reconstruction and emancipation brought initial freedoms to black Americans. However, following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the lives of blacks were again negatively affected by southern state governments as restrictive legislature and political violence swept over the south. One such set of laws were Jim Crow laws that allowed for "separate but equal" treatment of blacks and forced segregation of southern society.
Although institutions were separate, they were never equal. Southern state governments allocated funds disproportionately to white and black institutions and continued to hamper the ability of black people to enjoy equal treatment. This was accomplished through policies including laws against interracial marriages, curfews, literacy tests at voting booths, laws against having black jurors, and discriminatory hiring practices.
After the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to move to the back of a public bus to make room for a white passenger, a boycott of the city’s buses ensued. One of the leaders of the boycott, Martin Luther King Jr., would rise to prominence and become a key figure in the civil rights movement.
But the fight for equal rights did not begin in 1955. Many black Americans had already enjoyed greater freedoms after serving in the military during WWI and II, while many more migrated north to work in factories such as those for the automotive industry in Detroit. This disparity in freedoms and living conditions began resonating among many people in the country who had, up until then, worked behind the scenes for equal treatment of black Americans.
After the scenes from Birmingham, Alabama, played out on national television, where police dogs attacked innocent protesters, things changed dramatically. The civil rights movement gained national momentum and widespread support, forcing political action at the federal level. This culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing equal rights for all Americans.
https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/federal/civil-rights-movement/
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott
No comments:
Post a Comment