African American History

201 effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked. Jim Crow in the Early 1920s The separation of African Americans from the general population was becoming more formalized during the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), but it was also becoming increasingly ingrained tradition. Even in cases where Crow laws did not expressly forbid black people to participate in sports or recreation, for instance, culture did. As a result, the presidential election of 1912 was steeply slanted against the interests of African Americans. Most black Americans still lived in the South, where they had been effectively disenfranchised, so they could not vote at all. While poll taxes and literacy requirements banned many poor or illiterate Americans from voting, these stipulations frequently had loopholes that exempted white Americans from meeting the requirements. In Oklahoma, for instance, anyone qualified to vote before 1866, or related to someone qualified to vote before 1866 (a type of “grandfather clause”), was exempted from the literacy requirement—but the only people who could vote before that year were white male Americans. That is to say, white Americans were effectively excluded from literacy testing, whereas black Americans were singled out by the law. 11.3 Exodusters Introduction In 1879, an African-American man from Louisiana wrote a letter to the governor of Kansas that read in part: "I am very anxious to reach your state, not just because of the great race now made for it but because of the sacredness of her soil washed by the blood of humanitarians for the cause of black freedom." This man was not alone. Thousands of African-Americans made their way to Kansas and other Western states after Reconstruction. The Homestead Act and other liberal land laws offered blacks (in theory) the opportunity to escape the racism and oppression of the post-war South and become owners of their own tracts of private farmland. For people who had spent their lives working the lands of white masters with no freedom or pay, the opportunities offered by these land laws must have seemed the answer to prayer. Many individuals and families were indeed willing to leave the only place they had known to move to a place few of them had ever seen. The large-scale black migration from the South to Kansas came to be known as the "Great Exodus," and those participating in it were called "exodusters."

202 Conditions in the Post-War South The post-Civil War era should have been a time of jubilation and progress for the AfricanAmericans of the South. Slavery was nothing more than a bad memory; the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution had granted them citizenship; the Fifteenth Amendment outlawed suffrage discrimination based on race, color, or previous slave status. However, many Southern whites sought to keep blacks effectively disenfranchised and socially and economically inferior. One way whites in power attempted to prevent black equality was through denial of AfricanAmerican participation in the political process. Freed blacks were great supporters of the Republican Party, which was the party of Lincoln and emancipation. Much of the white South, however, remained loyal to the Democratic Party and professed hatred for all Republicans, black or white. When blacks turned out in droves to cast their ballots for Republican candidates, they were often met at the polls by whites employing creative means to keep the African-Americans from ever seeing the inside of the voting booth. Many African-Americans were prevented from casting their ballots and assuming their places as full members of the society. In addition to maintaining some semblance of the post-war balance of power, these methods also helped elect white Democrats. Economic obstacles unique to their condition also prevented many freed blacks from moving ahead. After having been slaves for most of their lives, they knew only how to be farmers. Even for those that did possess or acquire alternative skills, the region's lack of alternatives to farming as well as determined white supremacy blocked the freedmen's advance. As farmers, they had no money to purchase land of their own, and many were actually forced to go back to work for the very same whites who had held them in bondage for so many years. The only difference was that the white landowners now paid them with a share of the crop which, after deductions for food and other necessities, amounted to a ridiculously low wage for their work. Though this did not technically constitute a master-slave relationship, it likely seemed hardly better than one to the African-Americans that had to endure such humiliation and frustration. Many of the freed blacks had few other skills, however, and often had families of their own to support. It must have seemed a no-win situation. The era of Reconstruction in the South lasted from 1865 to 1877. During these years, federal troops occupied the states of the former Confederacy to ensure compliance with laws and regulations governing Southern states' re-entry into the Union. Though the protection these troops provided to African-Americans was often minimal, it had been better than nothing. President Rutherford B. Hayes ended Reconstruction in 1877 and pulled the U.S. troops out of the South. This gave the white ruling class of the South free reign to terrorize and oppress freed blacks without interference from the U.S. Army or anyone else. Murders, lynchings and other violent crimes against blacks increased dramatically. It was likely at this point that many African-Americans began to feel that leaving the South forever was their only real chance to

203 begin new lives. Movement to parts further west, such as Kansas, began almost immediately after the end of Reconstruction. Black Migration to Kansas Prior to the Great Exodus What was it about Kansas that particularly attracted African-Americans to that state? At the time that many blacks began to consider abandoning the South, there was certainly a good deal of frontier land available elsewhere. Besides slick (and often misleading) promotion of town sites, what drew freed men and women to Kansas? First, purely logistical and geographic factors must be considered. Kansas, while certainly never considered a part of the South (except by pro-slavery Missourians prior to the Civil War), is much closer to the South than far-off spots like California and Oregon. Getting to Kansas was a much simpler and less expensive task than getting to such faraway places. For those coming from many parts of the South, a boat or train ride to St. Louis was the real beginning of their journey to Kansas. While conditions on these boats and trains were never ideal, riding in any form was certainly preferable to walking. Many arrived in St. Louis with little idea how they would get across Missouri and into Kansas. They must have felt, however, that whatever hardships they faced on that leg of the journey would be less significant than those left behind in the South. Another factor—a human one—also played a role in the selection of Kansas as the new Promised Land. The exploits of anti-slavery activists like John Brown gave Kansas an almost holy sacredness to many African-Americans. In Kansas, blood had been spilled to keep slavery out. The memories of John Brown and other abolitionist warriors lived on in the hearts and minds of freed men and women and made Kansas seem the ideal place to begin anew. Many of the African-Americans that migrated to Kansas prior to the 1879 exodus came from Tennessee. There a popular movement sprang seemingly from nowhere in 1874, leading to a "colored people's convention" in Nashville in May 1875. Many town promoters, including the notable Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, saw this convention as a way to convince people to migrate to Kansas. The convention resulted in the designation of a board of commissioners to officially promote migration to Kansas. This board would later stipulate that would-be migrants needed at least $1,000 per family to relocate to Kansas; very few interested in doing so had such funds. Nevertheless, many freed blacks determined to leave Tennessee anyway. Promoters like Singleton became known as "conductors" and began leading African-American families to Kansas. Obviously, black migration to Kansas did not begin (or end) with the exodus of 1879. Thousands of freed blacks made their ways to Kansas throughout the decade of the 1870s. Since their migration was more gradual, however, few whites took notice. This was certainly not the case when the well-publicized exodus took place in 1879.

204 The Exodus of 1879 The great 1879 exodus of African-Americans was largely influenced by the outcome of 1878 elections in the state of Louisiana, in which the Democratic Party made major gains by winning several congressional seats and the governorship. Freed blacks, largely Republican supporters, were coerced, threatened, assaulted and even murdered to keep them away from the ballot box. When the final tallies were in and the Democrats claimed almost total victory, many black Louisianans knew that the time had come for them to abandon their state and join those already in Kansas. Senator William Windom, a white Republican from Minnesota, introduced a resolution on January 16, 1879, which actually encouraged black migration out of the South. The Windom Resolution, together with southern white bigotry and the letters and newspaper articles of those blacks already in Kansas, led many southern freed men and women to finally decide to make their ways to Kansas. By early 1879, the "Kansas Fever Exodus" was taking place. The 1879 exodus removed approximately 6,000 African-Americans primarily from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Many had heard rumors of free transportation all the way to Kansas, but they were sorely disappointed when they discovered that such a luxury did not exist. Very few, however, were dissuaded by this inconvenience. Many southern whites had a racist and patronizing attitude about blacks in general and the exodus in particular. As much as whites hated dealing with freed blacks, they still wanted the former slaves there as a cheap labor force. Many southern whites became so alarmed by the exodus that they began to pressure their elected officials to put a stop to it. They eventually succeeded, and a U.S. Senate committee met for three months in 1880 to investigate the cause of the exodus. The committee disintegrated into partisan bickering and accomplished little. Despite this, blacks continued to leave for Kansas. By early March, about 1,500 had already passed through St. Louis en route to Kansas. Back in Mississippi and Louisiana, thousands more crowded onto riverbanks to wait for passing steamers to give them passage to St. Louis. One white man stated that the banks of the Mississippi River were "literally covered with colored people and their little store of worldly goods [sic] every road leading to the river is filled with wagons loaded with plunder and families who seem to think that anywhere is better than here." Once in St. Louis, many of the exodusters had little idea how to continue their flight with no resources. Some were so destitute that they could not feed themselves or their families. In response, St. Louis clergy and business leaders formed committees to assist the freed blacks so that they could survive and makes their ways to Kansas. Food and funds were collected from the local community as well as from sympathizers from Iowa to Ohio. Lack of shelter, however, became the most serious problem, and many blacks were forced to sleep outside near the waterfronts to which the steamships had delivered them. Care of the exodusters in St. Louis became a political issue, especially after the Democratic-leaning Missouri Republican began running anti-black stories and tales of mishandling of donated funds. By the time the last of the

205 exodusters departed St. Louis by rail, wagon, boat or on foot, even the most sympathetic citizens were likely happy to see them go. Back in the South, more African-Americans continued to plan to depart for Kansas. Black social leaders and ministers often sang the praises of the exodus, comparing it to Moses and the Israelites' escape from Egypt. Of course, some black leaders spoke out against the exodus as well, stating that those leaving for Kansas were jeopardizing the future of those who chose to stay behind and that democracy should be given more time to work. Among the most notable of those that tried to dissuade blacks from fleeing the South was Frederick Douglass. Southern whites continued to oppose the exodus as well. Many went to extreme measures to try to keep blacks from emigrating, including arrest and imprisonment on false charges and the old standby of raw, brute force. African-Americans suffered beatings and other forms of violence at the hands of whites desperate to keep them in the South. Though these typical forms of intimidation did not really prevent many freed blacks from leaving, the eventual refusal of steamship captains to pick them up did. One can only guess that at least some of these sailors had been threatened or paid not to offer blacks passage to St. Louis. End of the Exodus The exodus began to subside by the early summer of 1879. Though some African-Americans did continue to head for Kansas, the massive movement known as the exodus basically ended with the decade of the 1870s. That ten-year period had witnessed great changes for blacks both in the South and in Kansas. In 1870, Kansas had hosted a black population of approximately 16,250. Ten years later, in 1880, some 43,110 African-Americans called Kansas home. Between the earlier gradual migrations and the 1879 exodus, Kansas had gained nearly 27,000 black residents in ten years. Though a far greater number of blacks remained in the South, this number still represents 27,000 individual dreams of a better life and 27,000 people that acted on their desires and their rights to enjoy the freedoms to which they supposedly had been entitled since the Emancipation Proclamation. Though few found Kansas to be the Promised Land for which they hoped, they did find it a place that enabled them to live freely and with much less racial interference than in the South. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY • National Park Service: Homestead Nation Monument of America, Nebraska. Located at:nps.gov/home/learn/historyculture/exodusters.htm (Links to an external site.). Project: National Park Service. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

206 READING MODULE 12: Great Migration, World War I, Great Depression Overview Great Migration, World War I, Great Depression As the 19th century came to an end and segregation took ever–stronger hold in the South, many African Americans saw self–improvement, especially through education, as the single greatest opportunity to escape the indignities they suffered. As America’s exploding urban population faced shortages of employment and housing, violent hostility towards blacks had increased around the country; lynching, though illegal, was a widespread practice. A new permanent civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was created with the goals of abolition of all forced segregation, the enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments, equal education for blacks and whites, and complete enfranchisement of both African American women and men. Learning Outcomes This module addresses the following Course Learning Outcomes listed in the Syllabus for this course: • To provide students with a general understanding of the history of African Americans within the context of American History. • To motivate students to become interested and active in African American history by comparing current events with historical information.(1) Additional learning outcomes associated with this module are: • The student will be able to discuss the efforts by African Americans to end discrimination and segregation at the beginning of the 20th century. • The student will be able to describe the process and comparatively reflect on the different approaches of Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois, and Booker T. Washington. • The student will be able to analyze the impact of the Great Migration, World War I, and the Great Depression on the African American community. Module Objectives Upon completion of this module, the student will be able to:

207 Use primary historical resources to analyze the early 20th century and the complexity it entails for African Americans living in the United States during the time period and today. 12.1: Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance New cities were populated with diverse waves of new arrivals, who came to the cities to seek work in the businesses and factories there. While a small percentage of these newcomers were white Americans seeking jobs, most were made up of two groups that had not previously been factors in the urbanization movement: African Americans fleeing the racism of the farms and former plantations in the South, and southern and eastern European immigrants. These new immigrants supplanted the previous waves of northern and western European immigrants, who had tended to move west to purchase land. Unlike their predecessors, the newer immigrants lacked the funds to strike out to the western lands and instead remained in the urban centers where they arrived, seeking any work that would keep them alive. The African American “Great Migration” Between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Great Depression, nearly two million African Americans fled the rural South to seek new opportunities elsewhere. While some moved west, the vast majority of this Great Migration, as the large exodus of African Americans leaving the South in the early twentieth century was called, traveled to the Northeast and Upper Midwest. The following cities were the primary destinations for these African Americans: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Indianapolis. These eight cities accounted for over two-thirds of the total population of the African American migration. A combination of both “push” and “pull” factors played a role in this movement. Despite the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (ensuring freedom, the right to vote regardless of race, and equal protection under the law, respectively), African Americans were still subjected to intense racial hatred. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War led to increased death threats, violence, and a wave of lynchings. Even after the formal dismantling of the Klan in the late 1870s, racially motivated violence continued. According to researchers at the Tuskegee Institute, there were thirty-five hundred racially motivated lynchings and other murders committed in the South between 1865 and 1900. For African Americans fleeing this culture of violence, northern and midwestern cities offered an opportunity to escape the dangers of the South. In addition to this “push” out of the South, African Americans were also “pulled” to the cities by factors that attracted them, including job opportunities, where they could earn a wage rather than be tied to a landlord, and the chance to vote (for men, at least), supposedly free from the

208 threat of violence. Although many lacked the funds to move themselves north, factory owners and other businesses that sought cheap labor assisted the migration. Often, the men moved first then sent for their families once they were ensconced in their new city life. Racism and a lack of formal education relegated these African American workers to many of the lower-paying unskilled or semi-skilled occupations. More than 80 percent of African American men worked menial jobs in steel mills, mines, construction, and meat packing. In the railroad industry, they were often employed as porters or servants. In other businesses, they worked as janitors, waiters, or cooks. African American women, who faced discrimination due to both their race and gender, found a few job opportunities in the garment industry or laundries, but were more often employed as maids and domestic servants. Regardless of the status of their jobs, however, African Americans earned higher wages in the North than they did for the same occupations in the South, and typically found housing to be more available. Figure 12-1. African American men who moved north as part of the Great Migration were often consigned to menial employment, such as working in construction or as porters on the railways (a), such as in the celebrated Pullman dining and sleeping cars (b). Library of Congress. However, such economic gains were offset by the higher cost of living in the North, especially in terms of rent, food costs, and other essentials. As a result, African Americans often found themselves living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, much like the tenement slums in which European immigrants lived in the cities. For newly arrived African Americans, even those who sought out the cities for the opportunities they provided, life in these urban centers was exceedingly difficult. They quickly learned that racial discrimination did not end at the Mason-

209 Dixon Line, but continued to flourish in the North as well as the South. European immigrants, also seeking a better life in the cities of the United States, resented the arrival of the African Americans, whom they feared would compete for the same jobs or offer to work at lower wages. Landlords frequently discriminated against them; their rapid influx into the cities created severe housing shortages and even more overcrowded tenements. Homeowners in traditionally white neighborhoods later entered into covenants in which they agreed not to sell to African American buyers; they also often fled neighborhoods into which African Americans had gained successful entry. In addition, some bankers practiced mortgage discrimination, later known as “redlining,” in order to deny home loans to qualified buyers. Such pervasive discrimination led to a concentration of African Americans in some of the worst slum areas of most major metropolitan cities, a problem that remained ongoing throughout most of the twentieth century. So why move to the North, given that the economic challenges they faced were similar to those that African Americans encountered in the South? The answer lies in noneconomic gains. Greater educational opportunities and more expansive personal freedoms mattered greatly to the African Americans who made the trek northward during the Great Migration. State legislatures and local school districts allocated more funds for the education of both blacks and whites in the North, and also enforced compulsory school attendance laws more rigorously. Similarly, unlike the South where a simple gesture (or lack of a deferential one) could result in physical harm to the African American who committed it, life in larger, crowded northern urban centers permitted a degree of anonymity—and with it, personal freedom—that enabled African Americans to move, work, and speak without deferring to every white person with whom they crossed paths. Psychologically, these gains more than offset the continued economic challenges that black migrants faced. The Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance (1920s–1930s) was an African-American cultural movement known for its proliferation in art, music, and literature. Overview The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement in the United States that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. While the zenith of the movement occurred between 1924 and 1929, its ideas have lived on much longer. At the time, it was known as the New Negro Movement, named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. This cultural and political renaissance produced novels, plays, murals, poems, music, dance, and other artwork that represented the flowering of a distinctive African-American expression. Along with the artists, political leaders such as Marcus Garvey founded potent philosophies of self-determination and unity among black communities in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa.

210 At the same time, activists like Hubert Harrison challenged the notion of the renaissance, arguing that the term was largely a white invention that overlooked the continuous stream of creativity that had emerged from the African-American community since 1850. Harlem’s Background The district of Harlem had originally developed in the 19th century as an exclusive suburb for the white middle and upper classes. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by whites, who moved further north. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s, during the Great Migration in which many sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others of African descent came from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean, seeking a better life in the U.S. By 1930, 90,000 new arrivals joined the AfricanAmericans already living there, creating a community of nearly 200,000. Despite the increasing popularity of black culture, virulent white racism continued to affect African-American communities. Race riots and other civil uprisings occurred throughout the U.S. during the Red Summer of 1919, reflecting economic competition over jobs, housing, and social territories. Characteristics and Themes What characterized the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride and the developing idea of a new black identity, that through intellect and production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and promote progressive politics. There was no uniting form characterizing the art that emerged, however. It encompassed a wide variety of styles, including Pan-African perspectives; high culture and low culture; traditional music to blues and jazz; traditional and experimental forms in literature, such as modernism; and the new form of jazz poetry. Some common themes represented during the Harlem Renaissance were the influence of slavery, black identity, the effects of institutional racism, the dilemmas of performing and writing for elite white audiences, and how to convey the experience of modern black life in the urban North. New authors attracted a great amount of national attention, and the Harlem Renaissance led to more opportunities for blacks to be published by mainstream houses. Some authors who became nationally known were Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Eric D. Walrond, and Langston Hughes.

211 Figure 12-2. Langston Hughes: Langston Hughes was one of the most well-known writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance. Library of Congress. A new way of playing the piano called Harlem Stride was also created during the Renaissance, and jazz musicians like Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Willie “The Lion” Smith are considered to have laid the foundation for future musicians of their genre. Visual artists of the time included Charles Alston, Henry Bannarn, Leslie Bolling, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Archibold Motley.

212 Figure 12-3. Black Belt (original painting in color) by Archibald Motley is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience during the 1920s and 1930s and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance. Wikimedia. 12.2: The Nadir of Race Relations The nadir of race relations in the United States was an ideological era of nationwide hostility directed from white Americans against African Americans. Racism was so pervasive and, in many cases, so violent, that many African Americans realized they could not influence racists to change their views. Many came to believe that only white people had the power to destroy white supremacy and the racist economic, political, cultural, and social networks that supported it. Many white Americans around the nation and in the U.S. territories overseas supported legal and customary rules of segregation known colloquially as “Jim Crow,” especially in the Midwest and the South. Racism was so prevalent that even American presidents embraced segregationist attitudes and polices in the government and the military, while black Americans turned toward civil rights and Afrocentric movements led by W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. The “Nadir of Race Relations” Historians still debate the exact point in time at which the so-called nadir took place, but a commonly cited period spans the late 1880s to just after World War I, when lynchings—extra-

213 judicial killings of black people—were common. During this period, the popular and academic understandings of slavery in the United States, the Civil War, and Reconstruction supported a Confederate, pro-slavery point of view. This perspective argued that African-American demands for justice were ill-informed and illegitimate, since the competition between black people and white people over resources and power was a zero-sum game. The Great Migration and Social Tensions Extending from around 1915 through the 1930s, many black people living in the South moved to Northern cities, seeking better living conditions such as more work and an escape from the common vigilante practice of lynching, the extra-judicial killing of black people, commonly by hanging. In what became known as the Great Migration, more than 1.5 million black people left the South, and, while they faced difficulties, their chances overall were better in the North. They had to adapt to significant cultural change, as most went from rural areas to major industrial cities. In the South, white people worried about the loss of their labor force and so frequently tried to block the black migration. Even in the North, there was still segregation; black people had to compete for jobs and housing in cities that also drew millions of Eastern- and Southern-European immigrants. African Americans commonly experienced racism in the context of territorialism, often from ethnic Irish people defending their power bases. Blackface performances—in which white people donned costumes and extensive makeup to appear black and portrayed African Americans as ignorant clowns—were still just as popular in the North as in the South.

214 Figure 12-4. Segregation in Ohio: A segregationist sign at a restaurant in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938. Jim Crow laws established “separate-but-equal” facilities is in the Public Domain. In some regions, black people could not serve on juries. The Supreme Court reflected conservative tendencies and did not overrule the Southern constitutional changes that disfranchised African Americans. Despite being made up almost entirely of Northerners, in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court ruled that “separate-but-equal” facilities for black people were in fact constitutional. The years during and after World War I saw profound social tensions in the United States, not only because of the effects of the Great Migration and European immigration but also due to demobilization and the competition for jobs with returning veterans. Mass attacks on black people, sparked by strikes and economic competition, occurred in Houston, Philadelphia, and in East St. Louis in 1917. In 1919, there were riots in several major cities, resulting in the so-called Red Summer. The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 erupted into mob violence that lasted several days, leaving 15 white people and 23 black people dead. The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma was even more deadly, with white mobs invading and burning the city’s Greenwood district. Figure 12-5. Chicago Race Riot: A white gang looking for African Americans during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. A lack of plans for demobilization after World War I exacerbated racial and economic tensions in many cities across the U.S is in the Public Domain.

215 12.3: Theodore Roosevelt and Race Theodore Roosevelt’s treatment of the Brownsville Affair, in which 167 African American soldiers were wrongfully discharged from the Army, caused the black community to turn away from the Republic president they had once supported. Both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are criticized for their treatment of African Americans during their terms as U.S. president. For Roosevelt, President from 1901–1909, the Brownsville Affair in particular aroused criticism of his treatment of African Americans. Figure 12-6. Theodore Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (1901–1909). Library of Congress. Also known as the Brownsville Raid, the Brownsville Affair arose from tensions between black soldiers and white citizens in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906. When a white bartender was killed and a police officer wounded by gunshot, townspeople accused members of the 25th Infantry Regiment, a segregated black unit stationed nearby. Although commanders said the soldiers had been in the barracks all night, evidence was planted against them. As a result of an Army Inspector General’s investigation, Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167 soldiers, costing them their pensions and barring them from other civil-service jobs. The administration withheld news of the discharge of the soldiers until after the 1906 Congressional elections so the pro-Republican black vote would not be affected. Black people and many white people across the United States were outraged at Roosevelt’s actions. Prior to the Brownsville Affair, the black community had supported the Republican president. They were loyal to the party of Abraham Lincoln, and they also noted that Roosevelt

216 had invited civil rights leader Booker T. Washington to a White House dinner and had spoken out publicly against lynching. Roosevelt had also appointed numerous African Americans to federal office, such as Walter L. Cohen, whom he named register of the federal land office. After the Brownsville Affair, however, black people began to turn against Roosevelt. Leaders of major black organizations, such as the Constitution League, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the administration not to discharge the soldiers. From 1907–1908, the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee investigated the Brownsville Affair and in March 1908 reached the same conclusion as Roosevelt. A minority report by four Republicans concluded that the evidence was too inconclusive to support the discharges. In September 1908, civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois urged black people to register to vote and remember their treatment by the Republican administration when it was time to cast a ballot for President. A renewed investigation in the early 1970s exonerated the discharged black troops. The government pardoned them and restored their records to show honorable discharges but did not provide retroactive compensation for the time they could have been working. Woodrow Wilson and Race Despite promises made to black voters during the election of 1912, Woodrow Wilson gave into the demands of white Southern Democrats, fired a number of black Republican politicians, and supported racial segregation. Theodore Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (1901–1909). Also known as the Brownsville Raid, the Brownsville Affair arose from tensions between black soldiers and white citizens in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906. When a white bartender was killed and a police officer wounded by gunshot, townspeople accused members of the 25th Infantry Regiment, a segregated black unit stationed nearby. Although commanders said the soldiers had been in the barracks all night, evidence was planted against them. As a result of an Army Inspector General’s investigation, Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167 soldiers, costing them their pensions and barring them from other civil-service jobs. The administration withheld news of the discharge of the soldiers until after the 1906 Congressional elections so the pro-Republican black vote would not be affected. Black people and many white people across the United States were outraged at Roosevelt’s actions. Prior to the Brownsville Affair, the black community had supported the Republican president. They were loyal to the party of Abraham Lincoln, and they also noted that Roosevelt had invited civil rights leader Booker T. Washington to a White House dinner and had spoken out publicly against lynching. Roosevelt had also appointed numerous African Americans to federal office, such as Walter L. Cohen, whom he named register of the federal land office.

217 After the Brownsville Affair, however, black people began to turn against Roosevelt. Leaders of major black organizations, such as the Constitution League, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the administration not to discharge the soldiers. From 1907–1908, the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee investigated the Brownsville Affair and in March 1908 reached the same conclusion as Roosevelt. A minority report by four Republicans concluded that the evidence was too inconclusive to support the discharges. In September 1908, civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois urged black people to register to vote and remember their treatment by the Republican administration when it was time to cast a ballot for President. A renewed investigation in the early 1970s exonerated the discharged black troops. The government pardoned them and restored their records to show honorable discharges but did not provide retroactive compensation for the time they could have been working. Woodrow Wilson and Race Despite promises made to black voters during the election of 1912, Woodrow Wilson gave into the demands of white Southern Democrats, fired a number of black Republican politicians, and supported racial segregation. Figure 12-7. Wilson on Race: Quotation from Woodrow Wilson’s History of the American People as reproduced in the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. Numerous black people voted for Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election based on his promise to work for them. Yet as the first Southern-born president of the post-Civil War period, Wilson did not interfere with the well-established system of Jim Crow and instead acquiesced

218 to the demands of Southern Democrats that their states be allowed to deal with issues of race, such as voting, without interference from Washington. Black leaders who supported Wilson were angered when segregationist white Southerners took control of Congress and Wilson appointed many Southerners to his cabinet; Wilson and his cabinet members fired a large number of black Republican office holders in political-appointee positions, though they also appointed a few black Democrats to such posts. Wilson’s Southern cabinet members pressed for segregated workplaces, even though federal offices had been integrated since 1863. Wilson ignored complaints when his cabinet officials established official segregation in many federal government departments, such as the post office, because of his own firm belief that racial segregation was in the best interests of black and white Americans alike. New facilities were designed to maintain this segregation, with U.S. Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo defending the establishment of separate toilets in the Treasury and Interior Department buildings by saying, “I am not going to argue the justification of the separate toilets orders, beyond saying that it is difficult to disregard certain feelings and sentiments of white people in a matter of this sort.” Wilson and William Trotter On November 12, 1914, Wilson met with a group led by prominent civil rights leader William Monroe Trotter to discuss the continuing spread of segregation. In what became an acrimonious exchange in the Oval Office, Trotter listed examples of federal workplace segregation in several government buildings run by the Treasury Department, War Department, Interior Department, and others. Noting the backing he and other black leaders had provided Wilson in the 1912 election campaign, Trotter said, “Only two years ago you were heralded as perhaps the second Lincoln, and now the Afro-American leaders who supported you are hounded as false leaders and traitors to their race.” Questioning Wilson’s promises to aid black Americans with programs that included economic reforms, Trotter said, “Have you a ‘New Freedom’ for white Americans and a new slavery for your Afro-American fellow citizens ? God forbid!” Wilson countered that he considered workplace segregation a benefit to black people and that the aim was “not to put the Negro employees at a disadvantage [but] to make arrangements which would prevent any kind of friction between the white employees and the Negro employees.” Told by Trotter that black people considered workplace segregation to be a humiliation, Wilson responded, “If you think that you gentlemen, as an organization, and all other Negro citizens of this country, that you are being humiliated, you will believe it. If you take it as a humiliation, which it is not intended as, and sow the seed of that impression all over the country, why the consequence will be very serious.” Trotter continued with his claims that Wilson’s position about Jim Crow aiding black people was disingenuous and ended by saying, “We are sorely disappointed that you take the position that the separation itself is not wrong, is not injurious, is not rightly offensive to you.” An angered Wilson countered that the civil libertarian had insulted him, stating, “You have spoiled the whole cause for which you came,”

219 before ending the meeting abruptly. In 1914, Wilson told The New York Times, “If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it.” Figure 12-8. William Monroe Trotter, 1915: William Monroe Trotter (1872–1934) was a prominent African-American civil rights activist as well as founder and editor of the independent African-American newspaper the Boston Guardian. Wikimedia. This media file is in the public domain in the United States. Despite Wilson’s clear support for separation of the races, hardline segregationists, such as Georgia Congressman Thomas E. Watson, believed he did not go far enough in restricting black employment in the federal government. The segregation that the Wilson administration had introduced into the federal workplace was maintained by succeeding presidents and not officially renounced until the Truman administration in the late 1940s.

220 Military Segregation Woodrow Wilson’s policy of military segregation led to conflict, rioting, and the brutal sentencing of the all-black Twenty-Fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment. President Woodrow Wilson also supported segregation of the military, even when the need for troops during the First World War was so great that a national draft was reinstituted. African Americans were drafted on the same basis as white people and made up 13% of draftees. By the end of the war, more than 350,000 African Americans served in AEF units on the Western Front, earning pay equal to that of white soldiers, although they were assigned to segregated units commanded by white officers, under a policy approved by Wilson. This kept the great majority of black people out of combat. When a delegation of black soldiers protested the government’s discriminatory actions, Wilson told them “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.” W.E.B. Du Bois had supported Wilson in the 1916 presidential campaign and in 1918 was offered an Army commission in charge of dealing with race relations—Du Bois accepted, but he failed his Army physical and did not serve. Figure 12-9. Segregated Military: Members of the U.S. Army 369th Infantry Regiment, which won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action in World War I, pictured in 1919. Nicknamed the “Harlem Hellfighters,” it was the first all-black regiment By an unknown photographer, 1919. Records of the War Department General and Special. Staffs. (165-WW-127-8).

221 A mutiny by soldiers at Camp Logan near Houston in 1917 was precipitated directly by segregation. The all-black Twenty-Fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment was transferred from Columbus, New Mexico, where segregation had not been enforced. In Houston, however, they were met with segregated street cars and white workers at their camp who demanded separate water fountains. This led to clashes with local authorities, including an incident in which police beat a black soldier and set off a nighttime riot by 156 African-American troops resulting in the shooting deaths of two soldiers, four police officers, and nine civilians. A police officer and a soldier died later from wounds sustained in the riot, while another soldier died from injuries he received during his capture the next day. Nineteen of the mutineers were executed, and 41 received life sentences.

222 12.4: Marcus Garvey Marcus Garvey Marcus Garvey, a prominent Jamaican, led a Back-to-Africa movement that promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), as well as the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement that promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Prior to the 20th century, African-American leaders advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy, known as Garveyism, which focused on the complete and unending redemption of the continent of Africa by people of African ancestry, both at home and abroad. Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement, which proclaims Garvey a prophet. His intent was for those of African ancestry to “redeem” Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave. Garvey summarized his essential ideas in the Negro World editorial “African Fundamentalism,” in which he wrote, “Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality…to let us hold together under all climes in every country….”

223 Figure 12-10. Marcus Garvey: Pan-African movement leader Marcus Garvey, pictured in August 1924. Library of Congress. In 1910, Garvey left Jamaica and began traveling throughout the Central American region. Garvey lived in London from 1912 to 1914, where he took classes in law and philosophy at Birkbeck College, worked for newspapers, and sometimes spoke at Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner. Garvey’s philosophy, influenced by Booker T. Washington, Martin Delany, and Henry McNeal Turner, led him to organize the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914. After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, Garvey arrived in the U.S. in 1916 to give a lecture tour. He visited Tuskegee and afterward met a number of black leaders. In May 1916, he undertook a 38-state speaking tour. In May 1917, Garvey and 13 others formed the first UNIA

224 division outside Jamaica and began advancing the idea of social, political, and economic freedom for black people. Garvey next set about developing a program to improve conditions for those of African ancestry “at home and abroad” under UNIA auspices. August 1918 marked the first publication of the widely distributed Negro World newspaper. By June 1919, UNIA’s membership had grown to over 2 million. On June 27, 1919, the Black Star Line of Delaware was incorporated by the members of UNIA, with Garvey as President. By September, the Black Star Line obtained its first ship, rechristened as the S.S. Frederick Douglass in September 1919. By August 1920, the UNIA claimed 4 million members, the International Convention of the UNIA was held, and Garvey survived an attempt on his life. Convinced that black people should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey sought to develop Liberia. The Liberia program, launched in 1920, was intended to establish colleges, universities, industrial plants, and railroads; however, it was abandoned in the mid-1920s after strong opposition from European powers with interests in the region. A movement of black opposition to Garvey that came to be known as the “Garvey Must Go” Campaign aimed to reveal Garvey as a fraud. Run by a group called the Friends of Negro Freedom, the campaign pressed the federal government to investigate the Black Star Line. They alleged violence by Garvey’s associates, including a related to the assassination of former Garvey deputy J.W.H. Eason in New Orleans in January 1923. The “Garvey Must Go” movement also revealed that Garvey had met secretly with Ku Klux Klan leader Edward Young Clarke in June of 1922. On January 15, 1923, U.S. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty received a petition for a continued investigation into alleged mail fraud by Garvey that accused him of using the mail to expand the influence of his movement. Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in 1923, and beginning in February 1925 he served nearly three years of a five-year sentence in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. While there he wrote his “First Message to the Negroes of the World from Atlanta Prison,” in which he proclaimed, “Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.” U.S. President Calvin Coolidge commuted Garvey’s sentence in 1927, and he was deported to Jamaica. After further political activism abroad, he died in London on June 10, 1940, at the age of 52. Schools, highways, and numerous buildings in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States have been named in his honor. There is a bust of Garvey in the Organization of American States Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C. Garvey’s admirers have included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Earl and Louise Little, the parents of black militant activist Malcolm X, who met each other at a UNIA convention in Montreal.

225 12.5: The Depths of the Great Depression Prior to the Great Depression, African Americans worked primarily in unskilled jobs. After the stock market crash of 1929, those entry-level, low-paying jobs either disappeared or were filled by whites in need of employment. According to the Library of Congress, the African-American unemployment rate in 1932 climbed to approximately 50 percent. Lasting from 1929 to 1939, the Great Depression was the worst economic downtown in the industrialized world. While no group escaped the economic devastation of the Great Depression, few suffered more than African Americans. Said to be “last hired, first fired,” African Americans were the first to see hours and jobs cut, and they experienced the highest unemployment rate during the 1930s. Since they were already relegated to lower-paying professions, African Americans had less of a financial cushion to fall back on when the economy collapsed. From industrial strongholds to the rural Great Plains, from factory workers to farmers, the Great Depression affected millions. In cities, as industry slowed, then sometimes stopped altogether, workers lost jobs and joined breadlines, or sought out other charitable efforts. With limited government relief efforts, private charities tried to help, but they were unable to match the pace of demand. In rural areas, farmers suffered still more. In some parts of the country, prices for crops dropped so precipitously that farmers could not earn enough to pay their mortgages, losing their farms to foreclosure. In the Great Plains, one of the worst droughts in history left the land barren and unfit for growing even minimal food to live on. The country’s most vulnerable populations, such as children, the elderly, and those subject to discrimination, like African Americans, were the hardest hit. Most white Americans felt entitled to what few jobs were available, leaving African Americans unable to find work, even in the jobs once considered their domain. In all, the economic misery was unprecedented in the country’s history. Starving to Death By the end of 1932, the Great Depression had affected some sixty million people, most of whom wealthier Americans perceived as the “deserving poor.” Yet, at the time, federal efforts to help those in need were extremely limited, and national charities had neither the capacity nor the will to elicit the large-scale response required to address the problem. The American Red Cross did exist, but Chairman John Barton Payne contended that unemployment was not an “Act of God” but rather an “Act of Man,” and therefore refused to get involved in widespread direct relief efforts. Clubs like the Elks tried to provide food, as did small groups of individually organized college students. Religious organizations remained on the front lines, offering food and shelter. In larger cities, breadlines and soup lines became a common sight. At one count in 1932, there were as many as eighty-two breadlines in New York City.

226 Despite these efforts, however, people were destitute and ultimately starving. Families would first run through any savings, if they were lucky enough to have any. Then, the few who had insurance would cash out their policies. Cash surrender payments of individual insurance policies tripled in the first three years of the Great Depression, with insurance companies issuing total payments in excess of $1.2 billion in 1932 alone. When those funds were depleted, people would borrow from family and friends, and when they could get no more, they would simply stop paying rent or mortgage payments. When evicted, they would move in with relatives, whose own situation was likely only a step or two behind. The added burden of additional people would speed along that family’s demise, and the cycle would continue. This situation spiraled downward, and did so quickly. Even as late as 1939, over 60 percent of rural households, and 82 percent of farm families, were classified as “impoverished.” In larger urban areas, unemployment levels exceeded the national average, with over half a million unemployed workers in Chicago, and nearly a million in New York City. Breadlines and soup kitchens were packed, serving as many as eighty-five thousand meals daily in New York City alone. Over fifty thousand New York citizens were homeless by the end of 1932. Children, in particular, felt the brunt of poverty. Many in coastal cities would roam the docks in search of spoiled vegetables to bring home. Elsewhere, children begged at the doors of more well-off neighbors, hoping for stale bread, table scraps, or raw potato peelings. Said one childhood survivor of the Great Depression, “You get used to hunger. After the first few days it doesn’t even hurt; you just get weak.” In 1931 alone, there were at least twenty documented cases of starvation; in 1934, that number grew to 110. In rural areas where such documentation was lacking, the number was likely far higher. And while the middle class did not suffer from starvation, they experienced hunger as well. By the time Hoover left office in 1933, the poor survived not on relief efforts, but because they had learned to be poor. A family with little food would stay in bed to save fuel and avoid burning calories. People began eating parts of animals that had normally been considered waste. They scavenged for scrap wood to burn in the furnace, and when electricity was turned off, it was not uncommon to try and tap into a neighbor’s wire. Family members swapped clothes; sisters might take turns going to church in the one dress they owned. As one girl in a mountain town told her teacher, who had said to go home and get food, “I can’t. It’s my sister’s turn to eat.” For his book on the Great Depression, Hard Times, author Studs Terkel interviewed hundreds of Americans from across the country. He subsequently selected over seventy interviews to air on a radio show that was based in Chicago. Visit Studs Terkel: Conversations with America (Links to an external site.) to listen to those interviews, during which participants reflect on their personal hardships as well as on national events during the Great Depression.

227 Black and Poor: African Americans and the Great Depression Most African Americans did not participate in the land boom and stock market speculation that preceded the crash, but that did not stop the effects of the Great Depression from hitting them particularly hard. Subject to continuing racial discrimination, blacks nationwide fared even worse than their hard-hit white counterparts. As the prices for cotton and other agricultural products plummeted, farm owners paid workers less or simply laid them off. Landlords evicted sharecroppers, and even those who owned their land outright had to abandon it when there was no way to earn any income. In cities, African Americans fared no better. Unemployment was rampant, and many whites felt that any available jobs belonged to whites first. In some Northern cities, whites would conspire to have African American workers fired to allow white workers access to their jobs. Even jobs traditionally held by black workers, such as household servants or janitors, were now going to whites. By 1932, approximately one-half of all black Americans were unemployed. Racial violence also began to rise. In the South, lynching became more common again, with twentyeight documented lynchings in 1933, compared to eight in 1932. Since communities were preoccupied with their own hardships, and organizing civil rights efforts was a long, difficult process, many resigned themselves to, or even ignored, this culture of racism and violence. Occasionally, however, an incident was notorious enough to gain national attention. One such incident was the case of the Scottsboro Boys. In 1931, nine black boys, who had been riding the rails, were arrested for vagrancy and disorderly conduct after an altercation with some white travelers on the train. Two young white women, who had been dressed as boys and traveling with a group of white boys, came forward and said that the black boys had raped them. The case, which was tried in Scottsboro, Alabama, reignited decades of racial hatred and illustrated the injustice of the court system. Despite significant evidence that the women had not been raped at all, along with one of the women subsequently recanting her testimony, the all-white jury quickly convicted the boys and sentenced all but one of them to death. The verdict broke through the veil of indifference toward the plight of African Americans, and protests erupted among newspaper editors, academics, and social reformers in the North. The Communist Party of the United States offered to handle the case and sought retrial; the NAACP later joined in this effort. In all, the case was tried three separate times. The series of trials and retrials, appeals, and overturned convictions shone a spotlight on a system that provided poor legal counsel and relied on all-white juries. In October 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the Communist Party’s defense attorneys that the defendants had been denied adequate legal representation at the original trial, and that due process as provided by the Fourteenth Amendment had been denied as a result of the exclusion of any potential black jurors. Eventually, most of the accused received lengthy prison terms and subsequent parole, but avoided the death penalty. The Scottsboro case ultimately laid some of the early groundwork for the modern American civil rights movement. Alabama granted posthumous pardons to all defendants in 2013.

228 Figure 12-11. The Scottsboro Boys. The trial and conviction of nine African American boys in Scottsboro, Alabama, illustrated the numerous injustices of the American court system. Despite being falsely accused, the boys received lengthy prison terms and were not officially pardoned by the State of Alabama until 2013. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY • US History. Authored by: P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, and Sylvie Waskiewicz. Provided by: OpenStax College. Located at: http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/us-history (Links to an external site.). License: CC BY: Attribution (Links to an external site.). License Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11740/latest/ 12.6: Great Depression and the Democratic Party African Americans formed grassroots organizations, uniting for economic and political progress From the Great Depression’s earliest days, African Americans mobilized to protest for greater economic, social and political rights. In 1929, Chicago Whip editor Joseph Bibb organized boycotts of city department stores that refused to hire African Americans. The grassroots protests against racially discriminatory hiring practices worked, resulting in the employment of 2,000 African Americans. The “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” boycotts and pickets soon spread to other cities across the North.

229 The decade of the 1930s saw the growth of African American activism that presaged the Civil Rights Movement. In 1935, Mary McLeod Bethune organized the National Council of Negro Women, and the following year saw the first meeting of the National Negro Congress, an umbrella movement of diverse African-American organizations that fought for anti-lynching legislation, the elimination of the poll tax and the eligibility of agricultural and domestic workers for Social Security. Young African Americans in 1937 formed the Southern Negro Youth Congress that registered voters and organized boycotts. Figure 12-12. File:(Mary McLeod Bethune), "Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and others at the opening of Midway Hall, one of two residence halls built by the Public Buildings Administration of FWA for Negro government girls..." This image is in the Public Domain. National Archives and Records Administration. The African-American vote help elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the first time switching to the Democratic Party. For decades prior to the Great Depression, African Americans had traditionally voted for the Republican Party, which was still seen as the party of emancipation from the days of Abraham Lincoln. The presidential election of 1932, however, saw a sea-change as African Americans began to switch their political allegiance to the Democratic Party. “My friends, go turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall,” Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert Vann implored African Americans in 1932. “The debt has been paid in full.”

230 In an oral interview, historian John Hope Franklin said African Americans were drawn to Franklin D. Roosevelt after years of inactivity under Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. “He had a purpose, had a message, had a program. And it seemed that was better than the inertia that preceded things,” he said. Franklin also said African Americans could identify with Roosevelt’s personal struggles. “Roosevelt inspired large numbers of blacks, I think in part because he was handicapped himself. And although was not publicized as much as it might have been, blacks knew that he was a victim of polio, that he couldn’t walk, and that he had overcome these handicaps.” Since Roosevelt needed the support of Southern Democrats to pass his New Deal agenda, he did not advocate for passage of a federal anti-lynching law or embrace efforts to ban the poll tax that prevented many African Americans from voting. Yet, the economic support received by African Americans under the New Deal solidified their newfound loyalty to the Democratic Party. By 1936, more than 70 percent of African Americans voted for Roosevelt, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. What was the “Black Cabinet” during Roosevelt’s presidency? Roosevelt appointed far more African Americans to positions within his administration than his predecessors, and he was the first president to appoint an African American as a federal judge. According to the Roosevelt Institute, FDR tripled the number of African Americans working in the federal government. New Deal officials appointed African Americans as special advisors. Although none actually filled Cabinet-level positions, these public policy advisors were referred to as the “Black Cabinet” and the “Black Brain Trust.” Perhaps the best-known member of the Black Cabinet was its only woman, Bethune, a close friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and founder of BethuneCookman University. New Deal programs, however, still discriminated against African Americans. Although New Deal programs provided African Americans with badly needed economic assistance, they were administered at a state level where racial segregation was still widely, and systemically, enforced. The New Deal did little to challenge existing racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws prevalent during the 1930s. The Civilian Conservation Corps established racially segregated camps, while the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in African-American neighborhoods. The Agricultural Adjustment Association gave white landowners money for keeping their fields fallow, but they were not required to pass any money to African-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers who farmed the land and were not eligible for Social Security benefits.

231 Figure 12-13. Men and women working a field on the Bayou Bourbeaux Plantation, a Farm Security Administration cooperative near Natchitoches, Louisiana. Library of Congress. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY • US History. Authored by: P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, and Sylvie Waskiewicz. Provided by: OpenStax College. Located at: http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/us-history (Links to an external site.). License: CC BY: Attribution (Links to an external site.). License Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11740/latest/

232 READING MODULE 13: African Americans and World War II Overview African Americans and World War II African Americans served bravely and with distinction in every theater of World War II, while simultaneously struggling for their own civil rights from “the world’s greatest democracy.” Although the United States Armed Forces were officially segregated until 1948, WWII laid the foundation for post-war integration of the military. In 1941 fewer than 4,000 African Americans were serving in the military and only twelve African Americans had become officers. By 1945, more than 1.2 million African Americans would be serving in uniform on the Home Front, in Europe, and the Pacific (including thousands of African American women in the Women’s auxiliaries). Learning Outcomes This module addresses the following Course Learning Outcomes listed in the Syllabus for this course: • To provide students with a general understanding of the history of African Americans within the context of American History. • To motivate students to become interested and active in African American history by comparing current events with historical information.(1) Additional learning outcomes associated with this module are: • The student will be able to discuss the efforts of African American men and women during World War II. • The student will be able to describe the Double V Campaign • The student will be able to analyze the impact of World War II and the Double V Campaign on the African American community. Module Objectives Upon completion of this module, the student will be able to: Use primary historical resources to analyze World War II and the complexity it entails for African Americans living in the United States during the time period and today.

233 13.1: Race and World War II World War II affected nearly every aspect of life in the United States, and America's racial relationships were not immune. African Americans and many other racial and ethnic groups were profoundly impacted. In early 1941, months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the largest black trade union in the nation, made headlines by threatening President Roosevelt with a march on Washington, D.C. In this “crisis of democracy,” Randolph said, defense industries refused to hire African Americans and the armed forces remained segregated. In exchange for Randolph calling off the march, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, banning racial and religious discrimination in defense industries and establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to monitor defense industry hiring practices. While the armed forces would remain segregated throughout the war, and the FEPC had limited influence, the order showed that the federal government could stand against discrimination. The black workforce in defense industries rose from 3 percent in 1942 to 9 percent in 1945. More than one million African Americans fought in the war. Most blacks served in segregated, non-combat units led by white officers. Some gains were made, however. The number of black officers increased from 5 in 1940 to over 7,000 in 1945. The all-black pilot squadrons, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, completed more than 1,500 missions, escorted heavy bombers into Germany, and earned several hundred merits and medals. Many bomber crews specifically requested the “Red Tail Angels” as escorts. And near the end of the war, the army and navy began integrating some of its platoons and facilities, before, in 1948, the U.S. government finally ordered the full integration of its armed forces.

234 Figure 13-1. Tuskegee Airmen - Circa May 1942 to Aug 1943 Location unknown, likely Southern Italy or North Africa. Wikimedia. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain in the United States. While black Americans served in the armed forces (though they were segregated), on the home front they became riveters and welders, rationed food and gasoline, and bought victory bonds. But many black Americans saw the war as an opportunity not only to serve their country but to improve it. The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper, spearheaded the “Double V” campaign. It called on African Americans to fight two wars: the war against Nazism and Fascism abroad and the war against racial inequality at home. To achieve victory, to achieve “real democracy,” the Courier encouraged its readers to enlist in the armed forces, volunteer on the home front, and fight against racial segregation and discrimination. During the war, membership in the NAACP jumped tenfold, from 50,000 to 500,000. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was formed in 1942 and spearheaded the method of nonviolent direct action to achieve desegregation. Between 1940 and 1950, some 1.5 million southern blacks, the largest number than any other decade since the beginning of the Great Migration, also indirectly demonstrated their opposition to racism and violence by migrating out of the Jim Crow South to the North. But transitions were not easy. Racial tensions erupted in 1943 in a series of riots in cities such as Mobile, Beaumont, and Harlem. The bloodiest race riot occurred in Detroit and resulted in the death of 25 blacks and 9 whites. Still, the war ignited in African Americans an urgency for equality that they would carry with them into the subsequent years. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY American Yawp. Located at: http://www.americanyawp.com/index.html (Links to an external site.). Project: American Yawp. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike 13.2: African Americans in WWII Despite racism and segregation in the U.S. military, more than two and a half million African American men registered in the military draft, with more than 1 million serving in the armed forces during World War II. Racism in the Military African Americans first started enlisting in the military on June 1, 1942. More than two and a half million African American men registered in the military draft, and African American women

235 volunteered their services in the war. During the war, African-American enlistment was at an all-time high, with more than 1 million serving in the armed forces. However, the U.S. military was still heavily segregated. The air force and the marines had no African Americans enlisted in their ranks, and the navy only accepted black Americans as cooks and waiters. The army had only five African-American officers. In addition, no African-American would receive the Medal of Honor during the war, and their tasks in the war were largely reserved to noncombat units. Despite their high enlistment rate in the U.S. Army, most African-American soldiers still served only as truck drivers and as stevedores (except for some separate tank battalions and army air forces escort fighters). In the midst of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, a major German offensive campaign launched on the western front (in the region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg), General Eisenhower was severely short of replacement troops for existing military units that were totally white in composition. Consequently, he made the decision to allow African-American soldiers to pick up weapons and join the white military units to fight in combat for the first time. More than 2,000 black soldiers had volunteered to go to the front. At the start of the Battle of the Bulge, the 333rd Battalion, a combat unit composed entirely of African-American soldiers led by white officers, was attached to the 106th Infantry Division. Prior to the German offensive, the 106th division was tasked with holding a 26-mile (41.8 kilometers) long length of the front. The 333rd was badly affected, losing nearly 50 percent of its soldiers, including its commanding officer. Eleven of its soldiers were cut off from the rest of the unit and attempted to escape German capture, but were massacred on sight by the Waffen SS. The remnants of the battalion retreated to Bastogne where they linked up the 101st. The vestiges of the 333rd were attached to its sister unit the 969th Battalion. By December, the Germans had surrounded Bastogne, which was defended by the 101st Airborne Division, the all African-American 969th Artillery Battalion, and Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division. Despite low supplies of food and ammunition, and being limited to only 10 artillery rounds per day, the 333rd fought tenaciously, successfully holding their sector of the front despite repeated German assaults. Tuskegee Airmen The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American military aviators in the U.S. Armed Forces. Officially, they formed the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces. The Tuskegee Airmen were subjected to discrimination, both within and outside the army. All black military pilots who trained in the United States trained at Moton Field, the Tuskegee Army Air Field, and were educated at Tuskegee University, located near Tuskegee, Alabama. The name also applies to the navigators, bombardiers, mechanics, instructors, crew chiefs, nurses, cooks, and other support personnel for the pilots. Although the 477th Bombardment Group trained with North American B-25 Mitchell bombers, they never served in combat. The 99th Pursuit Squadron (later, 99th Fighter Squadron) was the first black flying squadron, and the first to deploy overseas (to North Africa in April 1943, and

236 later to Sicily and Italy). The 332nd Fighter Group was the first black flying group. The group deployed to Italy in early 1944. In June 1944, the 332nd Fighter Group began flying heavy bomber escort missions, and in July 1944, the 99th Fighter Squadron was assigned to the 332nd Fighter Group, which then had four fighter squadrons. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., served as commander of the famed Tuskegee Airmen during the War. He later went on to become the first African-American general in the U.S. Air Force. His father, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., had been the first African-American brigadier general in the army (1940). The Golden Thirteen In June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order (8802) that prohibited racial discrimination in the national defense industry. Responding to pressure from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Adlai Stevenson, in January 1944, the navy began an accelerated 2-month officer training course for 16 African-American enlisted men at Camp Robert Smalls, Recruit Training Center Great Lakes (now known as Great Lakes Naval Training Station), in Illinois. The class average at graduation was 3.89. Although all 16 members of the class passed the course, only 12 were commissioned in March 1944. Because navy policy prevented them from being assigned to combatant ships, early black officers wound up being detailed to run labor gangs ashore. Port Chicago Disaster The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly munitions explosion that occurred on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California. Munitions detonated while being loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for the Pacific theater of operations, killing 320 sailors and civilians and injuring 390 others. Most of the dead and injured were enlisted African-American sailors. A month later, unsafe conditions inspired hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the “Port Chicago Mutiny.” Fifty men—called the “Port Chicago 50″—were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to long prison terms. Forty-seven of the fifty were released in January 1946; the remaining three served additional months in prison. During and after the trial, questions were raised about the fairness and legality of the courtmartial proceedings. Due to public pressure, the U.S. Navy reconvened the courts-martial board in 1945; the court affirmed the guilt of the convicted men. Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre among certain Americans; it and other race-related navy protests of 1944–1945 led the navy to change its practices and initiate the desegregation of its forces beginning in February 1946.

237 Figure 13-2. Tuskegee Airmen: The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American pilots in U.S. military history; they flew with distinction during World War II. Portrait of Tuskegee airman Edward M. Thomas by photographer Toni Frissell, March 1945. Library of Congress.

238 Figure 13-3. African-American soldiers served with distinction in World War II, despite racism and segregation: 12th AD soldier with German prisoners of war, April 1945. Wikimedia. This work is in the public domain in the United States. Recognition The desegregation of all U.S. Armed Forces did not take place until after World War II. In 1947, A. Philip Randolph, prominent civil rights leader, along with colleague Grant Reynolds, renewed efforts to end discrimination in the armed services, forming the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training, later renamed the “League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation.” Consequently, Truman’s Order expanded on Executive Order 8802 by establishing equality of treatment and opportunity in the military for people of all races, religions, or national origins. In July 1948, the Executive Order 9981 abolished racial discrimination in the armed forces and eventually led to the end of segregation in the services. It was not until the 1990s that black World War II military men were awarded the Medal of Honor—the highest military decoration presented by the U.S. government to a member of its armed forces. A 1993 study commissioned by the U.S. Army investigated racial discrimination in the awarding of medals. At the time, no Medals of Honor had been awarded to black soldiers who served in World War II. After an exhaustive review of files, the study recommended that several black Distinguished Service Cross recipients be upgraded to the Medal of Honor. On January 13, 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded the Medal to seven African-American World War II veterans; of these, only Vernon Baker was still alive. The posthumous recipients were Major Charles L. Thomas; First Lieutenant John R. Fox; Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers; Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter, Jr.; Private First Class Willy F. James, Jr.; and Private George Watson.

239 Figure 13-4. Tuskegee Airmen: Tuskegee Airmen at Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945. Library of Congress.

240 READING MODULE 14: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement Overview The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for blacks to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. The Civil War had officially abolished slavery, but it didn’t end discrimination against blacks—they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, African Americans had had more than enough of prejudice and violence against them. They, along with many whites, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned two decades. Learning Outcomes This module addresses the following Course Learning Outcomes listed in the Syllabus for this course: • To provide students with a general understanding of the history of African Americans within the context of American History. • To motivate students to become interested and active in African American history by comparing current events with historical information.(1) Additional learning outcomes associated with this module are: • The student will be able to discuss the efforts by African Americans to end discrimination and segregation. • The student will be able to describe the process and comparatively reflect on the different approaches in the Civil Rights Movement. • The student will be able to analyze the gains and limitations of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Module Objectives Upon completion of this module, the student will be able to: Use primary historical resources to analyze the Civil Rights Movements and the complexity it entails for African Americans living in the United States during the time period and today.

241 14.1: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights In the aftermath of World War II, African Americans began to mount organized resistance to racially discriminatory policies in force throughout much of the United States. In the South, they used a combination of legal challenges and grassroots activism to begin dismantling the racial segregation that had stood for nearly a century following the end of Reconstruction. Community activists and civil rights leaders targeted racially discriminatory housing practices, segregated transportation, and legal requirements that African Americans and whites be educated separately. While many of these challenges were successful, life did not necessarily improve for African Americans. Hostile whites fought these changes in any way they could, including by resorting to violence. Early Victories During World War II, many African Americans had supported the “Double-V Campaign,” which called on them to defeat foreign enemies while simultaneously fighting against segregation and discrimination at home. After World War II ended, many returned home to discover that, despite their sacrifices, the United States was not willing to extend them any greater rights than they had enjoyed before the war. Particularly rankling was the fact that although African American veterans were legally entitled to draw benefits under the GI Bill, discriminatory practices prevented them from doing so. For example, many banks would not give them mortgages if they wished to buy homes in predominantly African American neighborhoods, which banks often considered too risky an investment. However, African Americans who attempted to purchase homes in white neighborhoods often found themselves unable to do so because of real estate covenants that prevented owners from selling their property to blacks. Indeed, when a black family purchased a Levittown house in 1957, they were subjected to harassment and threats of violence. The postwar era, however, saw African Americans make greater use of the courts to defend their rights. In 1944, an African American woman, Irene Morgan, was arrested in Virginia for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate bus and sued to have her conviction overturned. In Morgan v. the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the conviction should be overturned because it violated the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution. This victory emboldened some civil rights activists to launch the Journey of Reconciliation, a bus trip taken by eight African American men and eight white men through the states of the Upper South to test the South’s enforcement of the Morgan decision. Other victories followed. In 1948, in Shelley v. Kraemer, the U.S. Supreme Court held that courts could not enforce real estate covenants that restricted the purchase or sale of property based on race. In 1950, the NAACP brought a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that they hoped would help to undermine the concept of “separate but equal” as espoused in the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which gave legal sanction to segregated school systems. Sweatt v. Painter was a case brought by Herman Marion Sweatt, who sued the

242 University of Texas for denying him admission to its law school because state law prohibited integrated education. Texas attempted to form a separate law school for African Americans only, but in its decision on the case, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this solution, holding that the separate school provided neither equal facilities nor “intangibles,” such as the ability to form relationships with other future lawyers, that a professional school should provide. Not all efforts to enact desegregation required the use of the courts, however. On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson started for the Brooklyn Dodgers, playing first base. He was the first African American to play baseball in the National League, breaking the color barrier. Although African Americans had their own baseball teams in the Negro Leagues, Robinson opened the gates for them to play in direct competition with white players in the major leagues. Other African American athletes also began to challenge the segregation of American sports. At the 1948 Summer Olympics, Alice Coachman, an African American, was the only American woman to take a gold medal in the games. These changes, while symbolically significant, were mere cracks in the wall of segregation. Figure 14-1. Baseball legend Jackie Robinson (a) was active in the civil rights movement. He served on the NAACP’s board of directors and helped to found an African American-owned bank. Alice Coachman (b), who competed in track and field at Tuskegee University, was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. Desegregation and Integration Until 1954, racial segregation in education was not only legal but was required in seventeen states and permissible in several others. Utilizing evidence provided in sociological studies

243 conducted by Kenneth Clark and Gunnar Myrdal, however, Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP, successfully argued the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas before the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Marshall showed that the practice of segregation in public schools made African American students feel inferior. Even if the facilities provided were equal in nature, the Court noted in its decision, the very fact that some students were separated from others on the basis of their race made segregation unconstitutional. Figure 14-2. This map shows those states in which racial segregation in public education was required by law before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 1960, four years later, fewer than 10 percent of southern African American students attended the same schools as white students. Thurgood Marshall on Fighting Racism As a law student in 1933, Thurgood Marshall was recruited by his mentor Charles Hamilton Houston to assist in gathering information for the defense of a black man in Virginia accused of killing two white women. His continued close association with Houston led Marshall to aggressively defend blacks in the court system and to use the courts as the weapon by which equal rights might be extracted from the U.S. Constitution and a white racist system. Houston also suggested that it would be important to establish legal precedents regarding the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of separate but equal.

244 By 1938, Marshall had become “Mr. Civil Rights” and formally organized the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1940 to garner the resources to take on cases to break the racist justice system of America. A direct result of Marshall’s energies and commitment was his 1940 victory in a Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, which held that confessions obtained by violence and torture were inadmissible in a court of law. His most well-known case was Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which held that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. Later in life, Marshall reflected on his career fighting racism in a speech at Howard Law School in 1978: "Be aware of that myth, that everything is going to be all right. Don’t give in. I add that, because it seems to me, that what we need to do today is to refocus. Back in the 30s and 40s, we could go no place but to court. We knew then, the court was not the final solution. Many of us knew the final solution would have to be politics, if for no other reason, politics is cheaper than lawsuits. So now we have both. We have our legal arm, and we have our political arm. Let’s use them both. And don’t listen to this myth that it can be solved by either or that it has already been solved. Take it from me, it has not been solved." Figure 14-3. Holding a poster against racial bias in Mississippi in 1956, are four of the most active leaders in the NAACP movement, from left: Henry L. Moon, director of public relations; Roy Wilkins, executive secretary; Herbert Hill, labor secretary; Thurgood Marshall, special counsel. Library of Congress. In 1956, NAACP leaders (from left to right) Henry L. Moon, Roy Wilkins, Herbert Hill, and Thurgood Marshall present a new poster in the campaign against southern white racism. Marshall successfully argued the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954) before the U.S. Supreme Court and later became the court’s first African American justice.

245 When Marshall says that the problems of racism have not been solved, to what was he referring? Plessy v. Fergusson had been overturned. The challenge now was to integrate schools. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered southern school systems to begin desegregation “with all deliberate speed.” Some school districts voluntarily integrated their schools. For many other districts, however, “deliberate speed” was very, very slow. It soon became clear that enforcing Brown v. the Board of Education would require presidential intervention. Eisenhower did not agree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision and did not wish to force southern states to integrate their schools. However, as president, he was responsible for doing so. In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, was forced to accept its first nine African American students, who became known as the Little Rock Nine. In response, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the state National Guard to prevent the students from attending classes, removing the troops only after Eisenhower told him to do so. A subsequent attempt by the nine students to attend school resulted in mob violence. Eisenhower then placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control and sent the U.S. Army’s 101st airborne unit to escort the students to and from school as well as from class to class. This was the first time since the end of Reconstruction that federal troops once more protected the rights of African Americans in the South. Figure 14-4. In 1957, U.S. soldiers from the 101st Airborne were called in to escort the Little Rock Nine into and around formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Wikimedia. Copyright permissions unknown. Throughout the course of the school year, the Little Rock Nine were insulted, harassed, and physically assaulted; nevertheless, they returned to school each day. At the end of the school year, the first African American student graduated from Central High. At the beginning of the 1958–1959 school year, Orval Faubus ordered all Little Rock’s public schools closed. In the opinion of white segregationists, keeping all students out of school was preferable to having

246 them attend integrated schools. In 1959, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the school had to be reopened and that the process of desegregation had to proceed. White Responses Efforts to desegregate public schools led to a backlash among most southern whites. Many greeted the Brown decision with horror; some World War II veterans questioned how the government they had fought for could betray them in such a fashion. Some white parents promptly withdrew their children from public schools and enrolled them in all-white private academies, many newly created for the sole purpose of keeping white children from attending integrated schools. Often, these “academies” held classes in neighbors’ basements or living rooms. Other white southerners turned to state legislatures or courts to solve the problem of school integration. Orders to integrate school districts were routinely challenged in court. When the lawsuits proved unsuccessful, many southern school districts responded by closing all public schools, as Orval Faubus had done after Central High School was integrated. One county in Virginia closed its public schools for five years rather than see them integrated. Besides suing school districts, many southern segregationists filed lawsuits against the NAACP, trying to bankrupt the organization. Many national politicians supported the segregationist efforts. In 1956, ninety-six members of Congress signed “The Southern Manifesto,” in which they accused the U.S. Supreme Court of misusing its power and violating the principle of states’ rights, which maintained that states had rights equal to those of the federal government. Unfortunately, many white southern racists, frightened by challenges to the social order, responded with violence. When Little Rock’s Central High School desegregated, an irate Ku Klux Klansman from a neighboring community sent a letter to the members of the city’s school board in which he denounced them as Communists and threatened to kill them. White rage sometimes erupted into murder. In August 1955, both white and black Americans were shocked by the brutality of the murder of Emmett Till. Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago, had been vacationing with relatives in Mississippi. While visiting a white-owned store, he had made a remark to the white woman behind the counter. A few days later, the husband and brotherin-law of the woman came to the home of Till’s relatives in the middle of the night and abducted the boy. Till’s beaten and mutilated body was found in a nearby river three days later. Till’s mother insisted on an open-casket funeral; she wished to use her son’s body to reveal the brutality of southern racism. The murder of a child who had been guilty of no more than a casual remark captured the nation’s attention, as did the acquittal of the two men who admitted killing him. The Montgomery Bus Boycott One of those inspired by Till’s death was Rosa Parks, an NAACP member from Montgomery, Alabama, who became the face of the 1955–1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. City ordinances in

247 Montgomery segregated the city’s buses, forcing African American passengers to ride in the back section. They had to enter through the rear of the bus, could not share seats with white passengers, and, if the front of the bus was full and a white passenger requested an African American’s seat, had to relinquish their place to the white rider. The bus company also refused to hire African American drivers even though most of the people who rode the buses were black. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white man, and the Montgomery police arrested her. After being bailed out of jail, she decided to fight the laws requiring segregation in court. To support her, the Women’s Political Council, a group of African American female activists, organized a boycott of Montgomery’s buses. News of the boycott spread through newspaper notices and by word of mouth; ministers rallied their congregations to support the Women’s Political Council. Their efforts were successful, and forty thousand African American riders did not take the bus on December 5, the first day of the boycott. Other African American leaders within the city embraced the boycott and maintained it beyond December 5, Rosa Parks’ court date. Among them was a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. For the next year, black Montgomery residents avoided the city’s buses. Some organized carpools. Others paid for rides in African American-owned taxis, whose drivers reduced their fees. Most walked to and from school, work, and church for 381 days, the duration of the boycott. In June 1956, an Alabama federal court found the segregation ordinance unconstitutional. The city appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision. The city’s buses were desegregated. Summary After World War II, African American efforts to secure greater civil rights increased across the United States. African American lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall championed cases intended to destroy the Jim Crow system of segregation that had dominated the American South since Reconstruction. The landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education prohibited segregation in public schools, but not all school districts integrated willingly, and President Eisenhower had to use the military to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School. The courts and the federal government did not assist African Americans in asserting their rights in other cases. In Montgomery, Alabama, it was the grassroots efforts of African American citizens who boycotted the city’s bus system that brought about change. Throughout the region, many white southerners made their opposition to these efforts known. Too often, this opposition manifested itself in violence and tragedy, as in the murder of Emmett Till. CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY • US History. Authored by: P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, and Sylvie Waskiewicz. Provided by: OpenStax College. Located

248 at: http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/us-history. License: CC BY: Attribution. License Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11740/latest/ 14.2: The Role of Religion in the Civil Rights Movement In the Civil Rights Movement, religious leaders, thousands of black churches, and anonymous members, as well as religious rhetoric, played major roles. Overview Religion and religious institutions had a huge impact on the Civil Rights Movement. On the one hand, major denominations financially and intellectually supported the movement, and its many leaders were passionate ministers with superb oratory skills and who were critical to conveying the inspiring message of the civil rights struggle. On the other hand, black churches served as sites of organization, education, and community engagement for the movement’s hundreds of thousands of anonymous supporters. Historians also note that churches were places where many anonymous black women, so often excluded from the narratives of the Civil Rights Movement, organized and supported the civil rights struggle. Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African American civil rights organization that was central to the Civil Rights Movement. The group was established in 1957 to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protest in pursuit of civil rights reform. During its early years, the SCLC struggled to gain footholds in black churches and communities across the south. Social activism faced fierce repression from police, the White Citizens ‘ Council, and theKu Klux Klan (KKK). Only a few churches defied the white-dominated status quo by affiliating with the SCLC, and those that did risked economic retaliation, arson, and bombings. The SCLC’s advocacy of boycotts and other forms of nonviolent protest was controversial. Traditionally, leadership in black communities came from the educated elite—such as ministers, professionals, and teachers—who spoke for and on behalf of the laborers, maids, farmhands, and working poor who made up the bulk of the black population. Many of these traditional leaders were uneasy at involving ordinary African Americans in mass activities such as boycotts and marches. The SCLC’s belief that churches should be involved in political activism against social ills was also deeply controversial. Many ministers and religious leaders—both black and white—thought the church’s role was to focus on the spiritual needs of the congregation and perform charitable works to aid the needy. To some of them, the socio-political activity of

249 Martin Luther King, Jr. (the SCLC’s first president) and the SCLC amounted to dangerous radicalism that they strongly opposed. Birmingham Campaign The 1963 SCLC campaign was a movement to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. Led by figures such as King, James Bevel, and Fred Shuttlesworth, the campaign of nonviolent direct action culminated in widely publicized confrontations between young black students and white civic authorities, and eventually led the municipal government to change the city’s discrimination laws. Unlike the earlier efforts on Albany, which focused on desegregation of the entire city, the campaign focused on more narrowly defined goals: desegregation of Birmingham’s downtown stores, fair hiring practices in stores and city employment, reopening of public parks, and creation of a biracial committee to oversee the desegregation of Birmingham’s public schools. The brutal response of local police, led by Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Connor, stood in stark contrast to the nonviolent civil disobedience of the activists. After weeks of various forms of nonviolent disobedience, the campaign produced the desired results. In June 1963, the Jim Crow signs regulating segregated public places in Birmingham were taken down. Three months later, on September 15, 1963, four KKK members planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the front steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The church was one of the most important places of organization and protest during the campaign. The explosion at the church killed four girls and injured 22 others. Although the FBI had concluded in 1965 that the bombing had been committed by four known Ku Klux Klansmen and segregationists, no prosecutions took place until 1977, with two men sentenced to life imprisonment as late as 2001 and 2002, respectively, and one never being charged. March on Washington After the Birmingham campaign, the SCLC called for massive protests in Washington, D.C., aiming for new civil rights legislation that would outlaw segregation nationwide. Although the march originated in earlier ideas and efforts of secular black leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, the overall presence of religious values that shaped the Civil Rights Movement also marked the 1963 march. Its crowning moment was King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in which he articulated the hopes and aspirations of the Civil Rights Movement rooted in two cherished gospels—the Old Testament and the unfulfilled promise of the American creed. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 participated in the march. St. Augustine Protests When civil rights activists protesting segregation in St. Augustine, Florida, were met with arrests and KKK violence, the local SCLC affiliate appealed to King for assistance in the spring of 1964. The SCLC sent staff to help organize and lead demonstrations, and mobilized support for St.

250 Augustine in the north. Hundreds were arrested during sit-ins and marches opposing segregation—so many that the jails were filled and the overflow prisoners had to be held in outdoor stockades. White mobs attacked nightly marches to the Old Slave Market, and when African Americans attempted to integrate “white-only” beaches they were assaulted by police who beat them with clubs. On June 11, King and other SCLC leaders were arrested for trying to have lunch at the Monson Motel restaurant, and when an integrated group of young protesters tried to use the motel swimming pool, the owner poured acid into the water. King sent his “Letter from the St. Augustine Jail” to a northern supporter, Rabbi Israel Dresner of New Jersey, urging him to recruit others to participate in the movement. This resulted, a week later, in the largest mass arrest of rabbis in U.S. history—while conducting a pray-in at the Monson. Television and newspaper stories about St. Augustine helped build public support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 being debated in Congress. Selma Voting Rights Campaign and March to Montgomery When an illegal injunction blocked voter registration and civil rights activity in Selma, Alabama, the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) asked the SCLC for assistance. King, the SCLC, and the DCVL chose Selma as the site for a major campaign that would demand national voting rights legislation in the same way that the Birmingham and St. Augustine campaigns won passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Nonviolent mass marches demanded the right to vote, and the jails filled up with arrested protesters, many of them students. On February 1, King and Abernathy were arrested. Voter registration efforts and protest marches spread to the surrounding Black Belt counties—Perry, Wilcox, Marengo, Greene, and Hale. On February 18, an Alabama state trooper shot and killed Jimmie Lee Jackson during a voting rights protest in Marion, county seat of Perry County. In response, on March 7, close to 600 protesters attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery to present their grievances to Governor George Wallace. Led by Reverend Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of the SNCC, the marchers were attacked by state troopers, deputy sheriffs, and mounted possemen who used tear gas, clubs, and bullwhips to drive them back to Brown Chapel. King called on clergy and people of conscience to support the black citizens of Selma. Thousands of religious leaders and ordinary Americans came to demand voting rights for all. After many more protests, arrests, and legal maneuvering, a federal judge ordered Alabama to allow the march to Montgomery. It began on March 21st and arrived in Montgomery on the 24th. On the 25th, an estimated 25,000 protesters marched to the steps of the Alabama capitol, where King spoke on the voting rights struggle. Within 5 months, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson responded to the enormous public pressure generated by the Voting Rights Campaign by enacting into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965.