1950s and 1960s Discrimination

By: Ally Carlisle, Caitie Robinson, Ashley Fisher, Anna Husic, Praw S., and Corrine Vanbibber.

Jim Crow Laws

What are theyThe jim crow laws were laws that were made that segregated the blacks from the whites. These laws were to take place in all public

places even in the southern states. The laws made it seem like african americans were inferior to whites. The african americans were at a social and educational disadvantage compared to whites. Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated, as were federal workplaces.

Breaking them

The Civil Rights Act of 1875, introduced by Charles Summer and Benjamin F. Butler, stipulated a guarantee that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same

treatment in public accommodations, such as inns, public transportation, theaters, and other places of recreation. This Act had little effect.An 1883 Supreme Court decision ruled that the act was unconstitutional in some respects, saying Congress was not afforded control over private persons or

corporations. With white southern Democrats forming a solid voting bloc in Congress, with power out of proportion to the percentage of population they represented, Congress did not pass another civil rights law until 1957.

Discrimination

Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan during the 1950s began to be used by different individual groups. In the beginning, many individual groups in Birmingham, Alabama resisted the social change and the efforts the blacks made to improve their lives. One way the groups did so was by bombing houses in the transitional neighborhoods, giving the city its nickname “Bombingham” due to the mass number of bombings. Many Klan groups were closely allied with the police and were operating with impunity. Between 1951 and 1952, the homes of 40 black Southern families were bombed, according to a report from the Southern Regional Council. Along with the bombings of homes many Klan groups also went around lynching black people. It is said that they were involved in more than 400 lynchings.

In the south, many areas saw a rise in local Klan activity with them beating, bombing, and shooting blacks. Many white Americans had supported the civil rights movement, becoming activists and receiving some of the same treatment by the Ku Klux Klan as the blacks. Even though these actions were carried out in secret, it sparked the nations outrage and helped the blacks win support for their civil rights movement.

Hate Crimes

One well known hate crime is when Emmett Till(a 14 year old black man) wolf-whistled at a white woman and later was found dead in a river. At the time he was in Money, Mississippi visiting relatives but lived in Chicago, Illinois. Emmett was said to have been flirting with Carolyn Bryant and several nights later her husband and his brother came over to Emmett’s great-uncle’s house. They took Emmett out to a barn where they beat him, gouged out an eye, then proceeded to shoot him in the head. His body was then dumped in the Tallahatchie River and weighted down with several pounds of cotton gin fan tied with barbed wire around his neck. When his body was found and returned to his mother in Chicago, she insisted to have a public, open casket funeral service to show how brutal the killing was.

On September 15th, 1963, four African-Americans girls were murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Robert Chambliss and Bobby Cherry were on a mission and the main people in the bombing. The church was targeted by the Alabama Klan for its spiritual importance in the Movement, they placed a 500 pound bomb in the basement that went off right before the morning surface. This bomb created a twenty foot crater, destroying buildings and cars down the road. Including the four girls, about twenty people were injured or killed. Southern courts refused to

prosecute the murders and it would’ve gone unpunished when justice came in 1977. This was later adapted into a motion film.

Voting

Many African Americans found it very difficult to vote being faced with many restrictions like poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic impediments the southern voter registration board used to deny them their legal rights. The southern blacks were also faced with the risk of physical violence, economic reprisals, intimidation, and harassment when they tried to vote or register. African Americans had little political power, if any. For example, in 1960 only five percent of the blacks eligible were registered to vote in Mississippi.

In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) joined up with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to start staging nonviolent demonstrations in Georgia and Birmingham. They were hoping to attract the attention of the national media and protect the Black’s constitutional rights by pressuring the U.S. government. During these demonstrations, newspapers and TV broadcasts captured one of Birmingham’s racist police commissioner along with his men using water hoses, police dogs, and nightsticks to violently attack the protesters. These photos and broadcasts helped to awaken some consciences of whites.

The resolution, a law, empowered the federal government to oversee the registration of voters and elections in places where previously tests were used to determine voter eligibility or where turnout and registration was less than 50% in the presidential election of 1964. The use of discriminatory literacy tests was also banned further expanding the voting rights to the Americans that did not speak English. By the year 1968, nearly 60% of the African Americans eligible in Mississippi were registered. Many of the other southern states showed similar improvement to what Mississippi was showing proving that this law’s effects were wide and powerful.

Segregation

Even though slavery was abolished, and African Americans were given legal status as American citizens. Many still viewed them as second class and went as far as to segregate them into different neighborhoods, schools, public transport, workplaces and restaurants.

On September 4, 1957, nine African American students. Minnijean Brown, Terrance Roberts, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls were escorted by police to be integrated for the first time ever at Central High School in Little Rock. They were recruited by Daisy Bates who was the president of National Association of Advancement for Colored People(NAACP). Martin Luther King had even written to president Dwight D. Eisenhower to allow the students to attend the school. But fearing the violence worsening the students were rushed home.

What Martin Luther King had written to Eisenhower stated that “not taking a stand in this incident would set the idea of integration back fifty years. That is is a great opportunity to fix the mistakes made.” Eisenhower gave in, and ordered troops of the Airborne Division to protect the students as they once again entered the school and it remained that way for the rest of the year. King had written to Eisenhower again showing gratitude for his choices and telling him that many were behind the choices he made. Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock nine, became the first African American to graduate from Central High School.

Segregation had spread to more than just schools. the Montgomery Bus Boycott was a famous protest that had been fueled by some quieted cases of bus rules and some famous ones. An African American woman named Irene Morgan had been arrested in Middlesex Virginia for refusing to move from her seat. She talked to attorneys to get her conviction appealed. When the case was taken to court, they ruled the law she had violated as unconstitutional. On the 25th of February in 1953, after witnessing the protest when the bus fares were raised. Baton Rouge, Louisiana's city parish passed an ordinance known as Ordinance 222. This abolished seating requirements based on race and allowed African Americans to sit in the front rows only if no white passengers were present.

But still made blacks enter through the back of the bus. However the city bus drivers went on strike after the ordinance was enforced. Louisiana General Attorney and former mayor Fred S. LeBlanc declared that the ordinance was unconstitutional under Louisiana law. This led to what was believed to be the first ever bus boycott, led by Rev. Jemison. It ended shortly under an agreement that the first two front and back rows were racially reserved seating areas.

The method used for segregation on Montgomery buses were that the white passengers boarded the bus and took the seats in the front filling towards the back. The blacks who boarded took the seats in the back rows, filling towards the front and the two rows would meet. If more blacks got on they were suppose to stand, if more whites got on then the blacks in the back rows were suppose to stand to make room for the whites getting on. Often black passenger were suppose to pay at the front, get off, and re enter through the back, and more often than not the drivers would drive off before the black passengers could get on.

Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary for the NAACP, had been stopped from boarding a bus by James F. Blake, after he had driven off without her on she had vowed to never ride another bus again. But on December 1, 1955 she was sitting in the frontmost row for the black people. when a white man got on and the blacks had to make room for the new passenger. Rosa realized she was sitting on a bus driven by James F. Blake and refused to move from her seat. She arrested under the charges of violating the Jim Crow Laws. Which were laws that made a hierarchy of the whites were the chosen people, and blacks were the ones to serve them. The Laws were ones of social situations, such as a black must never shake the hand of a white male which showed equality between the races, a black was always to have respectful names to call a white person, to never eat before them if they were sitting together, to sit in the back of cars

or sometimes even the trunk if they were in a car together. Rosa Parks was found guilty of violating these laws and was charged a 10$ find plus a court find of 4$.

Voting

Voting Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson August 6th, 1965. It was used to overcome the barriers that prevented African Americans their right to exercise their vote under the 15th Amendment.

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson took over as president after a landslide victory in the presidential race. He used his power and influence to stronger voting right laws. Under his presidency in 1965 and under the Voting Acts, there six African American members in the House of Representatives but none in the Senate. By 1971 there 13 African Americans in the Representatives and one in the Senate. The 15 Amendment does not deny any male the right to vote based on his race or color. But particularly in the South there practices to prevent African Americans from voting. During this movement many Civil rights Activist were treated harshly in the South.

One incident was in Selma Alabama when protesters marching for voting rights were to the State Capitol in Montgomery where State troopers met them there. Beating them with night sticks and using tear gas and whips on the ones who didn’t comply to their orders. Several protesters were beaten severely and others ran from the scene. Once this had made its way to Lyndons ears he ordered a televised joint session. In the session he listed some of the ways election officials intentionally denied African Americans to vote, some being that they told the voters that they had gotten the date, time, or place wrong to vote. Or that they didn't fill out the application correctly and didn't have the skills to, often making them take literacy test when it was obvious they couldn't pass it.

The Voting Rights Act was passed by the Senate on May 26, 1965 by a vote of 77-19, after a month of debating the bill was passed by Representatives on July 9 with a vote of 333-85. with Civil Rights Activists present at the ceremony, Lyndon signed the bill into Law on August 6. Even though the law had been passed, enforcement of the law was weak and very often ignored. Despite that this new Act gave African Americans means to challenge the restrictions of voting and improve voter turn outs for the South.

Womens Rights in the 1940’s-60’s

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/Womens Sufferage

The womens sufferage contained many different movements such as the right to vote, education rights, and working rights. Almost all women wanted to right to vote, own property, etc. They wanted to be seen as equal to men. The first vote was in new jersey, when the state constitution's suffrage requirements included all "free inhabitants" meeting property requirements. Women with property used this loophole to vote in New Jersey until the state legislature ended women's voting in 1807. Lucy Stone and Fredrick Dougless believed that women could wait till after african americans had the right to vote and are granted citizenship. Many women were involved in women’s sufferage movement but there were some that were against women having the right to vote.http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php#abolitSusan B. Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony was an American social reformer who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. Susan B. Anthony played a major roll in the women’s sufferage movement; she was not the women who started it. She believed her voice needed to be heard so she was introduced by Amelia Bloomer to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. http://www.ushistory.org/us/57c.asp

Phillis Schlafly

While many women were for the right to vote among other rights for women philis schlafly was not. She wanted for the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) to be stopped. She mentioned things like protective laws like sexual assault and alimony would be swept away. The tendency for the mother to receive child custody in a divorce case would be eliminated. The all-male military draft would become immediately

unconstitutional. Those opposed to the ERA even suggested that single-sex restrooms would be banished by future courts. The women who were against the ERA would pin signs to baby girls saying,”Don’t draft me”. After all this hard work between all the rallies and appearing in front of the court it paid off. the number of states that ratified the amendment slowed to a trickle, by 1982, only 35 states voted in favor of the ERA. Only three short of making it final.http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=63Ratification

Finally ratified on August 18th,1920, the 19th amendment. It guarantees all women the right to vote. Starting in the 19th centrury hundreds of thousands of women protested and fought for the right to vote. It took a long while from 1848 when first introduced to congress to 1920 when it was ratified. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and 2 weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment passed its final hurdle of obtaining the agreement of three-fourths of the states.

Education

Since the 1950s, American women

have been less respected in the

society. The image of a typical 50s

woman was a happy housewife who

cooked the food, cleaned the house,

and watched the children. It is sad to

say that few women received a higher-

level education. After high school,

many girls stayed home while their

husbands worked to support the family. In the 1950’s, the ratio of men to

women going to college was 9:1. A 1947 bestselling book, The Modern

Woman, called feminism a "deep illness," labeled the idea of an

independent woman a "contradiction in terms," and explained that women

who wanted equal pay and equal educational opportunities were engaged

in a "ritualistic castration" of men." Some women went to finishing school,

which taught them to be a “good wife” and how to get a husband. This

often included sewing, cooking and cleaning.

The 1950s was a major set back for women’s education in America

became increasingly more valued and work became more justified and

accepted in the 1960’s women’s movement as opposed to the domestic

centered postwar women’s life of the 1950’s. The new feminism of the

1960’s gained force; college women formed group stance on the

betterment of women. Attitudes of women’s subordination were slowly

losing power even in the 1950’s from women’s necessity to work during the

“baby boom” and expansion of school systems. Elementary school

teachers were needed and to ensure a middle class status to combat

inflation, families required two incomes. Despite the entrance into sex-

typed vocations during the 1950’s, women began to be legitimately seen as

workers, although in a very “feminine” light at first. Whether women

combined child care with work or compared themselves with men on the

job, women noticed much had to be refigured in the attitudes of women,

men, and the law of America. The traditional methodology and women’s

inferiority of the 1950’s in the white household or the discrimination against

blacks, gave way to women gaining rights through law in the 1960’s, the

bridge to the new age of feminism and the civil rights movement.

The 1960’s was a time of revolution for women. Individualism was

highly valued in both men and women, unlike during the 1950’s. The

working mother, educated daughter, and most of all, the college woman

were highly recognized and realized. Women’s academic pursuits were

more egalitarian and not focused on domestic ideals anymore. Colleges

were crucial centers for social activism and developed followers of the new

feminist ideology. This sparked women’s individualism and straying from

traditional roles. “Casual” relationships became common. Increasing

amounts of single women had jobs of their own and attitudes of female

autonomy were widely promoted. Overall, there was a lot of improvement

for women in the 1960’s, there has been even more improvement since

then. However, women are often still treated unfairly and stereotyped

today.

As a whole, the women workers of America, white and black, gained

significant ground into the 1960’s, throwing away the “feminine” ideals of

the postwar 1950’s and fighting for antidiscrimination laws on the basis of

race. This time period marked a very drastic and positive change in thinking

and ideals for the improvement of women’s rights and social justice.

Citation

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/crm.htm

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_little_rock_school_desegregation_1957/

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Morgan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott

https://www.aclu.org/timeline-history-voting-rights-act

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act