Civil Rights and the

Great Society

During World War I, the 400,000 African Americans who served in the armed services believed that a victory for democracy abroad would help them to achieve democracy and equality at home

This wartime optimism made postwar discrimination and hatred difficult to endure

NAACP

Marcus Garvey

Black Nationalism

Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

Marcus Garvey, Black Nationalist. This portrait was taken in 1924, after Garvey’s conviction on mail fraud.

Critics of Garvey were also involved in a growing civil rights movement in the early twentieth century

Ida Wells-Barnett

W. E. B. Du Bois

Portrait of Ida Wells-Barnett

A. Philip RandolphPresident of the Brotherhood of Sleeping

Car Porters (BSCP)

• Randolph delivering a Presidential Address on “Constitution Night” at the Second National Negro Congress, Philadelphia, 1937. Behind Randolph is a giant banner with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the words: “All men are created equal.”

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP)

Executive Order 8802

Claude McKay

Committee on Civil Rights (1946)

Discrimination was costly to the country and wasteful of talent

Major League Baseball

Jackie Robinson

Branch Rickey

Fighting For Civil Rights During World War II

• A. Philip Randolph carrying sign, “If Negroes must fight, let them fight as free men, not as Jim Crow slaves!” during a demonstration for civil rights in the military

Jackie Robinson

It would be another decade before all Major League Baseball teams accepted integration

Restrictive covenants

In 1950, the Supreme Court ruled that under the Fourteenth Amendment racial segregation in state-financed graduate and law schools was unconstitutional

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

Chief Justice Warren

James O. Eastland

White Citizens’ Council

NAACP Lawyers (Including Thurgood Marshall, center) Celebrating Brown v. Board of Education

Emmett Till

Rosa Parks

Montgomery, Alabama

Dr. Martin Luther King

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Commission on Civil Rights

Lunch Counter Sit-ins

Greensboro, North Carolina

Rosa Parks Being Fingerprinted After Her Arrest

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Freedom Rides

In 1961, Kennedy administration sent federal marshals to protect the freedom riders

Birmingham, Alabama

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church

The Kennedy Administration hoped to shape the direction and pace of change by passing laws to get demonstrators “off the streets and into the courts.”

Racial Violence in Birmingham, Alabama (1963)

Martin Luther King

“I Have a Dream” Speech

1963 March on Washington

John Lewis

The Great Society

On assuming the presidency, Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed the passage of civil rights legislation

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Title VI – outlawed discrimination in employment on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex

Freedom Summer

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Freedom school library, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1964.

Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, Hattiesburg, MS, 1964. After being beaten by a racist with a tire iron while trying to register voters.

Volunteer Jim Nance, a minister, heading into the Black community to do voter registration canvassing.

Selma to Montgomery March

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the Constitution – outlawed the poll tax in federal elections

In 1960 only 20 percent of African Americans of voting age had been registered to vote – by 1971 it was 62 percent

A white resident of Selma, Alabama, offers her support to civil rights demonstrators

Johnson’s success in pushing through the 1965 Voting Rights Act stemmed in part for the 1964 presidential election

Won the presidency in his own right by defeating the conservative Barry Goldwater of Arizona by one of the largest margins in history – 61.1 percent of the popular vote

Johnson used his mandate not only to promote a civil rights agenda but also to establish what he called the “Great Society”

Barry Goldwater Lyndon Baines Johnson

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965)

Higher Education Act (1965)

Medicare and Medicaid (1965)

Although the Great Society is usually associated with programs for the disadvantaged, many of Johnson’s initiatives actually benefited a wide spectrum of Americans

National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Humanities (1965)

Johnson administration pressed for the expansion of the national park system

Highway Beautification Act of 1965

Under Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, Great Society programs emphasized quality of life

The new reform climate also allowed Democrats to bring about significant revisions to immigration policy

Immigration Act of 1965

Immigration quota system of the 1920s was abandoned

The system was replaced with more equitable numerical limits on immigration from Europe, Africa, Asia, and countries in the Western Hemisphere

The new system led to an immigrant influx far greater than anticipated

Heaviest volume came from Asia and Latin America

During his campaign for civil rights legislation, Johnson also pursued the goal of putting “an end to poverty in our time”

The War on Poverty

To reduce poverty, the Johnson administration expanded long-established social insurance, welfare, and public works programs

Expanded Social Security to include waiters and waitresses, domestic servants, farmworkers, and hospital employees

Social welfare expenditures increased rapidly

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

Food Stamps (1964) grew into a major program of assistance to low-income families

Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) (1964) was the Great Society’s showcase in the War on Poverty

OEO programs produced some of the most innovative measures of the Johnson administration

Head Start

Job Corps and Neighborhood Youth Corps

Upward Bound

Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)

By the end of 1965, the Johnson Administration had compiled the most impressive legislative record of liberal reforms since the New Deal

The Great Society never quite measured up to the extravagant promises made for it and by the end of the decade many of its programs were under attack

American Medical Association (AMA)

Johnson administration gradually phased out the Community Action Program and instead channeled spending for housing, social services, and other urban poverty programs through local municipal governments

The annual budget for the War on Poverty was less than $2 billion

Despite the limited nature of the program, the statistical decline in poverty during the 1960s suggests that the Great Society was successful on some levels

From 1963 to 1968, the proportion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 20 percent to 13 percent

Critics charged that the reduction in the poverty rate was due to the decade’s booming economy, not the War on Poverty

In 1966, the federal government spent $22 billion on the Vietnam War and only $1.2 billion on poverty

According to Martin Luther King Jr., the Great Society was “shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam