Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 1941-1954



Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 1941-1954

KEY THEMES & ISSUES

1. Impact of WW2 on US Race Relations

2. Impact of Cold War on US Race Relations

3. The battle over Jim Crow in the South

Race & WW2, 1

Black Participation & Protest

Segregated Units

Tuskegee Airmen

Discrimination in defense work

Race riots

Alexandria, La, 1942

Harlem & Detroit, 1943

War experience & rhetoric changed some white racial attitudes; spurred black protest vs. discrimination

Race & WW2, 2

“Double V” Campaign

March on Washington Movement, 1941-

A. Philip Randolph

FDR’s Executive Order 8802: Fair Employment Practices Commission

Congress of Racial Equality

Sit-ins, Chicago, 1943

NB: Both MOWM & CORE employ Gandhian, non-violent direct action tactics

WW2 & Southern Race Relations

Durham Conference & Statement, 1942

southern black leadership: Gordon Blaine Hancock

no direct challenge to Jim Crow; want better treatment within segregation

support from southern white liberals…

Southern Regional Council, 1944

finally denounces Jim Crow in 1949

Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 1944

exposed gap between US democratic theory & practice; proposed govt. action to resolve it.

Alarms southern conservatives….

The Vulnerable South, 1941-54

WW2 accelerates economic, political & social changes

Govt. defense contracts

farming modernization

mechanization

decline of sharecropping

mass migrations

to southern cities

to North

Balance of power in region shifts away from agrarian to urban/industrial/commercial sectors

NAACP

Increased membership

Veterans as activists

Medgar Evers

Legal victories

Morgan vs Virginia, 1946

outlaws segregation on interstate transportation

Shelley vs Kramer, 1947

outlaws discrimination in real estate practices

1951 NAACP targets segregation in public schools

Brown vs Topeka, 1954

Direct Action

Journey of Reconciliation, 1947 (to test Morgan)

CORE & Fellowship of Reconciliation

Gandhian methods

CIO, “Operation Dixie,” 1946-8

Biracial union drive

Bus Boycotts

Mobile & Baton Rouge “polite segregation”

Race & The Cold War

Paradox:

McCarthyism stifled dissent:

civil rights groups red-baited

But: Cold War also increased federal & popular sensitivity to the injustices of Jim Crow – bad for US image abroad and propaganda fight with USSR

Increased liberal support for racial justice campaigns:

President Truman’s Commission on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights, 1947

Conclusions

1. African American & their allies used WW2 & the Cold War to push for the same freedom & democracy America claimed to be protecting around the globe.

2. Between 1941 and 1954, African Americans used a wide repertoire of protest techniques, from the courts to direct action in the street.

3. Thanks to these efforts, important legislative gains were made & by the early 1950s Jim Crow looked doomed. Brown seemed to confirm this trend.

4. However, southern conservatives had already begun to mobilize to resist racial change (eg: Dixiecrat Revolt), first hoping to prevent federally ordered desegregation, and then planning ways to avoid full compliance.

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