America - The Race Issue

• Wall Street Crash - 1929
  • Blacks could not get jobs, therefore making it hard to pay for food, houses or bills

• Literacy Tests
  • Prevented blacks from voting
  • Asked impossible questions
  • Whites didn't want black to vote
    • They didn't want fairer rules
• Living Conditions
  • Blacks denied jobs in the south, migrated north
  • Had low pay jobs
  • Lived in poorest houseing with highest rents
• Improvements
  • Famous jazz artists often black
    • Louis Armstrong

Alphabet Agencies

• Eg - PWA, FERA,TVA, CCC, AAA
• Some had a positve, others had a negative effect
• +ve- funds for black hospials, local blacks employed, aid to black families
• -ve- refused to hire blacks, grew too many crops, paid blacks lower wages

TURNING POINT

• WW2 Over 1 million black Americans signed up for US forces
• Blacks were
  • Only allowed in black units
  • Until 1944 not allowed in combat
  • [Nurses] only allowed to treat blacks
• 1944 - Blacks allowed in combat, hundreds of black officers in the army and marines
• Black soldiers assigned most dangerous jobs
• Worst in the navy
• Black army workers struggled to get a job
• Government ordered end to all racial discrimination in the army by February 1946

• Brown vs Topeka 
  • Linda Brown had to walk for an 1hour each way to the local black school, crossing dangerous train tracks, when there was a white school just a block away
  • September 1952 - NAACP brought out court case against board of education Topeka
  • Warren stated that segregated schools could not be equal, as it creates a feeling if inferiority
  • Pattern made - campainers to use a individual story of discrimination at the Supreme court.
  • Declared illegal
• Little Rock, Arkansas
  • After Brown vs Topeka, 9 blacks enrolled
  • 3.Sep 1956 State govenor got national guardsmen to block entrance
  • President orded him to remove them 4.Sep blacks were sent home at lunch
  • President ordered federal troops to protect them for the whole year
  • Made America look awful and weak through media
  • Turned some white American's views on civil rights 

• Montgomery Bus Boycott
  • 1.Dec 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white person on the bus
  • 5.Dec 1955 (Monday) - Rosa's trial - bus boycott
  • Martin Luther King's first involvement in civil rights
  • 20,000 people joined the Monday boycott
  • Boycott continued
    • Buses lost money - blacks started walking daily
  • Bus segregation proved illegal Nov. 1956
  • Boycott ends Dec. 1956

• James Meredith
  • June 1962 supreme court ordered Mississippi University to accept Meredith
  • President sent in 320 federal marshals
  • 2 people killed, 166 marshals and 210 demonstrators wounded
• Sit ins
  • 1. Feb 1960 - 4 black students wanted to be served at white lunch bar. They were refused and sat in
  • 2. Feb - 27 other students joined  
  • 3. Feb - Another 80 joined
  • August 1961 - Sit ins had attracted over 70,000 participants. This resulted in over 3,000 arrests

Freedom Rides

• Groups ivolved - CORE, SNCC, SCLC
• Aim: to challenge racism. A group of blacks travelled by bus from Washington DC to New Orleans
  • Annison - Bus firebombed, riders attacked
  • Birmingham - Riders attacked by mobs
• Ended racial segregation in bus terminals