Background to Civil Rights

Key learning goals
To be able to explain: the impact of racial segregation and discrimination in the USA in the 1950s;

Key terms

Jim Crow – refers to the segregation laws imposed by states in the Deep South
Deep South – Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana
Other states in the south where segregation was legally enforced:
(Texas, Arkansas, Tenessee, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia
Segregation
Discrimination
Literacy tests
Poll tax
Implications of voting restrictions on justice
de jure discrimination
de facto discrimination
Precedent
Plessy versus Ferguson, 1896 – Separate but Equal
National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP)

Key Events

1861-65 American Civil War
1865 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishes slavery;
1868 14th Amendment to the Constitution granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to all persons born or naturalized in the United States
1870 15th Amendment removed restrictions on voting rights based on race, colour or previous condition of servitude.
1896 Plessy versus Ferguson ruled that segregation was constitutional so long as it was ‘separate but equal’
1914-18 Great Migration North
1929-1941 Great Depression
1941-5 World War II
1941 Under threat from a ‘March on Washington’ organised by A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste, American government passed Executive Orders first to de-segregate war industries (Fair Employment Act)
1948 – another threatened March on Washington led to the abolition of segregation in the military.

Segregation and discriminationReadings

Activities

Write down your own definition of Segregation and discrimination. Give three different examples of each.
According to James Eastland (Source B) what were the benefits of racial segregation? How popular do you think his views would have been?
Why did the three branches of the US government do so little to give African Americans more civil rights?