African Americans

• The Emancipation Proclamation


  Ended slavery in 1863, but only in areas under Union control.
• The 13th Amendment


  Wrote emancipation into the Constitution in 1865, making 4 million African American slaves into freedmen.
• Sharecropping


  Farming system whereby a white land owner provides land, seeds and tools, but a black worker provides the labour. Common in the South after the Civil War.
• President Johnson V Congress


  Johnson was unsympathetic to the cause of improving conditions of A/A. However, Congress was dominated by Radical Republicans who wanted to carry out reforms in the South to help them.
• Black codes


  Southern states' laws to control freed slaves.
• Freedmen's Bureau


  Set up by Congress in March 1865 to care for former slaves. It provided food, shelter, hospitals and education. It set up two universities, but its 900 agents were subject to intimidation and violence from hostile white Southerners.
• The 14th and 15th Amendments


  Outlawed discrimination
• Civil Rights Act (1866)


  Gave legal equality
• First Reconstruction Act


  Passed in 1867, guaranteed the right to vote and created new Southern constitutions.
• Reconstruction


  The process of rebuilding and reforming the 11 Confederate states and restoring them to the Union after the Civil War.
• Hiram Revels


  First A/A congressman
• White discrimination in 1868


  2,000 deaths and injuries in Louisiana alone.
• Hayes Tilden Compromise


  1877; the presidential election was disputed and there was an uncertainty whether Hayes or Tilden had won. The Democrats conceded the vote in disputed states as a bargain for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, which allowed the white Southern Democrats to end Reconstruction. Ironically, the hotel the compromise was made at was owned by a black man.
• Booker T. Washington (1865-1915)


  Famous for both gaining the confidence of white Americans and his moral authority among A/A. He stressed the importance of A/A relying on their own efforts to make progress, stating that they key was to demonstrate responsibility, to become educated and to become prosperous. In 1881 he founded the Tuskegee Institute to train teachers and founded the National Business League to encourage A/A economic enterprise.
• W.E.B DuBois (1868-1913)


  Du Bois' view was that an A/A elite - the 'talented tenth' - would spearhead a movement for radical political change. He co-operated with white reformers in the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (the NAACP, established in 1909) and led marches and campaigns for equal civil and political rights.
• Talented tenth


  Idea originating with white liberals and then publicised by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1903 that A/A would be led by an elite of well-educated men drawn from the highest ability 10%.
• NAACP


  Founded in 1909 and was the first successful nationwide civil rights organisation to campaign for A/A rights and gain support from both A/A and white people.
• Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)


  He did not want to achieve equality within the system. Rather, he saw a separate A/A community, aware of its African roots and part of a wider Pan African movement, as the goal. His UNIA was the first large civil rights organisation in the USA and was said to have 4 million members by 1920.
• Pan African


  Belief in the need for unity and solidarity among Africans all over the world.
• Philip Randolph (1890-1979)

  Rallied black organised labour to the cause of civil rights. He believed in mass non-violent protest and was influenced by civil disobedience campaigns in India, led by Ghandi. He pressured the gov to end discrimination in war production industries in 1941 by threatening a mass march on Washington. This was the first time an A/A leader had managed to influence policy substantially.
• MLK (1929-68)

  Co-opeated with white liberals and used the tactic of non violence. King brought a new fervour to the movement and an ability to use publicity and image effectively. He formed to SCLC in 1957, organised the march in Birmingham, Alabama, Selma to Montgomery and Washington, and isknown for his 'I have a dream' speech (1963).
• Malcolm X (1925-65)


  Was of the separatist tradition. Worked with the NOI to promote the African heritage and was a powerful and influential leader. He inspired the Black Panther movement. He softened his approach in later years, particularly after his pilgrimage to Mecca.
• Nation of Islam


  An A/A religious organisation founded in 1930.
• Black Panthers


  Nationalist and socialist A/A organisation formed in 1966 and active until 1982. Founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seal for self defence, calling for equality and armed resistance to authority and white hostility.
• Jesse Jackson (1941 - )


  Joined MLK on his March on Selma. Founded Operation Push a Chicago-based organization in which he advocated Black self-help and achieved a broad audience for his liberal views. In 1984 he established the National Rainbow Coalition, which sought equal rights for African Americans, women, and homosexuals. These two organizations merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Jackson ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, in what was then the strongest showing ever by an African American candidate, Jackson placed third in the primary voting. 
• President Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77)


  Used federal troops and authority to support Reconstruction. However, presidents were conscious of the need to retain the support of Southern senators and congressmen in the party, and so allowed to South the discriminate against A/A.
• President Woodrow Wilson (1931-21)


  Even though a progressive Democratic leader, he did little for civil rights, showing how presidents were conscious of the need to retain the support of Southern senators and congressmen in the party. Indeed, he praised the KKK for defending Southern rights after the Civil War.
• President FDR (1933-45)


  Did not pass a specific civil rights act, but some of his reforms in his New Deal helped A/A, who had been hit particularly badly by the Great Depression. An example of this is the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). However, segregation was a feature of work camps and many reforms excluded key areas of A/A employment, such as agriculture and domestic service. When war broke out, the US armed forces remained segregated, though FDR did end discrimination in war industries.
• The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA)


  • FERA: Public works organisation to create employment; it gave $3 billion in grants to states.
  • PWA: Set up to build large-scale public works like dams, schools, roads and hospitals.
• President Truman (1945-53)


  Issued an executive order against segregation in the armed forces, appointed a committee on civil rights and urged Congress to pass civil rights legislation, but no comprehensive measures were passed.
• President Eisenhower (1953-61)


  Created the Civil Rights Acts which reaffirmed A/A right to vote. Sent troops to enforce a Supreme Court ruling on desegregating schools at Little Rock in 1957.
• President JFK (1961-63)


  Spoke clearly against the 'harmful, wasteful and wrongful results of racial discrimination', and prepared a general civil rights bills in 1963 before his assassination, but was prevented from passing it due to Southern white opposition.
• President LBJ (1963-69)


  Passed the most significant series of Civil Rights Acts since the 1860s: the 24th Amendment (1964) and the Civil Rights Act (1964 and 1965). Restrictions on voting rights for A/A were no longer premiered and discrimination in public accommodations and employment were made illegal. Also appointed the first A/A Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, a noted campaigner for civil rights.
• President Nixon (1969-74)


  Extended affirmative action to promote wider equality. This, along with the act of 1972 extending equal employment legislation to all federal, local, and state governments, showed a conscious desire by the government to go beyond simply ensuring equal political rights to promote greater prosperity and stability by making working practices more equal. However, although Johnson had secured greater political equality in the 1960s, subsequent presidents found it harder to address the remaining social and economic inequalities.
• Congress 1960s

  It was the Southern members of Congress who acted as a barrier to reforms in civil rights until the 1960s. Congress made it hard for presidents to consider comprehensive civil rights legislation. However the wave of sympathy following Kennedy's assassination led to more support for what were seen as his ideals, and Johnson did persuade Congress to pass key legislation. The authority of Congress was behind the changes of the 1960s, whereas previous key changes had come about more by executive orders (e.g. Trumans desegregation of the armed forces).
• Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896


  The Supreme Court played a major role in supporting segregation when it ruled in a key case that Louisiana was not acting against the Constitution in discriminating on its railroads.
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)


  Declared segregated education illegal, and that the concept of 'separate but equal' facilities was in fact inherently unequal.
• Busing


  Policy of ensuring that children were in mixed schools to help socially disadvantaged A/A children to promote racial integration. It was supported by the Supreme Court but proved unpopular among whites in the south.
• The southern states and Reconstruction

  In South Carolina, the heartland of the movement for Southern States' Rights before the Civil War, A/A representatives outnumbered whites. Thus civil rights were achieved in the South, but only because of the presence of Union armed forces.
• States rights after 1877

  When the North compromised with the South that they would return to regulating their own racial affairs by 1877, the terror unleashed against A/A forced them out of political life. The all-white legislatures and government passed Jim Crow laws which prescribes: separate public facilities, codes of behaviour regulating social and sexual relations between different races, complex voting laws against A/A. Southern states also did little to nothing to control violence against A/A or to stop lynching.