Troubled affluence

• The southern state of the US used “Jim Crow” laws to segregate black Americans from white.

  • black Americans were also banned from voting
  • the white supremacist organisation, the Ku Klux Klan, attacked black people
• after the Second World War, the conditions for black Americans changed.
• factors which brought about change for black people:

  • black people migrated to cities and became easier to organise
  • a new, educated black leadership emerged in the 1940s and 1950s
  • some of the leaders were Christian ministers, because black Americans depended heavily on the Christian church.
  • black americans who returned from the Second World War had higher expectations for civil and political rights. many fought in the armed forces or worked in war industries for freedom and democracy
• factors which brought about change for black people:

  • liberal whites wanted to give blacks more votes
  • during the Cold War the US wanted to be seen as the leader of the Free World, so it couldn’t be seen discriminating against black people
  • the mass media showed how black people were being treated, especially in the southern states
  • black Americans organised themselves through the NAACP and CORE to fight against discrimination
• Desegregation

  The Army: President Truman desegregated the armed forces with an Executive Order in 1948.
• Desegregation

  Education: this battle was fought mainly through taking test cases to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Earl Warren issued many decisions that opening up education to black Americans.
• Desegregation

  Brown v. Board of Education: Kansas City, 1954, under President Eisenhower. The result declared that state laws that required public school segregation were unconstitutional.

  • in many southern states there was white resistance to integrating education. white citizens councils, state governors and the Ku Klux Klan led the resistance
• Desegregation

  the brutal murder of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, Missouri shocked many white Americans in 1955
• Desegregation

  in Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, nine black students were prevented by National Guardsmen from entering the school. President Eisenhower had to send federal troops to protect the students from the angry mob
• Desegregation

  Bussing: Black and white students were bused across cities to achieve racial balance in public schools. There was widespread resistance amongst white people, and even after many years of bussing, there were many schools where desegregation didn't work. This was caused by white, middle-class families sending their children to private white schools
• Desegregation

  University of Mississippi: James Meredith had to have federal marshals and troops to protect him from white mobs when he attended the previously all-white university in Mississippi, in 1962
• Desegregation

  Non-violent protests: Non-violent protests became an important part of the methods used to challenge segregation. These protests were often organised by CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)
• Desegregation

  Black Americans boycotted the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system when Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving her seat up to a white man. (1955 - 1956)
• Desegregation

  Freedom Riders: black and white students took interstate buses to force the federal government to enforce desegregation in those buses.
• Desegregation

  MLK led schoolchildren as demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama. A white backlash led by police chief Eugene 'Bull' Conner and his men, when they used dogs and water canons, was featured on television, 1963
• Desegregation

  State troops attacked marchers from Selma to Mongomery who protested about their lack of voting rights. President Johnson sent federal troops to protect the marchers, who were now led by MLK.

  The success of the march led to the Voting Rights Act (1965) which banned literacy tests for voter registration and gave the federal government control over voting rights.
• The civil rights movement was weakened :

  • MLK was assassinated in Memphis 1968. This led to widespread rioting
  • Malcolm X supported the use of violence and Black Nationalism. He advocated Black Power and the development of a separate black identity.
  • There were race riots in many cities, such as Los Angeles and Detroit
• The Federal government and civil rights: the federal government played a vital role in bringing civil rights into America.

  • Truman and Eisenhower ended segregation in the armed forces
  • The Civil Rights Act (1964)- outlawed discrimination in public places including restaurants, stadiums and cinemas.
  • The Voting Rights Act (1965)- banned literacy tests for voter registration
  • Affirmative Action- companies on federal contracts had to provide jobs for minorities.
• Impact on black Americans

  • A new black leadership was created in sport, films, politics and music
  • a new black middle class was created
  • more black Americans were elected to the House of Representatives and the Senate.
  • but many black people still experienced poverty
• Chicanos (Mexican Americans) were used illegally as farm labourers in California and Florida. Led by César Chávez, they fought for better working conditions and wages.
• Native Americans suffered from bad education, poor housing, illness and high death rates. the American Indian Movement got the Indian Self Determination Act passed, which gave Indians control of their reservations
• Urban Poverty

  Michael Harrington's book The Other America showed how about 40 million (25%) people were below the poverty line. Much of this was Urban Poverty.
• urban poverty is a problem in cities, where there are high levels of unemployment and low wages
• the causes of urban poverty were:

  1. the movement of back Americans from the South to northern cities for work; when manufacturing industries declined they lost their jobs
  2. the movement of white Americans to the suburbs; the city centers became black ghettos - a place of high unemployment, poverty, bad housing and poor education levels.
  3. the cities lost tax revenue, so they were in financial trouble and unable to maintain streets and schools.
  4. public housing projects in cities consisted of high-rise apartments and were mainly occupied by poorer people
• government policies tried to combat poverty:

  • Truman and Eisenhower set up the minimum wage
  • Kennedy provided money for school and job-based training
  • Johnson began a war on poverty as part of his 'Great Society' programme, he set up:
  • Headstart (where children went to preschool classes)
  • the Job Corps (to provide skills for inner city youths)
  • Medicare (for the elderly) and Medicaid (for poorer welfare recipients)
  • --- the number of people below the poverty line fell from 40 million to 25 million
• Watts Riots and other urban riots- These began in the Watts district in Los Angeles and spread to other cities, such as Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, Detroit and Newark between 1965 and 1968
• these riots were caused by:

  • the concentration of poverty and unemployment in these areas
  • the remaining barriers to improvement - rising expectations of a better life now that civil and political rights were largely won
  • the message of radical leaders such as Malcolm X, who preached Black Power with violence.
  • tension between black youths and police (who were often white)
  • the influence of television, which spread a general discontent
• The causes of crime in the US were:

  • poverty, unemployment and slum conditions
  • the wide availability of guns
  • drug addiction and the cost of drugs
  • a shortage of police
• crime levels jumped rapidly in the 1960s. - the US had the highest rates of murders, rapes and robberies in the world
• crime was mostly in cities. 30% of all reported crimes in America too place in the six largest cities.
• • criminals were mostly young, male, poor, and black
  • criminals had become younger by the 1980s
  • most crime was committed by a small percentage of people
• much crime became drug-related in the 1970s. Drug trafficking was operated by organised crime. Various gangs operated, whether mafia, Jamaican, Puerto Rican or Mexican
• Drugs were linked to other problems - drug addicts stole to pay for their drugs; half of US murders were drug-related; AIDS spread partly owing to dirty needles used to take drugs.
• The spread of crime caused fear; it also led to racial tension between black and white citizens
• Crime became an issue in presidential elections; government policies were directed at the causes of crime by concentrating to job training, education, and better housing. But also there was a crackdown on criminals