Black Rights †Struggle for Racial Equality in Post War America Essay

Write a full account on the struggle for racial equality in post war America. During World War II, around one million black men served in the army. They were in different units to the white men. Riots and fights occurred when black men from northern America had to face the discrimination in the south during training. This lessoned peoples opinion of them, in a prejudice way. They were never allowed to join the Marines or the Air Corps, but this changed for the first time during the war due to the military needs. After the war, blacks began to challenge their status as second-class citizens. After their country fighting Nazi Germany, who killed six million Jews, and a fascist Italy, the people of America began to question the racism and many white people felt their main priority as a country should be dealing with their racial problems . More and more black people began moving from the south up to the more urban areas of the north after the war. It was easier to set up pressure groups against discrimination, some peaceful and some violent, thanks to the large numbers in the cities. When the blacks moved to the cities, a lot of whites moved out to suburbs, leaving the blacks in the inner city. Due to overcrowding black ghettoes emerged, houses were in poor conditions, which also helped to highlight the unfair racial injustice. More blacks started attending universities , improving their skills and raising the chance of jobs. When better roads and train lines were built or improved, the move from the south to cities became easier. The economy in American affected blacks greatly. During the economic boom, more blacks were employed and earned better pay. Now that blacks could earn more money their living standards increased. This led to a demand for blacks and whites to be treated more equally. The media helped. They wou ld highlight the disadvantages for the blacks. Television was expanding, exposing discrimination as it grew. It helped greatly to win over the support of the whites in the north. There was huge hypocrisy in the US during the cold war. The US were trying to prevent the spread of communism and disagreed with it completely. They thought the communists were treating their people badly and denying them their human rights. Blacks saw the hypocrisy. They were being treated horribly while their country and government fight for rights around the world. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was a black rights group. Their aim was to defend black civil rights. It became the main opponent of the Klu Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. For decades they had been campaigning for for an end to segregation in schools. They brought cases to court so black students were allowed into colleges. Linda Brown was a young black girl from Topeka, Kansas. She wanted to attend a local school but wasn’t allowed. Because of this she had to go to an all black school further away. The law said segregation was legal as long as facilities were equal. The lawyer for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, said that segregation like this denied these black children their rights and that separate schools caused psychological damage. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP won their case. Segregation was now ruled, by the Supreme Court, unconstitutional and therefore illegal. The schools were declared by the Court, the next year, to become desegregated. This didn’t stop racism or the racist acts. A fourteen year old boy was murdered by the KKK and an all white jury found the murderers not guilty. People said it was a plot by the NAACP. In 1957 the governor of Arkansas tried to prevent nine black students from attending a white school in Little Rock, even though the Supreme Courts had ruled it legal. Federal troops were sent in to protect the nine students so they could attend school safely and to make sure the new laws were upheld. President Eisenhower ordered the troops to remain present at the school for the remainder of the school year. The percentage of black children who attended school with white students had raised from one to twenty per cent in around ten years. A similar incident happened when a young man tried to enrol for the University of Mississippi, an all white university. An angry mob and the governor of Mississippi tried to stop him. The case was brought to court by the NAACP and won the right for him to enrol. President Kennedy also sent troops in to protect the young man when he was enrolling but riots broke out ending in 375 people injured and two dead. The rest of the state universities in the south were slowly desegregated. In the north, blacks and whites attended different schools because they lived in different parts of the city or state. The laws to desegregate the schools were not just for the south. So they brought in bussing. This meant that black children could get the bus to white schools that had been desegregated so there was a racial balance in the schools. A lot of northern cities resisted this court order, and some cities even fire-bombed the buses. To get around these laws, many white people sent their children to private schools. Most black children stayed in public schools due to lack of money. There wasn’t just racial segregation in schools. Restaurants and buses are just a couple of the other places where racial segregation occurred. Racial segregation on public transport was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. This meant that blacks had to sit at the back of the bus, whites at the front. A black person had to give up his seat if there was no room for a white person or if a white person sat beside them. In 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress, from Montgomery refused to give up her seat for a white person. She politely told the bus driver she wouldn’t get up. The driver called the police who then arrested her. When Rosa was due in court, the black community decided they would boycott the buses on the day of the court case. The buses in Montgomery made most of their money from black people travelling to and from work. Word of the boycott was spread in black churches, the organisers hoped 60 per cent would boycott the buses but on the day almost 100 per cent avoided the buses. Many drove, car-pooled or walked. The boycott went on for a year, costing the bus company a lot of money. The boycott ended when the blacks made a deal to desegregate the buses. There were three parts to the deal: Bus drivers must treat black passengers with courtesy; Segregation must end on the buses; Black drivers must be employed. This began a new phase of peaceful protests. Four black students in North Carolina sat at the white only counter in a diner. They refused, politely and peacefully, to move until they were served. This was called a ‘sit-in’. When word of the sit-in got out, more and more young black students around the south started doing the same. By the end of the year more than 50,000 young people had succeeded in desegregating public facilities in over 100 cities in the south. When black and white civil rights activists wanted to test the desegregation laws, they decided they would travel through the south on a bus together. They were attacked, threatened and intimidated by white mobs. Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General, was appealed to by the activists for protection. He sent in federal marshals to enforce the law and to protect the activists. The bus journeys went on for another year, receiving national media attention. Voting for black people was very difficult and involved a lot of obstacles. There was a poll tax that if you didn’t pay you couldn’t vote. Many black people couldn’t afford the tax leaving the majority of the voters white. This and the literacy test were both legal as it, technically, applied to both races. The literacy test was mainly to prevent blacks from voting also. They would be given a piece to read and if they struggled in the slightest they couldn’t vote. This was unfair for the blacks as the majority of them weren’t as educated as the majority of the whites. Even the whites who were more illiterate than the blacks had a better chance of passing as they would be given easier pieces to read. White employers also tried to prevent blacks from voting by threatening to fire them if they voted. Only four per cent of blacks in the south were registered to vote in 1955. In the 1960’s, Martin Luther King lead peaceful protests to get black voting rights. White’s in the north were impressed by King’s peaceful approach. In 1963 King organised a march in Birmingham, Alabama. The blacks marched the streets day after day. Others replaced them when the marchers were arrested. Martin Luther King was even arrested. He wrote a letter from Birmingham jail which is one of the most important documents of the civil rights movement. There was widespread white support for King on the north after the marches were televised showing the police using hoses, cattle prods and dogs against the peaceful marchers. The president got involved, then the violence ended and the protesters were given their demands. King delivered his famous â€Å"I have a dream†¦Ã¢â‚¬  speech at the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC, in front of over 200,000 black and white civil right supporters. A year later a new Civil Rights Act was passed. Discrimination in public facilities was banned, job discrimination was outlawed and the power of the local voter registration board was reduced, no longer preventing blacks from voting. The same year, using non-payment of the poll tax to prevent blacks from voting was outlawed. When a campaign began to get black voters to register in the south, two civil rights volunteers, one white one black, were murdered in Alabama. The governor and local police still tried to prevent black voters registering and the KKK burned down several black churches. By 1965 most of the legal barriers for black equality were gone, but a lot of people remained prejudice. Blacks were the poorest and undereducated racial group in America. A group of black rights activists didn’t agree with King’s approach. Their attitude was to fight back. They wanted black supremacy and wanted to use violence to get it. They were called the black panthers. They were a paramilitary force. Their leader was Huey Newton who called on them to collect weapons for protection against the white police. They’re campaign frightened many whites but was sending the wrong idea of the black community and was probably making matters, regarding their rights and acceptance, worse. After riots had broken out in cities such as New York and L.A between black youths and the police, King decided to move his SCLC headquarters to Chicago to focus on the northern ghettoes. Violence levels were huge in 1966 and 1967 with 164 riots taking place in cities across northern America, leaving 84 people dead and costing over 100 million dollars in damages. In April 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis. His death destroyed the hope for many, and the hope for resolving the racism. After his death, riots broke out in 125 cities out of grief and anger. A week after King’s death a Civil Rights Act was passed outlawing racial discrimination in housing.