Lesson 21: The African American Experience and the Civil Rights Movement
In this lesson, we will look at the Emancipation Proclamation and the
subsequent passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments which were designed
to give African Americans equality in the Constitution. We will learn about how
the separate-but-equal doctrine became official as a result of Plessy v.
Ferguson, and talk about the different ways African Americans were kept from
exercising their right to vote. We will then see how the separate-but-equal
doctrine came to an end and how the civil rights movement achieved success.
Finally, we will talk about modern civil rights legislation including the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the consequences of that legislation.
Because of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and
certain amendments that were passed after that,
inequality in the Constitution was over.
The 13th Amendment ended the institution of slavery. The 14th Amendment made it
clear that anyone born in the United States is a citizen of the United States.
And the 15th Amendment gave all citizens the right to vote.
The Civil Rights Acts from
1865 to 1875 were passed in
addition to the Amendments to
further implement their power and outline punishments for going against them.
Inequality may have been removed from
the Constitution, but things were not changing so quickly in
practice. The Civil Rights Acts were pretty much ineffective. In fact, what was
to come next would nullify all that work.
The Civil Rights Cases of 1883 did not reverse the enforcement clause of the
14th Amendment, but they did establish that it only pertained to official
actions of the states. The clause was not meant for private citizens; they
could still abridge the privileges and immunities of other citizens.
Separate-but-Equal was put to the test when Homer Plessy from
Louisiana boarded a train and was sent to
the African American car even though he was only 1/8 African American.
The Separate-but-Equal doctrine held that
separate-but-equal facilities do NOT violate the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
When Homer Plessy challenged Separate-but-Equal, he lost because it was decided
that offering separate facilities did not imply that any race was more or less
inferior than the other. That is when it pretty much became the rule and
facilities were allowed to offer separate water fountains, public toilets, and
seats in restaurants, among other things.
Even though African Americans had the right to vote,
white supremacist politicians found ways to keep them from voting.
A White Primary would be held restricting voting to whites only. The
Grandfather Clause restricted voting to those whose ancestors had voted before
1867.
There was also a Poll Tax, which was a special tax that
had to be paid as a qualification for voting. And then there was the Literacy
Test, which was administered as a precondition for voting, often used to
prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote.
The climate was very different back then. Even though there were laws in place,
they did not seem to be effective.
Lynching was against the law, but the law was not being enforced. Therefore,
African Americans were forced to live by a code of behavior when interacting
with white people, for fear of being lynched.
When Oliver Brown decided that
it was ridiculous to send his daughter 21 blocks away to
a school with no white kids when there was a perfectly good school just down
the street, he changed history.
In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education,
it was decided that the 14th Amendment was being violated by segregation. Chief
Justice Earl Warren actually reversed the Separate-but-Equal decision when he
said that it was in fact implying inferiority.
Of course, this ruling did not go unchallenged. In the 1957 incident at Central
High School in Little Rock, President Eisenhower had to send in the 101st
Airborne to enforce integration. In another incident in 1962, President Kennedy
had to send 30,000 troops to the University of Mississippi to make sure an
African American by the name of James Meredith was allowed to attend classes.
But as we mentioned earlier,
laws are not the only factors at play when it comes to
social issues. There are
different types of segregation and one concerns laws while the other concerns
social practices.
De Jure Segregation is racial segregation that
occurs because of laws or administrative decisions by public agencies. Brown
and Meredith both experienced De Jure Segregation.
De Facto Segregation is racial segregation that
occurs because of patterns of racial residence and similar social conditions.
This happens when landlords of certain districts are the only ones who will
rent to African Americans or realtors will only show houses in those areas.
Even though the Brown decision desegregated schools, that was about the extent
of its effects. It would take the courage of a lady named Rosa Parks in 1955 to
take a seat on a bus and refuse to move to the back. She was arrested, and that
is when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a protest, and in 1956, public buses
were desegregated as a result. That also set a precedent showing how effective
civil rights protests could be.
Martin Luther King Jr. became a huge part of the civil rights movement. He
advocated nonviolent protest even though violence was often brought against the
protesters. This form of protest is called Civil Disobedience and is a
nonviolent, public refusal to obey allegedly unjust laws.
Civil disobedience was not the only way African Americans and
sympathetic whites fought for change.
In 1963, the March on Washington was monumental because millions of people
around the nation heard Martin Luther King Jr. say those famous words, “I have
a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character.”
A new era was about to begin,
often referred to as the Second Reconstruction period. It began with a series
of acts designed to end discrimination of any kind.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be enacted to
ban discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, gender, or national
origin.
It specifically focused on voter registration and
public accommodations. Plus,
the federal government was authorized to sue to enforce desegregation. One very
important issue was that it extended to employment.
With African Americans being denied the right to vote through discriminatory
acts rather than law, Congress knew something had to change.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed voter-registration tests as well as
established federal registration and federal procedures for voting.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 brought about many changes the country needed.
With laws put in place to ensure voting rights to all, voter-registration
drives led to a significant climb in the number of African Americans registered
to vote. When Barack Obama was voted into office in 2008, the African American
vote made a significant difference.
10,000 African Americans are
in office across the United States. 49 in Congress in 2014. Of course, Barack
Obama became the first African American president.
There are still issues, though, that America has to overcome. The poverty level
in the African American community is high when compared to that of whites.
Also, African Americans are arrested and thrown in prison at a higher rate than
whites.