AA Exam mock q Flashcards
(31 cards)
2
WAS THE “GILDED AGE” (1877-96) A DISASTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS? - Convict Leasing
Southern states exploited a loophole in the 13th Amendment which allowed “involuntary servitude .. as a punishment for a crime” to charge AAs not only with rape but testifying against whites in court, seeking another job or failing to say ‘mister’ to a white man. All of these charges could result in a prison sentence leading to “convict leasing” (90% of convict labourers were AA) or a fine, inability to pay which could result in “peonage” (debt slavery). .
One by one the southern states introduced convict leasing b/c it was so profitable, e.g. Alabama introduced it in 1874 (even before the end of Reconstruction) & by 1890 was earning $164,000 a year from it, more than 10 times as much as in 1874. By 1890 every southern state (13 in total) had some form of convict leasing. There were “sweeps” to arrest AA men on trumped up charges when their labour was needed, e.g. in the autumn when the cotton picking season was about to start or when the coal mines in Alabama needed fresh labour.
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WAS THE “GILDED AGE” (1877-96) A DISASTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS? -
Peonage & Sharecropping
Peonage meant debt slavery: an AA was tied to working for a white employer or landlord until a debt was paid. Sometimes this debt was invented: in one case a white constable falsely alleged that an AA owed him money & had him sentenced to being forced to work for him for non-payment by a corrupt Justice of the Peace. He then sold the AA’s labour to another white employer as if slavery still existed.
Sharecropping was linked with peonage b/c the white landlord invariably controlled the financial records, enabling him to “fiddle” them to make sure that the sharecroppers never got out of debt & could therefore never escape from working for him.
The “separate but equal” Plessy v Ferguson judgement by the Supreme Court in 1896 led to the principle of social segregation being extended into every area of southern life, including street railways, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, recreations, sports and employment. In reality of course, as the accompanying cartoon shows, black facilities were almost always inferior: on trains first class carriages were reserved for whites while AAs could only use the smoking carriage.
WAS THE “GILDED AGE” (1877-96) A DISASTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS? - lynching
AAs who were economically successful in competition with whites or tried to defend themselves against racist violence were liable to be lynched, as happened to 3 AA men in Memphis, Tennessee in 1892.
Ida B Wells showed that in 2/3 of lynchings rape or assault on white women by black men was not even alleged, never mind proved.
The number of lynchings rose steadily through the 1880s & peaked in the 1890s: the number off AA victims first topped 100 in 1891, peaked in 1892 at 161 but remained at over 100 for all but 3 years that decade with a lynching on average every 2 days.
WAS THE “GILDED AGE” (1877-96) A DISASTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS? - disenfranchisement
Georgia in 1877, Florida in 1885 & Tennessee in 1888 restricted the vote to those who paid the poll tax as a way of disenfranchising AAs. By 1890 S Carolina, Louisiana & Mississippi had adopted literacy tests. Mississippi’s new constitution in 1890 using both literacy tests & the poll tax to disenfranchise AAs was followed by other states (e.g. S Carolina in 1895) & by 1908 virtually every southern state had done so. In S Carolina 60% of the population was AA but by 1896 less than 1% of them could vote.
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WAS THE “GILDED AGE” (1877-96) A DISASTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS? - other issues
Conditions were so bad that in the Exodus of 1879 alone some 40,000 African Americans left for the Midwest. Ida B Wells had to move to Chicago to pursue her campaign against lynching b/c it was too dangerous to stay in Memphis. Migration also broke up families.
Booker T Washington’s policies were aimed to reassure whites that AAs could be educated w/o threatening white supremacy; they would simply be trained to be better cooks or sharecroppers, not to rise above that position.
To win the support of whites like the businessman Andrew Carnegie & President Grover Cleveland, Washington had to accept segregation & disenfranchisement, as he did in the “Atlanta Compromise” in 1895; but whites did not keep their side of the bargain, with racial violence continuing & southern states underfunding AA schools.
Whites depended on AA servants to wash their clothes (but often only paid them $1 a day for doing it) & bring up their children (but told them they mustn’t love Nanny b/c “Nanny was only a nigger”). White children were taught never to call an AA man “Mr” but preface his surname with “nigger” instead. Newspaper reports would write things like “2 men & 2 women were killed and 4 Negroes”.
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WAS THE “GILDED AGE” (1877-96) A DISASTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS? - counter arguments
AAs in Georgia built 1,544 schools which educated over 11,000 students. By 1891 the literacy rate among AAs had risen to 42%.
This led to the gradual emergence of an AA middle class & the generation of AAs born after slavery were better educated & more assertive than their parents; many of them saw themselves as equal to whites.
Segregation was not fully established until the 1890s: in 1885 a black journalist reported from South Carolina that he rode first class cars on the railways and saw blacks dining with whites at train stations.
Isaiah T Montgomery established a prosperous & safe AA community at Mound Bayou in Mississippi.
Blacks sat in the state legislatures of South Carolina until 1900 and Georgia until 1908. The South sent black congressmen to Washington in every election until 1900.
6
How far did Roosevelt and the New Deal improve the lives of African-Americans? - improvement
Spoke out against lynching (he was the first incumbent President since the 1870s to do so publicly) found the poll tax reprehensible, and, at the prodding of his wife, met in the White House with African American civil rights leaders.
The New Deal programme helped African-Americans by providing one million jobs, nearly 50,000 public housing units, and financial assistance and skilled occupations training for half a million black youths.
FDR consulted a group of African-American public policy advisors who became known as the Black Cabinet. These included Mary McLeod Bethune, a black educator, who was appointed to the advisory committee of the National Youth Administration (NYA). Thanks to her efforts, blacks received a fair share of NYA funds meaning that they could continue their education.
By 1935 30% of black families were on relief compared with 10% of whites. This indicated their greater poverty but also the fair application of the policy towards them. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) spent $4000 million on poor relief and work projects from which African-Americans benefited. New Deal agencies like the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Public Works Administration (PWA), and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) grew more sensitive throughout the 1930s to the needs of African-Americans, largely because of the leadership of Roosevelt appointees at those agencies. From 1936 to 1940 the WPA provided work for 350,000 African-Americans each year, mainly in construction projects, and WPA educational programmes employed in excess of 5000 black teachers and taught over 250,000 African-Americans to read and write.
The 1937 Wagner Act secured the legal right of trade unions to engage in free collective bargaining. This led to the establishment of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the mid-1930s, which helped to organize large numbers of black workers into labour unions for the first time. By 1940, there were more than 200,000 blacks in the CIO; this raised the political consciousness of black workers. Young blacks educated and employed in New Deal projects also gained in hope and confidence.
One of Roosevelt’s severest critics, Ralph Bunch, said the FDR era “represented a radical break with the past,” and W.E.B. Du Bois concluded that Roosevelt “gave the American Negro a kind of recognition in political life which the Negro had never before received.” In 1936, some 70 percent of black voters supported the Democrats; by contrast in 1932 over 2/3 of African-Americans had backed the Republican Herbert Hoover.
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How far did Roosevelt and the New Deal improve the lives of African-Americans? - no improvement
Federal programs were administered through local authorities or community leaders who brought their own racial biases to the table. This meant that aid did not always reach the people for whom it was intended.
In 1933 Roosevelt told the NAACP secretary Walter White that to get the New Deal programme through Congress he had to rely on southern Democratic support and that if he insisted on federal action on black civil rights he would lose the support of the southern Democrats. This also explains his inaction over an anti-lynching bill and a bill to abolish the poll tax.
In the south, black sharecroppers were hit hard by the Depression and they were not covered by the Social Security Act (which excluded those job categories African-Americans traditionally filled, such as waiters, cooks, janitors, domestic and farm workers) or the National Labour Relations Act that assisted many others. Southern Democrats were responsible for this – they had refused to vote for a measure that would particularly help African Americans.
Most New Deal programs discriminated against blacks. The National Recovery Administration, for example, not only offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks. Although the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) provided 200,000 African-Americans with temporary jobs in rural conservation projects, they were often restricted to low-skilled jobs and camps were usually segregated.
The National Labour Relations or Wagner Act 1935 gave industrial workers the right to join a union but denied it to agricultural or domestic workers (covering 2/3 of AA employees). This was at the insistence of southern senators like Joseph Robinson of Arkansas whose support FDR needed to pass the New Deal legislation. Consequently FDR gave no support to the attempt by both black & white sharecroppers to form a union (the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, STFU) which was defeated by a campaign of violence & intimidation from the landowners.
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) offered white landowners cash for leaving their fields fallow (to halt falling farm prices). They were supposed to pass it on to their tenants or sharecroppers but almost never did so. When the federal govt. passed a law in 1938 forcing them to do so, they simply laid them off so they could keep the payments. Between 1933 and 1940 some 200,000 black sharecroppers were evicted from their livings.
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Did Black Power help or hinder the Civil Rights Movement? - social and economic achievements
The Black Panthers set up 49 clinics across the USA; the Illinois People’s Free Medical Care Centre treated 2,000 people in its first 2 months alone. Their campaign to raise awareness of sickle cell anaemia, a disease previously neglected b/c it predominantly affected black people, had a particular impact.
Working with local black churches, SNCC raised $1.5 million from the churches & the federal govt. (despite strong opposition from the Governor & a local senator) to establish the Child Development Group of Mississippi which set up 85 Head Start centres to support young children, improving the lives of 1,000s 1965-7.
In 1966 the SNCC Free DC movement, headed by Marion Barry, gained the right for the black citizens of Washington DC to elect their own school boards. He also helped to set up a “Model Police Precinct” controlled by a police boards partly elected by the local black community with $3 million worth of govt. funding to improve local policing.
4
Did Black Power help or hinder the Civil Rights Movement? - impact on black identity
Black Power influenced King into talking about “black” people rather than “negroes”, encouraging blacks to be proud of their race & above all to focus on social & economic rather than civil rights issues from 1965 onwards. Due to the activism of Black Power ‘Negroes’ and ‘coloured’ as terms fell into disuse due to their connection with slavery and segregation.
Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton emphasised the study of black history to connect African Americans with their past & provide them with examples of powerful black figures SNCC, Black Power and MX stressed the need for black Americans to recognise their African heritage
MX adopted the surname X in recognition that his original African name was lost, Stokely Carmichael took the name Kwame Ture in respect for a Ghanaian revolutionary leader & head of independent Ghana
As a result of Black Power the Afro hairstyle became a popular symbol of black identity.
Black Power gave African Americans a new pride in their history, literature, music, theatre, fashion & food; it made them more assertive & less dependent on white favour.
3
Did Black Power help or hinder the Civil Rights Movement? - cultural impact
TV was also affected, with powerful black roles like Lieutenant Uhuru (a Swahili speaking character with an African name) in Star Trek, Cat Woman in Batman & Bill Cosby in I Spy.
In film there was a radical shift in portrayal of blacks – e.g. Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Badaasss Song portrayed the story of a Black Panther & depicted the racist violence of LA police. Also Shaft showed a black private detective who teamed up with the Black Panthers to defeat the New York mafia.
Black athletes Tommie Smith & John Carlos gave the Black Power salute while receiving their medals at the 1968 Olympic Games (right): Smith wore a black scarf representing black pride, Carlos a bead necklace commemorating the blacks murdered by racists & both were barefoot to draw attention to poverty in Africa.
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Did Black Power help or hinder the Civil Rights Movement? - divided the movement
BP divided the civil rights movement & therefore made it less effective in trying to build on the 1964-5 civil rights legislation.
Some groups like the SNCC were broken by the stress this caused.
Malcolm X envied King b/c of the insistence of Elijah Muhammad that the Nation of Islam was a purely religious & not a political movement prevented him from getting involved in the civil rights campaigns. He was sensitive to the charge that he was a talker, not a doer: what had he achieved to compare with the Civil & Voting Rights Acts?
2
Did Black Power help or hinder the Civil Rights Movement? - alienated liberal whites
The combination of riots & “Black Power” made even previously liberal whites feel threatened & undermined the “moral high ground” for the civil rights movement which MLK had worked so hard to establish. This white backlash made it much harder after 1965 to achieve any further gains for African Americans.
The Black Panthers associated Black Power with violence, shown by the shoot-outs between Panthers & police in 1967 & 1968 & the conviction of Newton (albeit unjustly) for the manslaughter of a policeman.
2
Did Black Power help or hinder the Civil Rights Movement? - incoherent and unrealistic
It was foolish to talk of black supremacy & separation & to expel whites from the SNCC & CORE in a predominantly white society in which the majority of blacks were economically dependent on whites & in which nothing could be achieved politically without the help of white politicians.
“Black Power” leaders knew what they were against (white America & “Uncle Toms” like King) but were never able to specify exactly what they were for, e.g. whether to return to Africa or to revolutionise America. In many ways it was a kneejerk reaction lacking clarity or coherence.
4
TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE AIMS OF CAMPAIGNERS FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAIN THE SAME 1865-1992? - political rights and participation
Congress passed the 15th Amendment giving AA men the vote in 1870 more to ensure Republican control in the southern states than in response to AA campaigns but thereafter AAs were persistent in campaigning for the right to vote:
The NAACP secured the banning of the “grandfather clause” 1915 in the Guinn v USA Supreme Court case.
They got another SC decision in Smith v Allwright 1944 banning the exclusion of AAs from primary elections.
After the passage of the Civil Rights Act 1964 AA CR campaigners focused on voting rights in “Freedom Summer” in Mississippi 1964 & the Selma campaign 1965 which forced LBJ to pass the Voting Rights Act 1965.
3
TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE AIMS OF CAMPAIGNERS FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAIN THE SAME 1865-1992? - violence
The 14th Amendment in 1868 giving AAs theoretically equal CR was part of Congress’s battle with Johnson rather than a response to AA campaigning.
From its formation in 1909 until the end of the 1930s the NAACP campaigned against lynching & other forms of racial violence, e.g. attempting to pass bills through Congress in the 1930s making lynching a federal crime.
At the end of the period, as highlighted by the Rodney King controversy 1991-2, the issue of police violence agt. AAs assumed more prominence (although there was nothing new about this).
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TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE AIMS OF CAMPAIGNERS FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAIN THE SAME 1865-1992? - segregation
From the 1930s onwards the NAACP began to focus more on segregation than violence:
In Morgan v Virginia 1946 the NAACP persuaded the SC to ban segregation on interstate buses but CORE’s attempt to enforce this in the Journey of Reconciliation 1947 failed & facilities were not desegregated until 1961 after the “Freedom Rides”.
In the Brown Case 1954 the NAACP persuaded the Supreme Court to rule that school segregation was unconstitutional & that desegregation be enforced “with all deliberate speed”. This marked success in their campaign ever since their foundation to reverse the Plessy v Ferguson ruling 1896.
The NAACP organised 9 students into entering Little Rock Central High School, prompting presidential intervention to ensure they were admitted.
MLK & other CR campaigners in the moderate groups like the SCLC & NAACP aimed to achieve integration with fully equal civil & voting rights to be achieved through non-violent local activism & political lobbying with the aid of sympathetic media coverage to provoke federal govt. intervention. CORE & SNCC favoured slightly more radical “direct action” (but still non-violent) like the lunch counter sit ins & Freedom Rides 1960-1.
4
TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE AIMS OF CAMPAIGNERS FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAIN THE SAME 1865-1992? - economic position
Until the 13th Amendment in 1865 slavery was the main issue AAs campaigned on.
Like other Reconstruction measures, the setting up of the Freedmen’s Bureau 1865 was initiated by the Radical Republicans in Congress rather than a response to AA campaigning but:
In the hostile climate around 1900, all Booker T Washington could realistically aim at was to win white acceptance of gradual improvements in AAs’ education, training & economic status. Segregation & disenfranchisement could not openly be challenged at this stage.
Like Washington Garvey & later campaigners like Malcolm X, Carmichael & Jackson aimed at making AAs as economically self sufficient as possible so they did not have to depend on whites. Unlike Washington they had no interest in gaining white sympathy or support.
After the Civil & Voting Rights Acts 1964-5 AA campaigners focused more on the poverty of the AA underclass trapped in inner city ghettos with inferior accommodation & educational & employment opportunities.
4
OPPOSITION TO AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAINED STRONG THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD 1865-1992.” DISCUSS - violence
Terrorist groups like the KKK & the Knights of the White Camelia were especially active at times when AA CR were progressing, e.g. during Reconstruction or the Birmingham church bombing in 1963.
Lynching peaked in the 1890s & was used from the 1880s until WW2 to restore AAs to the subservient position they had been in under slavery.
The murder of 3 civil rights activists in Mississippi 1964 showed the willingness of southern racists to use violence agt. CR activists.
BUT violence could be counter-productive: KKK violence provoked the KKK Act in 1871 which crushed the KKK (though not other racist terror groups) & Connor’s use of dogs & firehoses led to the success of MLK’s Birmigham campaign in 1963.
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OPPOSITION TO AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAINED STRONG THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD 1865-1992.” DISCUSS - white public opinion
“Social Darwinism” provided a pseudo-scientific basis for racism in the late 19th & early 20th century.
The Brown judgement 1954 provoked “Massive Resistance” from the South, including the Southern Manifesto & White Citizens’ Councils.
BUT white public opinion became markedly more sympathetic towards AA CR in the early 1960s, provoked by media coverage of events like the March on Washington in 1963. Never again could overt racism be publicly acceptable.
4
OPPOSITION TO AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAINED STRONG THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD 1865-1992.” DISCUSS - federal government
The Supreme Court was consistently hostile to AA CR in the 19th century, notably in the Plessy v Ferguson judgement in 1896 which gave a “green light” to the “Jim Crow” laws in the South, but in the 20th century gave a series of judgements in favour of CR from Smith v Allwright 1944 to Swann v Charlotte 1971 but most notably Brown 1954. It became more conservative in later years, undermining affirmative action with judgements like Milliken v Bradley in 1974 & Freeman v Pitts 1992.
Most presidents after Lincoln were lukewarm or indifferent towards AA CR, e.g. Andrew Johnson with his “Presidential Reconstruction” & no president between Grant & FDR publicly condemned lynching, but they did much more after WW2, especially LBJ who passed the landmark Civil & Voting Rights Acts 1964-5. Later presidents were less sympathetic, notably Reagan & Bush who both vetoed CR legislation.
Congress took the lead in promoting CR agt. indifferent or hostile presidents & Supreme Court, notably during Reconstruction & after 1981, but did not pass any CR acts at all 1875-1957.
Disenfranchisement removed AAs from political office from about 1900 until the 1970s.
2
OPPOSITION TO AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAINED STRONG THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD 1865-1992.” DISCUSS - other factors
The Cold War influenced Eisenhower to intervene in Little Rock & JFK to intervene in Birmingham to avoid international embarrassment, while African decolonisation stimulated the growth of Black Power in the 1960s.
From the late 1960s onwards AAs acquired greater prominence in politics, entertainment, music & sport, e.g. the Black Power salute at the Olympics & Jackson standing for the Democrat vice presidential nomination 1984 & 1988.
2
OPPOSITION TO AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS REMAINED STRONG THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD 1865-1992.” DISCUSS - conclusion
The strength of opposition to CR has varied over time, from the progress achieved during Reconstruction 1865-77 & the civil rights era 1954-65 to the indifference & hostility 1877-1945 & to a lesser extent 1965-92.
Party differences have affected opposition to CR, e.g. during Reconstruction the Republicans supported AA CR while the Democrats opposed them but in the 20th century the major progress came in the 1960s under Democratic presidents & in the 1980s the Democrat controlled Congress was supportive while the Republican Presidents Reagan & Bush & the increasingly conservative Supreme Court were hostile.
3
TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROMOTE AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS & HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT IN RELATION TO OTHER FACTORS? - the presidency
Some presidents were hostile to AA CR, e.g. Andrew Johnson who tried to restore slavery in all but name in his “Presidential Reconstruction” 1865-7 & Wilson who segregated the White House.
Most presidents 1877-1933 were indifferent to AA CR while later ones were lukewarmly supportive: FDR was the first president since Grant to condemn lynching but allowed many of his New Deal programmes to discriminate against AAs, Truman desegregated the armed forces but was preoccupied with the Cold War, Eisenhower intervened in Little Rock but was otherwise reluctant to enforce the Brown judgement.
In recent years Democratic presidents, especially LBJ who passed the crucial Civil & Voting Rights Acts 1964-5 but also to a lesser extent JFK & Carter, both of whom strongly supported AA CR in theory, have given more support than Republicans, especially Reagan & Bush who both tried to veto civil rights legislation passed by Congress. Nixon did not really believe in affirmative action but made some efforts to enforce it.
