Political Situation of Black Americans, 1940's-
-It was not until 1944 that the white primary, a device that kept blacks from voting in southern primaries, was declared unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright;
-Presidents deferred to state governments and to southerners who controlled theCongress for fear they would not be able to pass legislation that they wanted if they pushed too hard for civil rights for black people;
-Franklin Roosevelt had a paternalistic view of black Americans and saw their plight in political terms more than in moral terms. A. Philip Randolph and other black leaders had to threaten a march on Washington in 1941 in order to end discrimination in defense-related industries and in the military. Roosevelt passed a weak Fair Employment Practices Commission bill that empowered the federal government to investigate and publicize employment discrimination (but not to end it).
-In Detroit there were riots in 1943 where 34 blacks were killed and 700 injured. Competition for jobs was the major cause. In New York there were boycotts of white businesses in Harlem that would not hire blacks;
-The black middle class spearheaded movements to register blacks and to raise funds to fight the white primary. There was a tradition of self-help in the black community. Some of the radical unions (such as Local 22 of the Food, Tabacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union of the Congress of Industrial Organizations) formed coalitions with blacks. Anti-communism and red-baiting was used to smash this emerging alliance.
-What progress occured, took place at a glacial pace.
-Harry S. Truman (1945-1952) was like FDR in that he saw the plight of black Americans primarily in political terms. He did not want to alienate southerners that controlled Congress. He supported anti-lynching laws, set up a President's Commission on Civil Rights, etc. Through Executive Order, he ended formal segregation in the armed forces.
-Eisenhower endorsed anti-lynching laws, desegregation of armed forces, and end to poll taxes, and an end to segregation in federal employment. But he was reluctant or unwilling to use federal power thinking blacks could achieve their goals through the vote.
-The reluctance of the federal government to take strong action on civil rights led black leaders to conclude that they had to take direct action to end discrimination. The Brown v. Topeka Bd. of Education decision in May of 1954 also encouraged them. The decision ended legal segregation of the schools and declared the doctrine of "separate but equal" (established in Plessy v. Fergusen, 1896) unconstitutional. Southern judges moved slowly in enforcing the law. The White Citizen's Councils sprung up in many places to fight desegregation. Florida declared The NAACP a subversive organization and Alabama prohibited the NAACP from functioning for 10 years. Virginia banned the NAACP from initiating law suits. The growth of a black urban vote scared the white south.
-From 1955-1957, a young black minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., led a boycott of buses in Montgomery, Alabama. The boycott demonstrated the need for federal intervention that Eisenhower was loathe to provide.
-Eisenhower did support the 1957 Civil Rights Act (a weak act that created a Commission on Civil rights, upgraded the civil rights division of the Dept. of Justice, and empowered the Attorney General to file law suits to enforce voting rights).
-John F. Kennedy showed the same caution as did his predecessors. He placed his faith in the slow moving courts,emphasized voting by blacks, and stressed the achievements of blacks as individuals (versus group advancement). Kennedy tried to get blacks to end freedom rides and sought to negotiate with state and local officials when blacks were threatened or assaulted for protesting discrimination. He appointed conservative southern judges who opposed desegregation in the south.
-It was only through the direct action of civil rights activists that Kennedy took more decisive measures. He had to be pushed to act following efforts in the spring and summer of 1963 to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama. He issued an executive order desegregating federally subsidized housing and federalized the national guard in Alabama (June 1963) to allow the entrance of two black students to the University of Alabama. He cut federal funds to local education and public accomodations entities that contiuned to practice segregation.
-The March on Washington in August of 1963 was undertaken to push Kennedy to support passage of a comprehensive Civil Rights Act that would ban discrimination in employment, education, public accomodations (mostly through cutting of federal funds). It was only upon the murder of Kennedy (in Nov. of 1963) plus the murder of three civil rights workers (James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman that the Congress was moved to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act (after a 57 day filibuster). The Act made discrimination in employment (based on race, sex, national origin) unlawful. It created an Equal Opportunities Commission to oversee enforcement of the Act. The federal government could also deny funding for schools and public facilities practicing discrimination.
-Lyndon Baines Johnson became U.S. president upn the death of John F. Kennedy. he was a southerner (Texas) who viewed racial discrimination as a moral issue and not just as an issue of political expediency. He was willing to use the power of the federal government much more extensively than had previous presidents in order to fight discrimination. But it was politics that allowed him to be such a forceful advocate. The political mobilization of black Americans was at an historic high in 1964 when he was elected by a landslide over Barry Goldwater. A large majority of Democrats was also elected to Congress. Johnson had vast experience in dealing with the Congress and was a master in getting things done at that institution.
-Johnson passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act that provided for federal registrars to oversee elections in states and localities where there was an established pattern of denial of voting rights. It also ended the literacy tests and allowed the Department of Justice to view and to give clearance to laws that might obstruct voting rights on the basis of race. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 generated a 60% increase in black voter registration by 1969.
-Along with these gains there developed a Black Power Movement. Leadership rivalries and differing perspectives on the issue of both the likelihood and the desireability of integration produced a series of splits among blacks. The NAACP was bi-racial, accommodationist, and middle class in both its leadership and its goals of integration within the framework of existing American politics. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (headed by Dr. King) represented a commitment to direct action based on the charismatic leadership of black ministers. It emphasized "Christian" virtues. Like the NAACP, the SCLC was accomodationist and integrationist. Its strongest base was in the south.
-The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) rejected the assimilationist and accomodating stance of the traditional civil rights organization and of the SCLC. In 1966, SNCC propagated the term "Black Power" as the goal of the black movement. The growth of an underclass in both the urban north and in large cities of the south created a mass base to whom "Black Power" had the greatest appeal. Outside of the south, it was not legal barriers but rather institutional and economic barriers that limited black advancement. Social relations outside of the south were more anarchic. The view outside of the south (and in the urban south) was that if blacks were to be segregated, they might as well control their own communities and its institutions (schools, businesses, social services networks, etc.). "Community Control" was the principle underlying the Black Power Movement. Militants within SNCC moved to the Black Power position in response to the lack of federal protection of civil rights activists, the slow pace of change, and the continuing economic plight of African Americans. The refusal of the Democratic Party to seat the black delegation from Mississippi at its 1964 convention led to the formation of the Lownes County Black Panther Party (the seed for the Black Panther Party later based in Oakland, California after 1967).
-In the Oceonhill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn. N.Y., there was a takeover of the local school board and school system. Malcom X, until then a marginal figure, became a leader of some prominance as Black Power advocates began to draw parallels between the black struggle in America and anti-colonial struggles throughout the world. They were drawn to the ideas of Franz Fannon (see The Wretched of the Earth ) and to anti-colonial struggles in Africa.
-In urban centers, riots became common starting in Harlem in 1964 (then Watts, Detroit and many other large cities). Congress passed a law making it a federal offense to cross state lines advocating violence (known as the H "Rap" Brown law as Brown frequently crossed state lines using the Phrase "burn baby, burn" in his speeches). After 1965, polarization grew between white liberals and progressives and black organizations and black leaders. Whites were told to go to their communities and fight racism in the white community. The war in Viet Nam and the opposition movement to that war drew the energies of progressive whites. Federal funds wer diverted to fighting the wear and there was a lessened commitment to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.
-Within this context, Richard Nixon is elected president in 1968 on a campaign that promised "law and order" and on appeasing the south. Using what was known as the "Southern Strategy," Nixon sent signals that the federl government would go slow in enforcing civil rights laws and that the feds would not become an overbearing presence. Nixon formed a pact with Strom Thurmond. Both supported "freedom of choice" in schools and an end to busing as a way to achieve integrated schools. Nixon's law and order was a code word for putting an end to black militance. The FBI disrupted black organizations through its COINTELPRO program. Nixon sought to nationalize the Voting Rights Act in order to get northerners to oppose it. He went back to preferring court action rather than relying on the Justice Dept. to enforce existing law. His own Office of Civil Rights within the Dept. of Justice sued the government for inaction in enforcing civil rights statutes (in 1969)! Nixon appointed conservative judges to the Supreme Court who felt that federal power should be restrained (including in the area of civil rights).
-Nixon promoted "Black Capitalism" and encouraged blacks going into business through small business loans. While some black leaders like Floyd McKissick and James Foreman embraced black capitalism, others questioned Nixon's motives. Nixon initiated the first affirmative action programs in the form of apprentership programs in union jobs (then known as the Philadelphia Plan). Some saw the Plan as an attempt to divide blacks and union members (as both were constituencies of the Democratic Party).
-The declining emphasis on civil rights after 1968 slowed down the momentum for change. This also shows that only when there is a strong presidential commitment and leadership, can there be gains for black Americans.
-Since 1968, black leaders have been involved in a struggle to hold on to the gains made before 1968. Southern whites shifted to the Republican Party (the southern strategy was a success). The Democratic Party came to be seen as the party of minorities and "special interests" especially after the 1972 elections when delegates to the Democratic Party convention were represented in proportion to their overall population in the country. Tagged as the party of blacks, big government, permissiveness, taxes, and opposition to law and order, the Democratic Party has attempted to woo back its base among white voters. This was particularly the case in the 1970's and 1980's when America experienced a large decline in its manufacturing base and white workers were not sympathetic to affirmative action or other ameliorative programs when they themselves were on the unemployment lines. The result was a shift to political right in both major political parties and, consequently, and abandoning of the old civil rights agenda that stressed strong federal involvement in government programs to alter the legacy of slavery and of racial discrimination.

The Decline of Manufacturing and the Reagan Reaction- Although the decline in manufacturing beginning in the 1970's was due to structural changes in the American economy, the decline provided an avenue for attack to conservatives who wanted to undo the "poverty programs" created by Lyndon Johnson and--in their wildest imagination--the programs of the New Deal created by Roosevelt. They sought to divide the coalition that supported the Democratic Party (labor, union workers/poor whites, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Latinos). This could be achieved by blaming the poverty programs for unemployment, high government spending (meaning taxes), crime, "illegitimacy," decline in family values, and for "big government." This all crystallized in the administrations of Ronald Reagan.
Under Reagan:
-budgets for the Equal Opportunity Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance were cut 10-24% in his first term (1981-1985).
-by 1984, the Justice Dept. had filed only one (1) school desegregation case.
-Reagan supported Bob Jones University and Goldboro Christian Schools when his own Justice Dept. challenged their tax exemption on the grounds that they did not admit blacks and prohibited interracial dating. The Supreme court later ruled 8-1 in favor of the Justice Dept.
-funding for the Housing and Urban Development Dept. were reduced by 70%.

All of this took place while the number of elected black officials doubled from 1970-1992 and their representation in Congress more than doubled from 1975 to 1993. Black voting rates also increased significantly. This brings into question the effectiveness of voting as a means of bringing about fundamental change. Most elected black officials were voted into local governments and cities that were shells of their former selves as whites moved to the suburbs (called "white flight"). Left behind were major urban centers with a declining manufacturing base, lower tax bases, a growing urban underclass of unemployed, high rates of crime (related to drugs), and defiant city bureaucracies (police, fire, and sanitation workers as well as the local bureaucracies opposed to black leadership). Even in cases where black mayors "governed" cities, the limited economic power of the black community meant that politicians (black and white) ended up catering to the white business elite.

The established civil rights organizations became increasingly irrelevent but they continued to mouth slogans to keep liberal support and dollars. The program 20/20 of May 13, 1994 reported a poll showing that 25% of the black community considered itself conservative. While the black middle class grew to about 40% of the black population, there was also a corresponding growth in a class of black people that lacked job skills, education, work or motivation for work. This latter group was termed the black underclass.

Writing in The Nation of October 16, 1989, Susan Anderson argued:

"The legal and statutory standards that were won by the black freedom movement, as beseiged as they are today, are the result of a profound compromise by mainstream black leaders, who witheld any deeper criticism of the economic structure of the nation as long as blacks were 'equally' represented in it. Representation, however, pertained only to 'qualified' blacks. That compromise, with all its class bias, is the hidden reality in black politics today.

As the Reagan era showed how race could be used to divide the coalition that made up the Democratic Party, a key goal for the Democrats was to win back defectors such as the 40% of whites belonging to unions who had voted for Reagan. This meant moving the Democratic Party in a more conservative direction (moving it to the right) by stressing that Democrats were confortable working with business, placing less emphasis on new programs to combat urban poverty, and moving ultimately towards a balanced budget after declaring the "era of big government" was over. Whereas in the Reagan 1980's, 60% of all the income gains were made by the top 1% of the U.S. population, under Clinton growing income inequalities continued. Hence we have a post-civil rights era where neither of the two major political parties places the remediation of inequities based on race high on their agenda and where both parties favor a lessened governmental role in addressing these inequities.

Post-Civil Rights Era- The post civil rights era defines fundamental issues facing ethnic and racial minorities as economic (more than prejudice and discrimination). Large sectors of minority communities are economically irrelevent in today's economy that requires education and technical skills. These have been called "throw-away people." The movement from a manufacturing economy to a service economy oftem means work in the service sector for lower pay or part-time work. It means the loss of employment security and stagnant wages relative to the cost of living. It means a growing income gap between the haves and the have-nots.

The growing inequality has increased resource competition. Blacks are ofen pitted against immigrant groups from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean or from parts of Asia. In cities such as Compton, California, Latinos now make up the majority of the peopulation while blacks control the key political and educational positions in the city. In addressing the majority of the U.S. population that is now suburban and middle class, politicians use code words (words loaded with hidden meanings). Big government, taxes, crime and law and order, are defined to mean that too much is being done for the poor, for minorities, for immigrants. These groups are often perceived a free loaders and law breakers. The fact that most government aid or entitlement programs go to the middle class is overlooked. Not a peep is made of government corporate welfare (whether for savings and loans companies or "bankrupt" energy companies in California). Those who did very well in the 80's and 90's, the upper income groups, manipulate symbols and take advanage of resource competition to divide whites (in unions or in poverty or in the middle class) against minorities. But the real problem of growing class inequality that is made worse by government policies is not addressed. In fact, we are now entertaining a 1.6 trillion dollar tax cut that most experts claim will go mostly to the most economically privileged sector of American society.