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WEDNESDAY • AUGUST 28 • 2013
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A newspaper in education supplement TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
In the decades following the end of slavery,
blacks faced formidable barriers to political, eco-
nomic, and social equality. The U.S. Supreme Court
institutionalized segregation with the 1896 Plessy
v. Ferguson “separate but equal” decision. This
decision upheld laws requiring racial segregation,
as long as those laws did not dictate that separate
accommodations and facilities for blacks would be
inferior to those for whites.
In the South, Jim Crow laws enforced a rigid ra-
cial segregation. (“Jim Crow” was a pejorative term
for blacks which became a term used to describe
discriminatory race-based segregation practices and
laws.) Local poll taxes and literacy tests were aimed
at preventing blacks from voting. In the North and
West, there were fewer legal barriers, but wide-
spread, blatant discrimination occurred in employ-
ment, housing, schools, and other aspects of life.
Race-based violence was also common, and
thousands of blacks were lynched or assassinated in
the South and elsewhere from the 1870s until the
1960s.
Even though progress was difficult, African
Americans leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary
McLeod Bethune, Booker T. Washington, George
Edmund Haynes, and many others worked to
establish organizations to work for their civil rights.
In 1909, the National Negro Committee convened,
leading to the founding of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
In 1910, The National Urban League was founded
to help African Americans migrating to northern
cities to find jobs and housing.
During the 1911-1930 Great Migration, millions
of southern African Americans moved north to in-
dustrial towns looking for work and better opportu-
nities. More than five million more blacks migrated
North and West in the Second Great Migration
from 1940 to 1970.
To obtain more employment rights, blacks made
efforts to participate in and develop unions, a move-
ment led by A. Philip Randolph. Among Randolph’s
many contributions was his leadership in organizing
a March on Washington Movement in the 1930s
and 1940s aimed at ensuring fair employment and
other rights for African Americans. Randolph and
others helped motivate President Franklin D. Roos-
evelt to sign an executive order during World War II
to bar discrimination in the defense industries.
There were individuals who broke into their
“field of dreams.” In 1947, Jackie Robinson played
his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming
the first black baseball player in modern profes-
sional baseball.
But it was desegregation in the military that
opened the first major opportunity for blacks. In
1948 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive
Order 9981 ending segregation in the Armed Forces
“without regard to race, color, religion or national
origin.” Though racism and discrimination did not
come to a halt in the armed forces, the military rap-
idly integrated, providing new opportunities.
In fact it was one million Black soldiers
returning from World War II in 1945 who lent
A Century of Inequality
support to the modern Civil Rights Movement. They sacrificed
their lives for their country and they felt they deserved equal rights
and opportunity under the law. They were not willing to put up
with discrimination and Jim Crow laws any longer.
Primary Source Activity:
Ask students to read Executive
Order 9981 which desegregated the armed forces at the Our Docu-
ments site of the National Archives:
.
php?doc=84
. What did this order say, and how did it change the
U.S.? Respond in a short essay or class discussion.
Resource:
The Montford Point Marine Association, Inc. has an
excellent website devoted to the role of African American marines
who received training at Montford Point during the World War II
era. Visit them at
to learn more about the role of these marines, listen to oral histo-
ries, and find links to other relevant sites.
Important Publishing Note:
The word that we have obscured (“n----r”) is deeply offensive. This word is used four times in speeches, quotations and stories from
Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine students. We have included these references to the
word because of its role in understanding their experiences during their fight for civil rights.
The term “Negro,” which is not used as an offensive word, is in quotes and stories over two dozen times. Although the word is seldom
used today, people of African descent were by definition referred to as “Negro” or, in plural form, “Negroes.” The terms’ first known use
was in 1555 and they were in constant use until recent years.
Primary Source Activity:
Japanese
Americans were sent to internment
camps during World War II after
President Roosevelt signed Execu-
tive Order 9066. Ask students to
read this order at
-
ments.gov/doc.php?doc=74
and
discuss the internment policy in re-
lation to the civil rights of Japanese
Americans. For an extended activity,
students can also research Asian
American civil rights efforts.
Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers
At the same time that African Americans were struggling to achieve civil rights, Mexican-
American farmworkers started movements to secure their rights as laborers. A key leader in
this movement was Cesar Chavez. Chavez was born into a family of migrant workers in Yuma,
Arizona in 1927. Throughout the agricultural regions of the U.S., Latino families like his
worked long hours harvesting crops for meager wages, with no guarantee of work and no pro-
tection from harsh working conditions. In the early 1960s, Chavez helped form the National
Farm Workers Association to address these injustices, which later bloomed into the United
Farmworkers Union (UFW). Led by Chavez, the UFW launched a boycott of California grapes
in March of 1968, urging all consumers to refuse to buy grapes until agribusiness leaders ne-
gotiated with the UFW. Learn more at:
