5-2: African Americans

African Americans in Politics Today: The Impact of Voting Restrictions

-Progressives feared that the Court's decision would result in new state laws that would make it difficult for many low-income persons to vote. Before the 2012 elections, a substantial number of new laws threatened to reduce turnout among poor—and minority—voters. These laws included limits on early voting and requirements that voters produce photographic IDs. As it turned out, there was no drop-off in the minority vote relative to the white vote in 2012. Some analysts concluded that anger over the restrictive laws drove up minority turnout, fully compensating for any fall in the number of voters due to the restrictions.

The Civil Rights Movement: Nonviolence as a Tactic: Greensboro: An example

-four African American students in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat at the "whites only" lunch counter at Woolworth's and ordered food -The waitress refused to serve them, and the store closed early, but more students returned the next day to sit at the counter, with supporters picketing outside. -Sit-ins spread to other lunch counters across the South. -students participating in sit-ins were heckled or even dragged from Woolworth's by angry whites. -protesters never reacted with violence = simply returned to their seats at the counter, day after day. -lunch counter managers began to reverse their policies of segregation SIT-IN: A tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience. Demonstrators enter a business, college building, or other public place and remain seated until they are forcibly removed or until their demands are met.

The Civil Rights Movement: Nonviolence as a Tactic: The National Reaction

-media images increasingly showed nonviolent protesters being assaulted by police, sprayed with fire hoses, and attacked by dogs. -pictures shocked and angered Americans across the country = public backlash led to nationwide demands for reform. -The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963, aimed in part to demonstrate widespread public support for legislation to ban discrimination in all aspects of public life.

Violence and Vote Suppression: Loss of the Franchise

15th Amendment explicitly extended the franchise (the right to vote) to African Americans, and for several decades following the Civil War, blacks were in fact able to vote throughout much of the former Confederacy. However, Southern leaders launched major efforts to disenfranchise black voters. Techniques to accomplish this goal, including the following: -Literacy tests, which African Americans were guaranteed to fail. -The poll tax, a tax on voting, which disenfranchised poor whites as well as blacks. -The grandfather clause, which effectively limited voting to those whose ancestors could vote before the Civil War. -The white primary, which prevented African Americans from voting in Democratic primary elections.

Continuing Challenges

African Americans continue to struggle for income and educational parity with whites. -average incomes in black households are only 59 percent of those in non-Hispanic white households. -poverty rate for blacks is roughly three times that for whites. -The loss of jobs caused by the recent Great Recession tended to make matters worse for African Americans and other minority group members. -Criminal activity is commonplace in the impoverished neighborhoods where many African Americans live, and African Americans are disproportionately arrested for crimes of all types (Prejudice)

The Civil Rights Movement: Nonviolence as a Tactic

Civil rights protesters began to apply the tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience: the deliberate and public refusal to obey laws considered unjust Tools of nonviolence: -how to use nonthreatening body language -how to go limp when dragged or assaulted -how to protect themselves from clubs and police dogs

Brown Decisions and School Integration: Reactions to School Integration

Delay desegregation: -"White Flight": white parents sent their children to newly established private schools, some formerly white-only public schools became 100 percent black -block integration with the use of national guards -De Jure Segregation: Racial segregation that occurs because of laws or decisions by government agencies. *abolished by school systems *meant only that no public school could legally identify itself as being reserved for all whites or all *did not mean the end of De Facto Segregation -De Facto Segregation: Racial segregation that occurs because of social and economic conditions and residential patterns. *attempts to overcome it: redrawing school district lines

The Civil Rights Movement: Civil Rights Legislation in the 1960s: The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Forbade discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, and national origin. The major provisions of the act were as follows: -It outlawed discrimination in public places of accommodation, such as hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, and public transportation. -It provided that federal funds could be withheld from any federal or state government project or facility that practiced any form of discrimination. -It banned discrimination in employment. -It outlawed arbitrary discrimination in voter registration. -It authorized the federal government to sue to desegregate public schools and facilities.

Separate but Equal: Plessy v. Ferguson

Louisiana citizens decided to challenge a state law that required railroads to provide separate railway cars for African Americans Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths European and one-eighth African, boarded a train and sat in the railway car reserved for whites. When Plessy refused to move at the request of the conductor, he was arrested for breaking the law. Plessy v. Ferguson: the Court held that the law did not violate the equal protection clause if separate facilities for blacks were equal to those for whites. Majority established the separate-but-equal doctrine: A Supreme Court doctrine holding that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not forbid racial segregation as long as the facilities for blacks were equal to those for whites. Separate facilities were in practice, but almost never truly equal.

The Civil Rights Movement: The Black Power Movement

Malcolm X -a speaker and organizer for the Nation of Islam (also called the Black Muslims) -rejected the goals of integration and racial equality espoused by the civil rights movement -called for black separatism and "black pride." Although he later moderated some of his views, his rhetorical style and powerful message influenced many African American young people. -By the late 1960s, with the assassinations of Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King in 1968, the era of mass acts of civil disobedience in the name of civil rights had come to an end.

African Americans in Politics Today: Representation in Office

More than nine thousand African Americans now serve in elective office in the United States. At least one congressional seat in most southern states is held by an African American, as are more than 15 percent of the state legislative seats in the South. A number of African Americans have achieved high government office: -Colin Powell & Condoleezza Rice served as President George W. Bush's secretary of states -Barack Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, became the first African American president of the United States.

The Civil Rights Movement

Rosa Parks -activist in the NAACP -boarded a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama -When it became crowded, she refused to move to the "colored section" at the rear of the bus = arrested and fined for violating local segregation laws -Her arrest spurred the local African American community to organize a year-long boycott of the entire Montgomery bus system. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -27 yr old Baptist minister -led bus system boycott -jailed and his house was bombed -federal court prohibited the segregation of buses in Montgomery Civil Rights Movement -The movement in the 1950s and 1960s, by minorities and concerned whites, to end racial segregation -led by Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the NAACP, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

African Americans in Politics Today: The Supreme Court Weakens the Voting Rights Act

Shelby County v. Holder, the Court ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. This section defined which state and local governments were subject to special federal oversight. These governments could not change voting procedures or district boundaries without preclearance, or approval, from the federal government. The governments identified by Section 4 had a history of voting rights violations in the 1960s, but the Court argued that basing current law on events that far in the past was unacceptable. In principle, Congress could adopt a new Section 4, but the chances of such a measure passing a highly polarized Congress any time soon were remote.

Continuing Challenges: Problems with Education

The education gap between blacks and whites also persists despite continuing efforts by educators/government, through programs such as the federal No Child Left Behind Act to reduce it. African American students in high school read and do math at the level of whites in junior high school. black adults have narrowed the gap with white adults in earning high school diplomas, the disparity has widened for college degrees. Schools in poorer neighborhoods generally have fewer educational resources available, resulting in lower achievement levels for their students. all comes down to money. many parents of minority students in struggling school districts are less concerned about integration than they are about funds for their children's schools. A number of these parents have initiated lawsuits against their state governments, demanding that the states give poor districts more resources.

Brown Decisions and School Integration: Busing

The transportation of public school students by bus to schools physically outside their neighborhoods to eliminate school segregation based on residential patterns. Proponents believed that busing improved the educational and career opportunities of minority children and also enhanced the ability of children from different ethnic groups to get along with one another. Unpopular SC started to reject the idea of busing children across school district lines Today, busing orders to end de facto segregation are not upheld by the courts

Brown Decisions and School Integration

Topeka's schools were segregated. Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Brown wanted their daughter, Linda Carol Brown, to attend a white school a few blocks from their home instead of an all-black school that was twenty-one blocks away. With the help of lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Linda's parents sued the board of education to allow their daughter to attend the nearby school. Brown v. Board of Education: the Supreme Court ordered desegregation to begin "with all deliberate speed," an ambiguous phrase that could be (and was) interpreted in a variety of ways.

The Civil Rights Movement: Civil Rights Legislation in the 1960s: Voting and Housing Rights

Voting Rights Act of 1965 made it illegal to interfere with anyone's right to vote in any election held in this country. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination in housing.

African Americans in Politics Today

Voting Rights Act of 1965: ended discriminatory voter-registration tests and gave federal voter registrars the power to prevent racial discrimination in voting.

The Civil Rights Movement: Civil Rights Legislation in the 1960s

civil rights movement demonstrated its strength, Congress began to pass civil rights laws While the Fourteenth Amendment prevented the government from discriminating against individuals or groups, the private sector (businesses) could still freely refuse to employ and serve nonwhites.

After the Civil War

equal protection clause was intended to protect the newly freed slaves after the Civil War U.S. government made an effort to protect the rights of blacks living in the states of the former Confederacy 13th Amendment: granted freedom to the slaves 14th Amendment: guaranteed equal protection under the law 15th Amendment: stated that voting rights could not be abridged on account of race southern legislatures had begun to pass a series of segregation laws (laws that separated the white community from the black community) Ex. Jim Crow laws = use of public facilities

Violence and Vote Suppression: Social Control Through Violence

restrictive laws were backed up by the threat of violence directed at African Americans who were brave enough to try to vote -Ku Klux Klan: use of force to keep black citizens "in their place -Lynching: execution and even torture at the hands of a mob -Violence and economic coercion were also used to impose an elaborate code of conduct on African Americans. They were expected to behave humbly toward whites.

Continuing Challenges: Class versus Race in Educational Outcomes

when students enrolled at a particular school come almost entirely from impoverished families, regardless of race, the performance of the students at that school is seriously depressed. When low-income students attend schools where the majority of the students are middle class, again regardless of race, their performance improves dramatically—without dragging down the performance of the middle-class students. several school systems have adopted policies that integrate students on the basis of socioeconomic class, not race.