Pamela Oliver, Sociology 220African American History Outline 1900-2000Black Mobilization in the Dark Years 1880-1930Migration. Move away from where things are bad. Away from low voting rights, awayfrom high lynching, away from debt peonage. Migration accumulates. The Great Migration.Rural south to urban north and south.Early on still not enough for victory, but strength is accumulating.Assimilation/Integration vs. Separatism/Nationalism (Two continuing trends in AfAmpolitics) (see separate slides)1895-1915. Booker T. Washington Accommodationist self-improvementW.E.B. DuBois. T. Thomas Fortune. Militant Integrationism. (But some culturalnationalist impulses.) Founds Niagra Movement 1905, then NAACP, 1909 NAACP = NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People.Ida B. Wells-Barnett Anti-lynching campaign. Demonstrates that lynching is a politicaltool. Inflammatory rhetoric.1919 Many bloody race riots. Whites on anti-black rampage. Resent blackadvancements with urbanization.1920s NAACP under James Weldon Johnson begins the concerted campaign of lawsuitsto chip away at segregation, begin the path towards Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka(1954). Early victories provide resources that increase black education.1916-1925 Marcus Garvey. Back to Africa. Militant separatist, black capitalist. Blackreligious icons.1920s - 1940s. A. Philip Randolph. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Strong blackunion, political platform.1920s - 1930s Blacks shift voting patterns, become potential swing voters. From “knee-jerk Republicans” (holdover from 19th century, Republicans anti-slavery, Lincoln freed theslaves) to willing to vote for whomever supports them and their issues. 1936 Blacks play a keyrole in Roosevelt’s New Deal Coalition. Become significant political players.1941 threatened March on Washington, led by Randolph. Called off when FDR agrees toban racial discrimination in war industries.1942-1945 World War II. Political watershedPost-war politics. Communism and anti-Communism. “Hearts and Minds” Anti-colonialism, independence for African nations. US racial policies become internationalembarrassment.What Changed between 1880 and 1960? (Major source: Doug McAdam. Political Process andthe Development of Black Insurgency. University of Chicago Press, 1982.)1890 Blacks: 90% rural, 90% southern. No political leverage. Economically dependent. Illiterate. Threat of numbers in southern areas leads to extreme measures to keep themsuppressed.The Great MigrationSouth to North. From 90% southern in 1900 to 60% in 1960. Rural to Urban. Southern blacks: from 9% urban in 1890 and 34% in 1930 to 58% in1960. The 40% of blacks in the north are virtually all urban.Consequences of urbanization:1) Voting. Important swing votes in northern cities. Parts of northern political machines. Election of northern black Congressmen.2) Less daily domination. More able to gather, talk politically without white oversight. Positive consequence of physical segregation.3) Black communities able to support independent black professionals (ministers,morticians, barbers & hairdressers)4) Rising education, rising incomes, rising political awareness5) Black newspapers, magazines, news sources.Growth of organizational infrastructure1) Churches. Larger, can support full-time ministers who can be free from whitedomination. Organizations, meeting places they control themselves. Economicindependence=political independence. (Also other professions who depend on black customers:beauticians, barbers, morticians, lawyers.) Spread of social gospel.2) Black colleges. Lawsuits force the equal part of separate but equal. Obtain whitemoney. Massive growth in educated youth.3) NAACP is a white-dominated organization at the national level, but a black grassrootsorganization at the local level.HOPEBrown vs. Board of Education. 1954. Biggest effect was not in desegregation, whichtook 20 years and was undone in the next 20 years by white flight, but in giving black peoplehope that change was possible, that the government would intervene.McAdam: “cognitive liberation” People act out of hope, sense of possibility.Chronology of the Black Civil Rights Movement in the South1954 Brown vs. Board of Education. Bans segregation, but allows graduateimplementation.1954-1970 (and continuing?) White resistance.1954 Emmett Till murdered. Widespread publicity among blacks.1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. Nation-widepublicity.1950s Malcolm X preaching on the streets of Harlem in the 1950s. 1957. White riots at Little Rock (Arkansas) High to block small-scale integration. USTroops protect integration.1957 King founds Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)1954-1960s NAACP persecuted in south. Banned as “Communist.” Teachers, othersfired for being members. Same people who were members of NAACP involved in other blackorganizations, involved in black churches.1960 Close election, Kennedy vs. Nixon. Kennedy wins, blacks seen as swing vote. Kennedy gives support to civil rights, while trying to keep white southern vote.1960- Sit-ins start (SNCC = Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)1961 Freedom Rides (CORE=Congress of Racial Equality)1963-65 major civil rights marches, major civil rights legislation1963 March on Washington1963 Kenney killed. President Johnson (a southerner) vows to be the “civil rightspresident.”1964 Public Accommodations Act1964 Freedom Summer. White college students go south. Civil rights workers killed. Battle over the Mississippi delegation to national convention. Fanny Lou Hamer “Is thisAmerica?”1964 Johnson re-elected. The shift of the white racist vote to the Republican Party.1963-1968 Black urban riots. Militancy. Northern/ western. Policing, poverty – not just“rights.” White fears.1965 Malcolm X assassinated1965 Selma, the last big civil rights march. Voting Rights Act1966 “Black power” Stokeley Charmichael and SNCC. Marginalization of whites inthe movement. Power rhetoric frightens whites.1966-1967 King takes the movement north. Much less success. “Where Do We GoFrom Here?” Stresses need to address economic issues1968 ML King assassinated. Huge wave of riots.1966-1971 White students increasing involved in anti-war movement. White campusriots over the Vietnam war.1969 Nixon. “Law and order.” The beginning of the decline of black political influence.The post-civil
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