Civil Rights in the USA 1945–1968

Civil Rights in the USA 1945–1968 is one of six Change in the Modern World options in Section IV. Unlike Sections II and III, this section has one question in three or four parts, and one part is worth 10–15 marks. Smaller parts usually ask you to outline, describe or explain, often using a source; the big part asks for a judgement. The syllabus key features are: the nature and impact of segregation and discrimination; the role and impact of civil rights groups; opposition to civil rights; the influence of changing social attitudes; the role of leadership; and the successes of the movement.

• Survey: the impact of World War II on African Americans; the extent of segregation and discrimination.
• Struggles for civil rights: groups and their ideas; Martin Luther King's efforts; methods (boycotts, direct action, political agitation); King and Malcolm X compared; opposition (the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens' Councils).
• Key events: the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Rosa Parks; Little Rock; the Freedom Rides; the March on Washington; Freedom Summer 1964; the assassination of King.
• Achievements: social and political change; legislation (the Civil Rights Act 1964) and the attitudes of US presidents; the movement's influence beyond the USA.

A note on language: sources from this period use words such as ‘Negro’ and ‘coloured’, which were standard then but are offensive now. In your own writing use ‘African American’ or ‘Black American’.

Segregation and discrimination

• Jim Crow laws in the South separated Black and white Americans in schools, transport, restaurants, hospitals and more, upheld by the ‘separate but equal’ ruling in _Plessy v. Ferguson_ (1896). In practice Black facilities were far worse.
• Disenfranchisement: literacy tests, poll taxes, white primaries and intimidation kept most Black Southerners from voting.
• Violence and economic control: lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, sharecropping debt, and the threat of losing jobs or homes.
• De facto segregation in the North: no Jim Crow laws, but discrimination in housing (redlining), jobs and policing created segregated ghettos.

Impact of World War II

• More than a million African Americans served in the armed forces, in segregated units such as the Tuskegee Airmen.
• The Double V campaign (1942): victory over fascism abroad and racism at home.
• Executive Order 8802 (1941) banned discrimination in defence industries after A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington.
• War jobs drove migration to northern and western cities; NAACP membership grew roughly ninefold.
• The fight against Nazi racism, and later the Cold War competition for allies, made American segregation look hypocritical.

After the war Truman's committee produced _To Secure These Rights_ (1947), and Executive Order 9981 (1948) began desegregating the armed forces.

King and Malcolm X

• Martin Luther King Jr: Christian non-violence influenced by Gandhi; integration; appeal to the conscience of white America and to federal power; mass direct action designed to provoke a response that the media would show. Key moments: Montgomery (1955–56), Birmingham and the ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ (1963), the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (August 1963), the Nobel Peace Prize (1964), Selma (1965), the Chicago campaign (1966), the Poor People's Campaign (1968).
• Malcolm X: as a Nation of Islam minister, rejected integration and non-violence, calling for Black pride, separation and self-defence. After leaving the Nation of Islam in March 1964 and visiting Mecca, he spoke of human rights and was more open to cooperation. He was assassinated on 21 February 1965.

Their differences were real, but historians also see them as complementary: Malcolm X's militancy made King look moderate to white politicians.

• White Citizens' Councils (from 1954): ‘respectable’ middle-class resistance using economic pressure and politics.
• The Ku Klux Klan: bombings and murders, such as the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham (September 1963), which killed four girls.
• Massive resistance: the Southern Manifesto (1956), states closing schools, governors defying the courts (Faubus in 1957, George Wallace's ‘stand in the schoolhouse door’ in 1963).
• Local police and officials: Bull Connor in Birmingham, Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma.
• Congress: southern Democrats filibustered the 1964 bill for about 60 working days.
• The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover spied on and tried to discredit King.

Opposition slowed change, but its violence, shown on television, often won sympathy for the movement and pushed the federal government to act.

Legislation and law: _Brown_ (1954); the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 (weak but symbolic); the Civil Rights Act 1964; the 24th Amendment (1964, banning poll taxes in federal elections); the Voting Rights Act 1965; _Loving v. Virginia_ (1967); the Fair Housing Act (1968). Black voter registration in the South rose sharply after 1965.

Presidents: Truman (Executive Order 9981), Eisenhower (cautious, but enforced the law at Little Rock), Kennedy (slow at first, then the June 1963 address and a civil rights bill), Johnson (passed the 1964 and 1965 Acts).

Limits by 1968: de facto segregation and poverty in northern cities; urban riots (Watts 1965, Detroit and Newark 1967); division between non-violence and Black Power; the assassinations of Malcolm X and King; backlash among some white voters.

Influence beyond the USA:

• Australia: the 1965 Freedom Ride through western NSW, led by Charles Perkins and the Student Action for Aborigines, was modelled on the American Freedom Rides.
• Northern Ireland: the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (1967) used marches and sit-ins against discrimination towards Catholics.
• Elsewhere: Black Power ideas influenced activists in Britain and the Caribbean; the movement's methods inspired anti-apartheid and other rights campaigns.

Worked example (not a bank question).

• _(a) Outline the role of Ella Baker in the civil rights movement. (3 marks)_ — Name her roles (NAACP field secretary in the 1940s, SCLC organiser, adviser at the founding of SNCC in 1960) and her belief in grassroots, group-centred leadership rather than reliance on one charismatic leader. Three clear points with detail.
• _(b) Using a source, explain how the Greensboro sit-ins changed the movement. (5 marks)_ — Use the source's details, add your own knowledge (the sit-ins spread to dozens of cities within weeks, SNCC was founded, young people became central) and explain the change.
• _(c) To what extent did young people drive the civil rights movement? (12 marks)_ — A thesis, paragraphs weighing students (sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the Birmingham children's crusade, SNCC) against other forces (churches, the NAACP's lawyers, King, presidents), and a conclusion.

Spend your time in proportion to the marks: roughly 1.8 minutes per mark.

• Confusing the Freedom Rides (1961, travel) with Freedom Summer (1964, voting).
• Mixing up the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).
• Treating the movement as only King's story, or only a southern story.
• Assuming _Brown_ desegregated schools immediately.
• Describing events without saying what changed, which is what Section IV is about.
• Forgetting the ‘influence beyond the USA’ dot point.

• Use precise terms: Jim Crow, de jure and de facto segregation, disenfranchisement, direct action, non-violent resistance, massive resistance, Black Power, filibuster.
• In source parts, quote briefly and explain; always add your own knowledge.
• In the 10–15 mark part, make a judgement in your first sentence and return to it at the end of every paragraph.
• Show change over time: from legal challenges (to 1955) to mass direct action (1955–65) to Black Power and northern struggles (1965–68).

• The Cold War 1945–1991: the Soviet Union used American segregation in propaganda, which made civil rights a foreign policy issue for US presidents.
• The core source-analysis skills (value, limitations, perspective) apply directly to the source parts of Section IV.