Successful End to Legal Segregation

The Civil Rights Movement and a Second Reconstruction

World War II and postwar prosperity created rising expectations for African Americans who were seeing their incomes increase in the years following the Great Depression. Roosevelt issued an Executive Order in 1941 prohibiting discrimination in wartime industries leading to growing numbers of African Americans working in industries outside the South. FDR had been pressured to act by A. Philip Randolph, an African American labor leader who had threatened to organize thousands to march on Washington protesting discrimination. Furthermore a new civil rights organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) formed in 1942 had forced several Washington, D.C., restaurants to serve African Americans after sit-ins where patrons refused to leave until arrested or served. CORE protestors carried signs "Are you for Hitler's Way or the American Way?' Indeed, many black Americans asked what was the difference between Hitler proclaiming Germans the “master race” and white Americans segregating black Americans out of mainstream society, especially in the South?

Black soldiers, over one million who served in WWII and restricted to segregated units, having fought to defeat German racism now sought to battle segregation at home.  As noted earlier, President Truman ordered the desegregation of the military in 1948, but much of which was carried out by Eisenhower.

Civil Rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whose numbers swelled during WWII from 50,000 to 450,000 black and white members, were pushing cases into federal courts to try and begin the process of dismantling legal segregation.  Their biggest court victory occurred in 1954. The NAACP managed to get the case of Linda Brown, a Topeka, Kansas, elementary school student forced to attend a segregated school several miles from home rather than her neighborhood school, to the Supreme Court.  The lead lawyer in the case, Thurgood Marshall (later the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court) argued that such segregation stigmatized an entire race and therefore violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The Supreme Court agreed 9-0 in Brown v. Board prohibiting segregation in public schools. The Court in the following years used Brown as a precedent to overturn segregation in public parks, public golf courses, public housing, and public transportation. (Below: photo of Linda Brown)

Yet there was a great deal of foot-dragging by white southerners to desegregate the public schools. Over 1/2 million joined White Citizens Councils in 1956 which organized to fight court orders to desegregate.  Over a hundred southern members of the House of Representatives signed a Southern Manifesto denouncing the Brown decision and encouraged their constituents to resist

Eisenhower, although not enthusiastic about enforcing federal court orders in the face of what he feared possibly would be violent resistance, nonetheless was committed to upholding federal law. When Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard in early September 1957 to deny entry to nine black students to Central High School in Little Rock, Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas guard and sent a thousand US troops to the city to enforce desegregating the school. Eisenhower’s action was the first federal enforcement of Civil Rights since Reconstruction.

Prior to Ike sending in the troops, the nine students had spent several weeks trying to attend the school where they were met every morning not only by the National Guard but a mob of angry white parents and students who harassed, screamed at, and cursed the well-mannered, well-dressed, quiet and dignified black students attempting to enter the school. White TV audiences outside the South were shocked at the undignified and borderline violent behavior they witnessed. The nine black students won not only a lot of national sympathy for themselves, but for the growing Civil Rights Movement as well. (Below: photo of angry whites harassing one of the nine African American students attempting to desegregate Little Rock's Central High School)

Eisenhower also promoted and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (the first civil rights legislation passed since Reconstruction) which provided criminal penalties for obstructing voter registration. Southern Democratic senators however neutered much of the legislation's impact by allowing jury trials of violators by what would effectively be all white juries.

After Ike left office, JFK found himself facing his own school standoff between federal courts and segregationists, this time at the University of Mississippi in October 1962.  Federal marshals attempted to enroll James Meredith into Ole Miss but they were assaulted by a white mob (or as some might say today “mostly peaceful protestors”) as night fell and state authorities did nothing to intervene. JFK ordered thousands of US troops to Oxford to break up a riot that left two whites dead (including a French journalist) and around a hundred injured, including soldiers and marshals. Meredith subsequently enrolled and chastened state and local authorities offered no resistance.

On 11 June 1963 Governor George Wallace physically blocked entry of two students to the University of Alabama. Wallace earlier had pledged “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”. JFK federalized Alabama’s National Guard and the governor did ultimately stand aside and let the students enroll. 

It wasn’t just in schools however, that civil rights organizations were working to end segregation.  In 1955 the NAACP planned a challenge to the “back of the bus” policy in Montgomery, Alabama, where typically in southern cities, African Americans were required to sit at the back of bus and give up their seats if the “white's only” section was full. Rosa Parks, a secretary for the local NAACP refused to give up her seat on a crowded city bus to a white man. She was arrested and the NAACP took her case to court.  African Americans in Montgomery launched a bus boycott organized by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) that lasted over a year. It ended only when the Supreme Court upheld a lower federal court ruling in Browder v. Gayle, that segregation on buses violated the 14th Amendment and therefore was unconstitutional. At that point the city of Montgomery relented and ended its segregation policy on the city’s buses. 

King and other black ministers also organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta to provide support for boycotts, sit-ins, and legal challenges by southern black churches. The boycott, which received national attention made King the face of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet most of what was happening went well beyond King and the SCLC. In February 1960, four Greensboro, North Carolina college students from North Carolina A & T, sat down in the "whites only" section at a Woolworth’s convenience store’s lunch counter. (One of the purposes for such Jim Crow laws was to exclude African Americans from any perceived equal social relationship with whites). The students were not served, nor arrested, but returned the next day with more students sitting-in.

Below: photo of four students sitting in for service at a "whites only" section of a Woolworth's lunch counter

The sit-ins spread to other stores in other southern cities with eventually thousands taking part. These were organized in part by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In addition to the sit-ins, black and some white customers began boycotting Woolworths and other stores with segregated lunch counters. The Greensboro store desegregated its lunch counter in July, and most other southern Woolworth stores and some others followed shortly thereafter.

Interestingly none of the Greensboro students were arrested, as in this case there was no law being violated.  Segregating the lunch counter was due to custom and store policy. And the sit-ins were peaceful (except on occasion when some whites showed up protesting the protestors), as the students were careful to do nothing to provoke police to arrest them

James Farmer of CORE organized FREEDOM RIDES in 1961 enlisting black and white “Freedom Riders” to ride on interstate bus-lines throughout the South with the intention of desegregating waiting rooms, restrooms, and terminal restaurants. The buses were attacked by members of a new Ku Klux Klan (it’s third incarnation since Reconstruction) among others.  One bus in Anniston, Alabama was set on fire.  As riders fled the burning bus they were attacked by white mobs. Alabama state police intervened to prevent a wholesale lynching of the riders many who were hospitalized.  Riders throughout the South were frequently attacked, however, while state and local authorities refused to act. (Below: burning Freedom Riders bus, Anniston Alabama)

JFK reluctantly entered the fray. (Kennedy is thinking about reelection and he doesn’t want to alienate southern Democrats by pushing too hard for civil rights). He sent federal marshals to protect the buses while the federal Interstate Commerce Commission enforced regulations against segregated facilities in interstate bus terminals.

In spring 1963 Martin Luther King launched protests in Birmingham, Alabama against segregation. Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor used dogs, electric cattle prods, fire hoses, and tear gas on largely defenseless demonstrators. The violence made for great television and gained the Civil Rights Movement sympathy among shocked white audiences outside the South.  (As hard as it maybe for some to believe, white Americans beyond the southern states had little if any understanding to the extent of segregation in the region unless they had occasion to travel there. And in the 1950s and early 1960s, southern cities...except for New Orleans…were not big tourist destinations).

Changing American attitudes toward southern segregation allowed JFK to announce his support for a new Civil Rights Act in June 1963. MLK and the SCLC supported the proposed legislation with a massive 200,000 persons biracial march on Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963 with King as key speaker.

Also aiding the effort was a series of bombings of African American churches, the most tragic and important being the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963 that killed four girls ages 11-14. (This church and others were targets because they often served as meeting places for civil rights organizations)

Yet the biggest boost to getting the Civil Rights Act through Congress, may have been the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, by  Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, in Dallas.  Born in New Orleans, Oswald had a psychiatric evaluation as a teenager for his erratic behavior.  He developed an interest in socialism, joined the Marines, qualified as a “sharpshooter” and radar operator.  He taught himself passable Russian and defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 where he could live in a socialist society.  The Russians saw a propaganda opportunity and treated him well providing him with a factory job in Minsk.  He married in 1961 but was disappointed with life, especially and ironically, the lack of freedom in the USSR.  Almost inexplicably, the Soviets allowed him to return to the US with is bride, Marina, and almost as inexplicably he was allowed to return by US authorities. His return however, unlike his defection, was ignored by the press.  He settled in Dallas, but had trouble keeping a job.

In September 1963 Oswald visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. He was hired by the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on October 16.  The motorcade route of JFK’s visit to Dallas was published in local newspapers the night before and the morning of his arrival. The route would take Kennedy directly in front of the book depository.  On November 22, Oswald brought to work a long bag in which he claimed were “curtain rods”. 

Below photo of President Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy seated behind Texas Governor John Connally moments before Kennedy was shot

Working alone on the sixth floor of the building, at 12:30 PM he shoots President Kennedy wounding him first with a shot to the throat and then killing him with a shot to the head (Texas governor John Connelly was wounded). Oswald quickly left the building (and his rifle) before police could seal it off.  He later killed a Dallas police officer with a handgun, and hid in a movie theater where he was discovered and arrested.  Two day later, Oswald himself was killed by a night club owner, Jack Ruby, during a jail transfer. Ruby claimed he acted on anger and impulse (though he may well have believed he would be treated as a hero for murdering Oswald.  He wasn’t, instead he died as an inmate from cancer while awaiting a new trial in 1967)

Conspiracy theories abound as to whether Oswald actually was the gunman (imo he was) and if so whether he murdered JFK on his own or at the behest of others.  Alleged culprits include the Joint Chiefs of Staff (who opposed JFK’s supposed decision not to escalate the war in Vietnam); the Mafia (for JFK’s brother's-- US Attorney General Robert Kennedy-- crackdown on organized crime);  Communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (Kennedy had authorized assassination attempts against him); or the Soviet Union (for JFK successfully forcing the USSR to remove nuclear missiles from Cuba in October 1962); or Vice-President Lyndon Johnson (who wanted to be president); or Lassie (if you know who Lassie is, I made that up…) 

Oswald, like other American assassins and would be assassins, was a bit of a loner, a bit “mentally and emotionally disturbed”, and especially, a self-aggrandizer ( as with Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, and John Schrank).  Oswald wanted to be somebody (so did Jack Ruby) as evidenced by his very public defection to the Soviet Union and his continued ties with Soviet agents after his return to the US.

If there was a conspiracy, why did the conspirators have no way of whisking Oswald away?  Why would conspirators trust a night club owner like Ruby to kill him?  And why are there so many theories? Because individually each one is very weak, so the more there are the more doubt it casts on what actually happened (and it’s a great way to sell books and movies).  Polls continue to show a majority of Americans believe Oswald was part of a conspiracy. 

(Btw and fwiw, several years ago I went to Dealey Plaza where JFK was assassinated and to the sixth floor of the depository building (it is now a museum).  While some conspiracy theorists have claimed it would have been difficult for Oswald to fire three times and hit JFK twice from there, in my judgement it would have been a piece of cake, especially for a former Marine)

Anyway, back to the point, JFK’s death opened the way to Congressional passage for the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA) forbidding any government and private discrimination or segregation in public accommodations regarding race, religion, national origin, or sex. It created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to oversee enforcement of the law. The legislation was supported by former Texas senator and then president, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) and received bipartisan support that overcame opposition from southern Democrats in Congress.

Proponents of the act had argued that its passage would be a legacy to the slain president.

LBJ, who had helped other southern senators gut the 1957 Civil Rights Act, hoped to walk the thin line between keeping peace with northern Democrats while keeping white southern Democrats loyal to the party.  Knowing there would be considerable southern defections, Johnson double-downed on civil rights, by supporting a proposed voting rights bill that would require federal officers to monitor southern state elections guaranteeing African Americans their right to register and vote. LBJ, who was a New Deal liberal, hoped he could keep poorer southern whites Democratic by appealing to the economic interests of both blacks and whites, thereby offsetting the certainty of many (ultimately most) southern whites ditching the Democratic party.

The 1964 election would tell how much damage, with his running for reelection, LBJ’s new found support for civil rights would hurt the party in the South. The Republican candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona had broken ranks with most of his senate Republican colleagues and voted against the Civil Rights Act.  Goldwater’s opposition had little to do with race, and a lot to do with his libertarian political philosophy.  He believed the government should not tell private individuals and business owners who they could and could not do business with. Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, his position opened him up to charges of racism.  Republicans who had won nearly 33% of the black vote in 1960, watched as most of the party’s remaining black voters moved in droves to vote for LBJ in 1964. Goldwater won only six percent of the black vote, and Republican candidates have struggled to break double digits ever since. (Again, this would be African Americans living mostly outside the South, although some southern states were gradually allowing more African Americans to vote, most remained unable to)