Firstly, during President Truman’s time in office life improved slightly for black Americans. This was because President Truman became committed to challenging Southern racism and he aimed to reduce lynching, police brutality and discrimination in the armed forces. To achieve his aims he established The Presidents’ Committee on Civil Rights in 1946 and commissioned a report examining the experience of racial minorities in America. This report was called ‘To Secure These Rights’ (1947). While this report was very significant, its proposals were only recommendations and in practice Truman was not able to achieve every proposal due to a lack of support from Congress.
There was more de jure change then there was de facto change. President Truman helped change the lives of black people within the US. Truman was president from 1945 to 1953, just after the war so got involved in civil rights because he was moved the the racial attacks that veterans were still receiving. Truman established the “To secure these rights” report in 1947 which highlighted that their equal rights were not equal at all and segregation was a huge problem. Knowing this, Truman tried to do as much as he could to help such as desegregating the armed forces, the acts of fair employment in the civil service and the fair deal programme which included building houses in urban areas.
Black campaigners tried to use the fact that they fought in the war to gain respect and equality. However, there was still a very high number of racism in the southern states and the number of lynchings increased after the war. This shows that even after the effort the black put into helping in the war, they were still classed as second class citizens and not respected in the same way as
All of these Supreme Court rulings show de jure change in favour of blacks and improving the status of African Americans. But it wasn’t just the Supreme Court, as the Federal Government were involved too. Although the Civil Rights 1960 can be regarded as a failure, Congress still passed significant acts that changed the status of blacks and it was in positive ways too. Under President Johnson’s idea of a ‘great society’, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, outlawing segregation in public places and thereby changing the status of African Americans. The Voting Rights Act 1965 was a significant law that changed the status of blacks.
Hochschild examines how African Americans have made advances in society since the civil rights movement, and how some are worried that their time of advance has come to an end. She also examines and compares the situation of the early white European immigrants to America to that of African Americans in regards to their place in the workplace and society as a whole. She compares and contrasts the attitudes of African Americans of different social classes and how they view the American dream. Hochschild comes to the conclusion that through
Because of this, all armed forces were eventually desegregated. This is a huge step to equality as it shows to people that black people can do the same jobs white people can do. Although this may have been apparent, many white people still treated black people as second class citizens. You could say to an extent that they treated them like children as white Americans thought that they were still smarter than African Americans even though this has been proved wrong in WWII. Even though African Americans have shown that they can do what Caucasian Americans can do there is still De Jure segregation in the south which is commonly known as the Jim Crow law.
There were many problems African Americans were facing before the New Deal became an instrument in the saving of the United States economy. Because of the Depression, African Americans workers were pushed out of jobs, favoring White workers. Because Blacks were last hired and first fired, it made it easier for them to lose their jobs at faster rates. The near subjugation of the tenant farming system destroyed many work opportunities for blacks to have any work because many black agricultural workers did not have other job skills, they were highly unlikely to get employment elsewhere. Many black farmers could not obtain contracts for their crops.
The second world war most underling is racial hate and racial supremacy. It created a threefold impact on race relations. Even though there was very few tangible changes towards the Civil Rights movement due to the second world war. It’s brought a new look on segregation for the black citizens. A turning point; as for many this was the first experience of formal racial segregation, it showed an obvious contradiction between fighting Nazi racism; at the same time allow racism home.
Although African Americans had greatly improved in their income and houses, many people didn't treat them any differently. Approximately 1 million African Americans had served in the Second World War but when they returned home, they were treated with disrespect by white people. There were instances where they were beaten because they were in uniform
How far is it accurate to say that the black power weakened the civil rights movement in the 1960’s? To some degree it is accurate to say that the growth of Black Power is a reason why the Civil Rights Movement weakened. However it can be argued that there were many other reasons that were involved with the break down such as the Vietnam War, which shifted many people’s opinions away from the civil rights movement, the death of the two main leaders Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and the Nation of Islam, I believe that these factors are more influential in the collapse in the Civil Rights Movement in America than the emergence of Black Power. The Nation of Islam contributed to the collapse of the civil rights movement. This organisation