However, generally the Northern blacks were somewhat better off than the Southern blacks in 1945. In 1945, African Americans in the North had different conditions then the South. Firstly, there were political differences. Only 15% of black people in the southern states had the right to vote. Black people had the legal right to vote as there were measures that were put into place to prevent the south African Americans from voting by using the poll tax and literacy tests.
How far do you agree that the years 1945-55 saw only limited progress in improving the status of African Americans? The years 1945-55 can be described as ‘seeds of change’ in improving the African American people’s position in society as their lives saw slight improvements however nothing drastic happened that changed their economic, political and social status immediately in America. Before 1945, during the second world war, conditions of life for black American’s was slightly improving in the northern states with there being less institutional racism and more equal job opportunities with acceptable pay for everyone. However in the south, conditions were very different; Jim Crow Laws meant that deep racial divides were being enforced throughout most states. Segregation was seen as lawful due to the Plessy vs. Ferguson case saying that ‘separate but equal’ was how they should live their lives.
It was much harder for blacks to get a job, and there employment position could be described as ‘the last to be hired, the first to be fired’. African Americans faced discrimination almost in every job, and they earned less, often due to the poor educational opportunities. The voting rights were different in the North from the South. In the North, almost all African Americans could vote. In the South however, the blacks were disfranchised, since the state governments introduced literacy tests, tests on the knowledge of constitution and Poll taxes, which African Americans had trouble with, because of poor education and financial problems.
How far had the status of Hispanic and Native Americans improved by the late 1960s? Black people were not the only racial minority that was discriminated in America. Both Hispanic and Native Americans were victims of discrimination and poverty, but inspired by black activists radicals from both communities became organised in the 1960s to fight for an equal America. There were several factors which affected both communities such as, poverty, lack of education and little opportunities for employment. Hispanic Americans predominantly worked in the farming industry within California, but were only employed seasonally during harvests.
How far did conditions for black Americans improve in the period 1945-56? Civil right was a major issue in America during 1945-56, especially in the Deep South. This was because conditions of African Americans didn’t improve much, it was mainly the start to any change that happened, with some limited progress. The first issue is ‘Jim crow’ laws; this was a law in the Southern states of America that introduced segregation between black and white people, by passing laws which denied them access to white facilities. Many of these facilities were, education, healthcare, transport, cinemas, restaurants and churches and even housing and estates were segregated.
The black population of such cities was concentrated in ghetto areas, where homes and schools for blacks were inferior to those for whites. Because of their lack of education, blacks had fewer job opportunities than whites. Outside the south, whites were just as unwilling as southerners to mix with blacks. You can change the laws but you can’t force to change the attitudes whites felt towards them. Whites did not
They had jobs such as railroad track layers, brick layers, grave diggers; fruit, vegetable and cotton pickers, doormen, elevator operators.Almost 1 million black farm workers lost their jobs, many moved to the cities where they shared similar experiences with the immigrants; low paid jobs and poor housing conditions.In the northern states, decent jobs went to the white population and discrimination was just as common in the north as it was in the South and many black families lived in ghettoes in the cities in very poor conditions. On the other hand one reason that black Americans did benefit as before the war less than 2% of the population in the southern states could vote but by 1945 around 15% of black Americans in the southern states had been registered to vote. Another reason that the black Americans did not share in the economic boom was that the living situations for them was appalling. 40% of housing available to black Americans in Washington DC was found to be sub standard where as only 12% of white housing fell into this category however as a result of boom the amount of unemployed black Americans fell. It fell from 937,000 to 151,000.
However, on average black workers earned 50% less than their white counterparts. In 1986 a black man called Homer Plessy challenged segregation laws, claiming that they were incompatible with the 14th amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal because it was legitimate to treat people according to the principle “separate but equal”. De facto was very different and African Americans were still treated as a lower ‘second’ class. Traditionally Black Americans had voted for the Republican Party.
There were several committee chairmen who were southern Democrats and as Biles wrote, “the strength of southern Democrats in Congress dictated the president’s reluctance to challenge the South’s racial customs” (175). The New Deal programs that were created during the first part of Roosevelt’s term did very little for blacks and racial discrimination was widespread. Blacks were being paid less than whites in all of FERA’s programs, even though they said that racial discrimination was forbidden. The WPA did seem to help a little more that FERA, but as Biles notes, “Although the WPA proved a godsend for thousands of poverty-stricken blacks, they never received the benefits their percentage of the unemployed warranted” (179). I believe that it was because of Eleanor Roosevelt that changes really started to take place.
Though the desegregation of schools in North Carolina granted blacks access to better educational resources and wealthier scholastic opportunities, the resultant dilution and erosion of the black educational community devastated its resolve and essential coherence. These negative effects of integration are only somewhat less visible even today. Black-only schools operated under astounding inequity before integration. With white schools hogging state funds, black administrators turned to their communities for support. When George Miller was principal in Wilkes County, NC, the community struggled to support the schools with funds, equipment, and food for the cafeteria.# Still, communities could provide very little, so educators adjusted their educational focus.