1) ‘Free at Last,’ 1865-77
2) The triumph of ‘Jim Crow,’ 1883-c1990
3) The New Deal and race relations, 1933-41
4) ‘I have a dream,’ 1954-68
5) Obama’s campaign for the presidency, 2004-09
6) Film and Media
Civil Rights and Race Relations in the USA, 1850-2009
Year Details
1852 - Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1861-1865 - American Civil War – Northern and Southern disagreements over the continued expansion of
slavery. President Abraham Lincoln’s Unionists (the North)eventually defeated the Confederated (the
South).
1862 - (September) President Lincoln issues a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation –
slavery could continue in states that returned to the Union before January 1863; after that, all slaves
in enemy territory conquered by Union armies would be free. Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation because: Union commanders needed clarification on the status of the 500,000 refugee
slaves in Northern army camps; the Union could use freed sales and more slaves would be
encouraged to flee and thereby weaken the Confederacy; it might halt British aid to the Confederacy.
1864-65 - Congress approved the 13th Amendment – there were several reasons: republicans felt that
slavery had caused terrible conflict and might do so again if retained; many slaves had run away
during the Civil War, so the restoration of slavery was impossible; Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation didn’t end slavery throughout the US, so abolitionist campaigned for a constitutional
amendment to end slavery; Lincoln worried about the constitutional status of slavery, as the
Constitution of 1787 recognised slavery and his Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure that
might not be considered constitutional in peace time. It created social tensions, political tensions, and
transformed the economy of the South
1865 - Lincoln assassinated – Andrew Johnson becomes president.
- Presidential Reconstruction – the South’s social, economic and political systems had been
ruined and needed to be revived. Radical Republicans had been pleased with Johnson’s wartime
declaration that Confederates merited harsh punishments. Johnson sided with the old Confederates
due to being a Southerner, believing in state rights, considered AA inferior, he thought the restoration
of the old Confederate elite would assure his own re-election. He allowed any Southern state that
accepted the end of slavery to return to the Union – naturally Southern whites reasserted their
supremacy.
- Black Codes – maintain black economic, social, political and legal inequality. They were designed to
make it impossible for AA to purchase or rent land; vote; obtain and education; receive meaningful
protection from the law.
1866 - Civil rights act - having the vote in free elections, equal treatment under the law, equal
opportunities in areas such as work and education, freedom of speech, religion and movement.
- Ku Klux Klan is established
1867 - Congressional Reconstruction begins: Military Reconstruction Act – it removed the old
white Confederate elite from the US Congress and from state government; southern states could only
return if they adopted constitutions that allowed black voting, ratified the 14 th Amendment, forbade
office-holding by military commanders upon the former Confederate states; it imposed government
by military commanders upon the former Confederate states. White Southerners and Johnson
considered it disastrous, AA found military rule beneficial.
1868 - Republican-controlled Congress passed the 14 th Amendment – aim was to reinforce the
Civil Rights act. Give black Americans citizenship.
- Jim Crow Laws first enforced - Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that
legalized racial segregation. Southern Whites were able to introduce segregation laws because the
American Constitution has given state power over: voting; education; law enforcement; and
transportation. The Jim Crow Laws were sustained because the federal government has lost interest
in the Black American predicament and the SC was particularly sympathetic to Southern Whites and
states’ rights. They were a constant reminder of black inferiority – young Martin Luther King JR. was
the son of a respected black minister in Atlanta, Georgia. If he wanted to travel on the bus, it had to
be in the section reserved for Black Americans at the back of the bus. He could not buy a soda or
hotdog from the downtown store lunch counter, he had to drink from the ‘coloured’ water fountain,
, 1) ‘Free at Last,’ 1865-77
2) The triumph of ‘Jim Crow,’ 1883-c1990
3) The New Deal and race relations, 1933-41
4) ‘I have a dream,’ 1954-68
5) Obama’s campaign for the presidency, 2004-09
6) Film and Media
use the ‘coloured’ restrooms and sit in the ‘coloured section of movie theatres.
1870 - 15th Amendment – Black American males enfranchised.
- Force Acts – gave President Grant powers to crush the KKK
1872 - Amnesty Act – helped restore political power to the former Confederates
1874 - White League - white paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in
1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting and prevent Republican Party political organizing.
1875 - Civil Rights Act 1875 tried to prevent discrimination in public places – hotels, railroads
and theatres but NOT schools. Unsuccessful.
1877 - Withdrawal of federal troops from the South ended Reconstruction
1883 - Civil Rights Cases – the Supreme Court reviewed 5 similar CR cases where AA had sued transport
services, hotels and theatres due to ‘white only’ areas.’ SC declared the Civil Rights Act (1785) and
federal government to be unconstitutional. Negative impact on AA as many White Americans were
unmoved by this loss of black CR.
1887 - Changes to rail travel in Florida – the end of reconstruction saw the spread of de jure
segregation on railroad cars. The Florida Law legislators were obviously encouraged and emboldened
by the SC’s ruling in the CR Cases of 1883. Southern cities and states passed laws to keep people
segregated in every aspect of society.
1890 - Discrimination in Mississippi – violence, congressional re-districting; fraud; poll tax; new state
constitutions; grandfather clauses; white primaries. Impacted black voting numbers: due to literacy
test
1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson – SC ruled that ‘separate but equal’ facilities for blacks and whites on
transportation were not against the 14 th Amendment. The court declared legislation ‘powerless to
eradicate racial instincts.’ Negative impact on AA – while some would have been satisfied with
separate but equal, the facilities were never equal, and the SC did nothing to ensure that they were.
1898 - Williams v. Mississippi – the black defendant challenged his indictment for murder on the
grounds that the state of Mississippi unconstitutionally excluded black Americans from grand juries.
Williams claimed that the voting qualifications had been adopted for purposes of discrimination and
gave registrars excessive power. The SC rules that literacy tests and poll tax provisions in the
Mississippi state constitution were not discriminatory, on the grounds that they were not mentioned
in the 15th Amendment. Ruling had a negative impact on the black Southern population.
- Louisiana Grandfather Clause - statutes that many Southern states implemented in the 1890s
and early 1900s to prevent Black Americans from voting. The statutes allowed any person who had
been granted the right to vote before 1867 to continue voting without needing to take literacy tests,
own property, or pay poll taxes. Since most Black people in the U.S. were enslaved prior to the 1860s
and did not have the right to vote, grandfather clauses prevented them from voting even after they
had won their freedom.
1899 - Cumming v. Board of Education – Cumming and his co-litigants challenged Richmond County
for continuing to fund a white high school but not a black high school. The challenge as made on the
grounds of the 14th Amendment. The county argued that it was better to focus funds on schools for
the youngest black children because only a few went to and would benefit from high school. The SC
ruled that inequality was reasonable under the circumstances. Black litigants were further
discouraged. SC approved segregated schools and gave federal sanction to the Jim Crow laws.
1900 - New York race riots - began following an incident between Arthur J. Harris, a black man, and a
white undercover police officer, Robert J. Thorpe, outside the apartment of Harris and his girlfriend
May Enoch in the Tenderloin section of New York City. At 2:00 a.m. on August 13, Harris witnessed
Thorpe grabbing Enoch, whom Thorpe believed to be a prostitute soliciting customers. Harris, not
knowing that Thorpe was a police officer, attacked Thorpe and cut him with a knife. Both Harris and
Enoch fled the scene. Harris left for his mother’s home in Washington D.C. and Enoch ran into her
apartment where she was later arrested. Thorpe, who was also the son in-law of Acting Captain John
Cooney of the local Twentieth Police Precinct, was taken to Roosevelt Hospital where he died the next
day.
1905 - Mass immigration into Harlem began – de facto segregation kept Black Americans confined
