23. Post war america

1861-1865 the Civil War.(600 000 deads)

• 1863 emancipation declaration freeing slaves from confederate states but not slave states which had not rebelled (in the North was slavery abolished firstly)

• 1865 amendment outlawed slavery and indentured servitude apart from for prisoners

• 1865/66 Formation of the Ku Klux Klan by Nathan Bedford Forrest, a confederate general (anti Afro Americans)

• 1870s/1880s a turbulent time, the beginning of Jim Crow

• at first violence was used to prevent a Republican (black, pro US) political leadership from being established

• later the Democrats developed a system of segregation laws (Jim Crow laws – voters had to be registered, literacy test was required and yours grandfather had to own a field) to maintain something close to the pre-civil war status quo literacy test (if you want to vote you need to have skill of reading, black didn’t read), grandfather clause (if your grandfather had some land you can vote, they were slaves so they didn’t have any lands)

• black people in the South went from being slaves to share-croppers

• lynching became more common as Afro-Americans no longer had economic value as slaves

• one estimate puts the number of lynching at 3,445, excluding other forms of murder and official executions, from 1882 to 1964

• late 1800s the great migration as Afro-Americans left the Deep South and headed north as part of industrialization

• White Flight and socio-economic segregation

• when black people came into the cities on the north, white moved out (disaster for them from the economic point of view)

• 1940s lynching is out of fashion

• interracial relationships were strictly prohibited

• despite the fact that slavery was abolished, black people still didn’t have the same status as a white people (for example the prices of houses decrease tremendously in the black areas)

• 1915 Birth of a nation – film (generally the depiction of Afro-Americans in movies and TV was at best patronizing at worst dehumanizing until the 1960 – (early Disney)

• 1900s Afro-American soldiers served in the US military in segregated units until 1948. This immensely changed the attitude towards black people. They usually served in the unit which did the dirty job but were admired for this. Also, when the black soldiers came to the Europe, Europeans wasn’t racist towards them. On the contrary were admired and celebrated.

• civil rights movement

• inspired by Ghandi, black and sympathetic white people challenged the Jim Crow laws and segregation using none-violent direct action

• tactics included boycotts, sit down protests, protest marches, voter registration, and legal challenges

• many of the leaders such as Martin Luther King were religious leaders and churches were often used as meeting places

• this led to church burnings in which people died

• civil rights activists were also harassed and murdered

• Rosa Parks (1955 American activist in the civil rights movement, rights for black), she chose this day to make her movement (refused to let sit the white in bus)

• she was arrested for civil disobedience

• Montgomery bus boycott (was a reaction on the throwing a young Afro-American woman out of the bus – all black community didn’t use buses for 10 month and so forced the bus company to apologise)

• 1960s the continued success of the civil rights movement, church burnings, Black Power and the Nation of Islam, Black is Beautiful, Muhammed Ali, 1968 the murders of King and Malcom X

• Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement (he is best known for his controversial advocacy for the rights of blacks; some consider him a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans, while others accused him of preaching racism and violence)

• after WW2 even more Afro Americans

• because of growing black middle class important their votes (black voters)

• “a black man is like a animal, sexual predator for women”

• 1950s lynching is unusual

• Emmet Till (14 years old boy was lynched in Mississippi, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family grocery store)

• violence from authorities

• supreme court ended segregation in schools

• Martin Luther King (I have a dream…) people started love him after he died, murdered in 1968

• FBI pressured Martin Luther King to kill himself

• black separatism (separatist political movement that seeks separate economic and cultural development for those of African descent in societies, US)

• Black Panthers (political organization)