Module 10
A Civil Rights Discussion: Social Reform and Turmoil in the 1960s
- African American and Black Protest
- Civil Rights Reforms
- legal challenges to racism: NAACP, court cases, Brown v Board of Education, Birmingham Buss boycott and Freedom Rides-legal desegregation of bus system
- political challenges to racism: Truman’s Executive Order 8802 to desegregate the armed forces, Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965
- social challenges to racism: mass protest, Martin Luther King Jr. and nonviolent protest–Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and CORE-Congress of Racial Equality, sit-ins, demonstrations, boycotts
- Divisions Within
- Malcolm X and Black Power
- Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael
- mid-1960s mass riots even at height of civil rights movement, confusion over goals and Americans uncertain where to turn when success achieved
- Civil Rights Reforms
- Hispanics (Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans primarily; as part of the Hispanic electorate, Cuban Americans would be affected after 1959 when they flee Castro’s domination)
- large numbers of Mexicans in US during WWII which the government had sought as interim labor; once the war ends officials expect them to leave. Many were deported. When there was protest or immigrants who returned covertly, the mass illegal immigration movement emerged in the southwest and FL and further restrictions were placed on labor relations between the two countries.
- “Operation Wetback” is racially negative program to send the workers home to MX
- Cesar Chavez and mass protest of farm workers in CA, Pacific Coast sought to equalize pay, gain respect for their work , and remove the stigma of alien status
- Puerto Ricans experienced much of the same issues in Florida’s agricultural industry but were partially protected by their status as US citizens
- Mendez v Westminster (1946)—landmark court case which led to the desegregation California’s school system to allow Hispanics equality in education “The equal protection of the laws’ pertaining to the public school system in California is not provided by furnishing in separate schools the same technical facilities, text books and courses of instruction to children of Mexican ancestry that are available to the other public school children regardless of their ancestry. A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage.” Federal District Judge, Paul J. McCormick, from Mendez v. Westminster School Dist. of Orange County, 64 F.Supp. 544 (D.C.CAL. 1946).
- Native Americans
- rights curtailed with legislation revoking sovereignty and reservations, activists fight back and win return of reservation lands, political power
- split in movement as become urban and less Indian vs poverty on reservation, rural, and mostly Indian
- more radical acts: take over Alcatraz for a year, stage protest at Wounded Knee, South Dakota
- Asian Americans (mostly Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean)
- much protest after WWII internments and immigration restricted, 1965 new Immigration and Nationality Act repeals 1924 Immigration Law requiring nationality quotas and reopens immigration to Japanese persons; reparations in part given in 1988 to the victims of internment
- Korean war brides come to the US, particularly in the western US, in record numbers during the 1950s which in turn increased the Korean American population. Posting of servicemen in South Korea would keep the door of cultural exchange and intermarriage open.
- 1970-1975 large numbers of Vietnamese immigrate to US, part of the “boat people” movement escaping the turmoil of war and the oppressive regime there, large numbers settle in Louisiana which created tremendous tension and competition for jobs in the local fishing industries
- After Nixon’s eases relations with China (1972), see larger numbers of Chinese immigrants to US, particularly West Coast, who would join families already