truman eisenhower kennedy johnson. the view from the nation (top to bottom approach) steven f....
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TrumanEisenhowerKennedyJohnson
The View from the Nation (top to bottom approach) Steven F. Lawson Professor Emeritus of History, Rutgers
University B.A., 1966, City College of New York M.A., 1967, Columbia University Ph.D., 1974, Columbia University Major publications include: Black Ballots: Voting
Rights in the South, 1944-1969; In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, 1965-1982; Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941; and Debating the Civil Rights Movement (with Charles Payne)
The View from the Trenches (bottom to top approach) Charles Payne Professor, Duke University, African and African
American Studies PhD, Northwestern University, 1976 BA, Syracuse University, 1970 Interests include urban education and school reform,
social inequality, social change and modern African American history. He is the author of Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure In Urban Education (1984) and I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement(1995). So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (2005); Teach Freedom: The African American Tradition of Education For Liberation, 2006).
Focus on the belief that the federal government had an indispensable role in the shaping of the civil rights movement
Belief that it’s impossible to understand how African Americans achieved citizenship rights without concentrating on what national leaders in Washington, D.C. did to influence those events.
Focus is on powerful presidents, congressional leaders, members of Supreme Court
Without their support, the struggle would have lacked power and authority to defeat state governments who were intent on keeping African Americans in subservient positions
Civil rights movement also depended on the presence of national organizations: NAACP, SCLC
Civil Rights also depended on the leaders of these organizations: especially Martin Luther King, Jr.
These groups could do what African American residents of local communities could not do alone: turn the civil rights struggle into a national cause of concern and prod the federal government into acting
The story in Washington begins with World War II and the presidencies of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson
This is a story of executive orders ending segregation in the military and housing; five pieces of civil rights legislation and landmark Supreme Court rulings
This perspective or approach to the movement does not mean to belittle African American creativity and determination in the struggle
But it suggests that given the existing power relations favoring whites—southern African Americans could not possibly eliminate racial inequality without outside federal assistance
At the same time, the federal government would shape the movement by choosing whether and when to respond to African American protests and to give its support within African American communities
This view believes that placing too much emphasis on national leadership and national institutions minimizes the importance of local struggle
You lose sight of the enormous personal cost
It creates the impression that historical change only resides with the power of elites—usually white, male, educated and that non-elites lack any historical agency
Heavy gender bias in the national approach; on the local level, women provided a disproportionate share of leadership in the early 1960s
A top down perspective can lose sight of the complexity of the African-American community—its class, gender, cultural, regional and ideological divisions
This perspective believes that the concentration on the period between 1955 and 1968 (Montgomery-Memphis framework) underplays the importance of earlier periods of struggle
This perspective believes that too much attention has been given to legislative and policy changes and there should be more attention paid to the struggles and experiences of individuals
This perspective feels that too much attention has been given to large scale dramatic events. There should be more study and understanding on the actual social infrastructure of individuals and groups that sustained the movement on a day to day basis (i.e. the civil rights movement was complex)
New emphasis on the complexity of the movement (there was more to the Montgomery bus boycotts than Rosa Parks and MLK)
New emphasis on the complexity of the African American community
New emphasis on the role of women and children in the movement
New emphasis on stretching the timeline beyond 1955-1968
NOW THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, by the Constitution and the statutes of the United States, and as Commander in Chief of the armed services, it is hereby ordered as follows:
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.
Harry Truman, July 26, 1948
April 15, 1947 first game as a Brooklyn Dodger at Ebbets Field
Branch Rickey, owner of Dodgers Robinson, 27 years old, son of Georgia
sharecroppers and grandson of slaves Won athletic scholarship at UCLA and lettered in
baseball, football, basketball, and track Second Lieutenant in segregated tank unit during
World War II Played for Kansas City Monarchs in Negro Leagues Promised Rickey that he would maintain self-
control National League Rookie of the Year
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American Major League Baseball player in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers
Sept. 1953, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died. Eisenhower replaced him with California governor, Earl Warren
For a decade African American lawyers had been filing legal challenges to segregated public facilities hoping to erode “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Led by Thurgood Marshall and William Hastie of NAACP’s Legal Defense fund. Had studied law under Charles Hamilton Houston at Howard University
May 17, 1954 a united 9-0 decision of Supreme Court overturned Plessy. Decision written by Warren.
“In the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Brown II required local school boards to draw up desegregation plans with the approval of a federal district judge. Integration should proceed “with all deliberate speed”
August 28, 1955--Chicago native Emmett Till, 14, was murdered in Money, Miss., where he went to visit his great-uncle.
In Montgomery, Alabama during the fifties, on local buses, blacks paid their fares in the front, got off the vehicle, and entered the “colored section” through the rear door. They also had to relinquish their seats to white passengers when the front section filled up.
December 1, 1955—Rosa Parks, a forty-two year-old black seamstress, and member of the local NAACP, refused to give up her seat to a white person and was arrested
Bus boycott organized by local clergymen and the Women’s Political Council
Calling themselves the Montgomery Improvement Association, MIA, they chose a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the struggle for open seating in public transportation
King was a newcomer to town, served as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He was familiar with the works of Gandhi and Thoreau
Viewed mass action and non-violent resistance essential to fight against racial justice
November 1956, federal courts struck down Alabama segregation law
Boycott had lasted 381 days 1957-King joined with other black ministers
to form Southern Chrisitan Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Opposition to Brown decision was spreading Eisenhower’s silence was interpreted as a sign that
he supported resistance to integrated schools 1956-more than 100 Congressmen from former
Confederate states issued a “Southern Manifesto” that vowed to resist court-ordered integration “by all lawful means.”
1957-Governor Orval Faubus began the confrontation between national authority and “state’s rights” by defying a federal court order to integrate the all-white Central High School
Arkansas National Guard, and then a crowd of angry whites, turned away the nine black students
As T.V. scenes of mob violence in Little Rock flashed around the world, Eisenhower had to take command
Vowing to use “the full power of the U.S….to carry out the orders of the federal court”
Nationalized the Arkansas Guard and dispatched a thousand fully equipped army paratroopers to surround the high school and escort the black students to their classes
Eisenhower became the first president since Reconstruction to protect the civil rights of African American through the use of military force
