Civil Rights Movement Background

After the disputed election of 1876 resulted in the end of Reconstruction, Whites in the South regained political control of the region, after mounting intimidation and violence in the elections. Systematic disfranchisement of African Americans took place in Southern states from 1890 to 1908 and lasted until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s. For more than 60 years, for example, blacks in the South were not able to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.

During this period, the white-dominated Democratic Party regained political control over the South. The Republican Party—the "party of Lincoln"—which had been the party that most blacks belonged to, shrank to insignificance as black voter registration was suppressed. By the early 20th century, almost all elected officials in the South were Democrats.

During the same time as African Americans were being disfranchised, white Democrats imposed racial segregation by law. Violence against blacks increased. The system of overt, state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged out of the post-Reconstruction South became known as the "Jim Crow" system. It remained virtually intact into the early 1950s. Thus, the early 20th century is a period often referred to as the "nadir of American race relations". While problems and civil rights violations were most intense in the South, social tensions affected African Americans in other regions as well.

Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period:

Racial segregation. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains. Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.

Disfranchisement. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more inaccessible to blacks. Black voters were forced off the voting rolls. The number of African American voters dropped dramatically, and they no longer were able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor white Americans.

Exploitation. Increased economic oppression of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.

Violence. Individual, police, organizational, and mass racial violence against blacks (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in California).

African Americans and other racial minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that rejected separate white and colored school systems and by implication overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson.

The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). From 1910 to 1970, African Americans sought better lives by migrating north and west. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration.

Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation. They were faced with "massive resistance" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance, African Americans adopted a combined strategy of direct action with nonviolent resistance known as civil disobedience, giving rise to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of 1955–1968.

Tags:

Civil Rights Movement Background ,

Rosa Parks Bus Boycott ,

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 ,

Desegregating Little Rock, 1957 ,

Freedom Rides, 1961 ,

Gates v. Collier ,

American Jewish community ,

St. Augustine, Florida ,

Voter registration organizing ,

Birmingham Campaign ,

Mississippi Freedom ,

Kennedy administration ,

Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965 ,

Poor People's Campaign ,

Race riots, 1963–1970