Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ritterhouse
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt ◽  
Long Civil Rights Movement

This chapter shows how race-baiting, red-baiting, and white southern liberals' own ambivalence made it impossible for a broad-based coalition to lead an ongoing fight for democratic social change, despite the large number of people who had come together at the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW) in 1938. Activists like Virginia Durr lobbied for anti-poll tax bills in the early 1940s without success. Meanwhile, New Deal policies gave way to mobilization for World War II, which favoured the South with defense-related and infrastructure spending but did not challenge the Jim Crow system. Black civil rights activists like A. Philip Randolph and the lawyers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in a Long Civil Rights Movement that earlier efforts to bring change to the South had helped to make possible. Jonathan Daniels was never an activist but became increasingly supportive of civil rights initiatives after working as an aide to Franklin Roosevelt from 1943-1945. The chapter describes his wartime work and briefly traces the remainder of his career, including the reissue of A Southerner Discovers the South in 1970 and his death in 1981.

Washington Is a Giant Awakened

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Myers Asch ◽  
George Derek Musgrove
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Survival ◽  
White Resistance ◽  
War Effort

As the city boomed during the New Deal and World War II, a new generation of black activists and their allies arose to challenge Jim Crow, find decent housing, and fight for economic survival. They used new forms of protest, including boycotts, union organizing, and sit-ins, and they formed interracial alliances with a growing number of white people, in Washington and around the country, who saw racial inequality in the nation’s capital as a stain on America’s reputation. This experimentation produced mixed results at the time, but the community activism and interracial organizing of the 1930s and 1940s helped lay the foundation for the postwar civil rights movement. Nonetheless, determined white resistance at the local and federal levels largely preserved segregation in the nation’s capital during the war years. In fights against employment discrimination, segregated public spaces, and inadequate housing, racial egalitarians often achieved symbolic or small-scale victories but ultimately failed to defeat Jim Crow. Despite the sweeping rhetoric about freedom, democracy, and the “American Way” that accompanied the U.S. war effort, World War II stalled racial progress in D.C.

Paul Bunyan and the “Frozen Logger”

2020 ◽  
pp. 180-240
Author(s):  
Michael Goldfield
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Wood Industry ◽  
National Office

Chapter 5 highlights the wood industry, one of the largest industries in the country. Most of the woodworkers were located in the South, and half of those workers were African-American. Woodworkers successfully organized in the Northwest and Canada, the other two centers of the industry. Despite a perceived willingness of southern woodworkers to unionize, this did not happen. The chapter attributes most of the problems to an incompetent, right-wing, racially backward leadership, which was installed by the CIO national office before World War II. The chapter also argues that the successful organization of southern woodworkers had the potential to radically transform the civil rights movement.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Women ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
World War ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Massive Resistance

Massive resistance to the civil rights movement has often been presented as sequestered in the South, limited to the decade between the Brown Decision and the Civil Rights Act, and attributed to the most vehement elected officials and the Citizens’ Councils. But that version ignores the long-standing work of white women who sustained racial segregation and nurtured both massive support for the Jim Crow order in the interwar period and who transformed support into massive resistance after World War II. Support for the segregated state existed among everyday people. Maintaining racial segregation was not solely or even primarily the work of elected officials. Its adherents sustained the system with quotidian work, and on the ground, it was often white women who shaped and sustained white supremacist politics.

Pruning Knife Busy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jackson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
American Film ◽  
World War ◽  
Film Censorship ◽  
Southern Film ◽  
American Film Industry

Chapter 7 addresses film censorship in the South, and places this history in the larger context of the American film industry as a whole. From early boxing films such as the Johnson-Jeffries fight of 1910, which led southern politicians to ban interracial boxing films (and, in some cases, all boxing films) to the prodigious work of individual southern censors including Lloyd T. Binford of Memphis and Evan R. Chesterman of the State of Virginia, this history reveals the embeddedness of Jim Crow ideology within all sorts of film institutions. In the years after World War II, when film censorship practices came under greater scrutiny and legal threat, the work of southern film censors largely petered out, anticipating some of the coming confrontations of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Power of Racial Rape Myths after World War II

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Rae Flood
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Women ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Male Body ◽  
World War ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Geographic Boundaries

This chapter reveals how African American men and their attorneys challenged assumptions about black criminality and forced urban authorities to confront these assumptions during the postwar years, when the civil rights movement expanded nationally. By World War II, instances of lynch mob violence had decreased significantly, but the specter of interracial sexual violence continued to govern trial proceedings, even outside the Jim Crow South. Many Americans continued to believe that black men were sexual predators and likely perpetrators of rape if accused, especially but not exclusively, by white women. Thus, these men specifically asserted that the trial system they faced in Chicago mirrored a Southern system of (in)justice that had not yet fully abandoned lynch-mob violence. Although they were not successful in gaining acquittals, their efforts expand current understandings of racial discrimination and re-imagine the geographic boundaries of the criminalized black male body.

4. Confronting change

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Charles Reagan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Black Leadership ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Major Player ◽  
The American South ◽  
The New Deal

‘Confronting change’ describes how the American South became a major player in the national mobilization for World War II. The war pushed the South far along the path of modernization. Democracy became a watchword during World War II, as the nation fought against fascism and emphasized that democratic values had to be affirmed by all as the reason for fighting. Ultimately, the war produced an assertive black leadership within the South, and the continued reform spirit of the New Deal led to aggressive campaigns for organized labor and for urban efforts to improve African American living conditions and opportunities. The rise of the civil rights movement was crucial to defining this period of American history.

Trouble in My Way

2019 ◽  
pp. 133-160
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
University President ◽  
State University ◽  
Campus Environment ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Jackson State University ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the strained history of Jackson State University during the aftermath of World War II and leading up to the modern civil rights movement. Located in the heart of Mississippi, Jackson State students carved out space to express their militancy as the war came to a close. However, they quickly felt that space collapse around them as segregationists tightened their grip on the Magnolia State as the burgeoning movement for black liberation challenged the oppressive traditions of the most socially and politically closed state in the country. Administrators such as Jackson State University president Jacob Reddix quickly fell in line with the expectations of his immediate supervisors and squared off against outspoken scholar-activists such as famed poet and novelist Margaret Walker. The standoff resulted in a campus environment fraught with tension yet still producing students and faculty determined to undermine Jim Crow.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-234
Author(s):  
Kurt Edward Kemper
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
College Athletics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medium Size ◽  
World War ◽  
Multiple Pressures ◽  
Economic Elites

Throughout much of the NCAA’s first half century, the organization maintained an uneasy collection of commercialized schools that pursued highly competitive athletics for publicity and profit; liberal arts colleges that saw college athletics as a component of their educational and leadership missions; and smaller and medium-size state schools that wanted to play athletics for competitive glory but lacked the size, resources, and finances of the big-time powers. Unable to balance those three interests, the NCAA largely ignored the concerns of the latter two while devoting itself to the service of commercialized athletics. This fraught arrangement finally came asunder in the years after World War II when multiple pressures from scandals, racial criticisms, and growing pressure for access to the NCAA Basketball Tournament finally forced concessions. The concessions made in the mid- to late-1950s, however, did not reshape the balance of power in the NCAA, as the organization remained wholly committed to serving the interests of big-time commercialized athletics. In this regard the challenges faced by the NCAA mirrored the larger social and cultural upheaval in the United States following World War II. The civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, and opposition to the war in Vietnam all challenged the authority of existing political and economic elites yet did not mark any fundamental shift in power in American life. The question, then, is not really how did the NCAA manage to survive but, rather, how did its critics ever hope to succeed?

The Age of Segregation, 1900–1950

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-152
Author(s):  
Donald G. Nieman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
World War ◽  
Civil Rights Organizations ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter argues that segregation generated organized opposition from African Americans and a small group of whites that challenged the system. Segregation was rigid, capricious, and designed to demonstrate white power. While it kept most blacks in menial positions, a small black middle class emerged that produced leaders who attacked Jim Crow. The organization leading the charge was the NAACP, which developed publicity, lobbying, and litigation campaigns. The effort gained steam in the 1930s, as a cadre of black lawyers challenged segregated education, the CIO and the Communist party championed civil rights, and the New Deal gave blacks a voice in federal policy. It further accelerated during World War II as the federal government challenged workplace discrimination, membership in civil rights organizations swelled, black veterans demanded their rights, and the Supreme Court became more aggressive on civil rights.

Quaker Brotherhood

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan W. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Interracial Relations ◽  
History Of

This is the first extensive study of the American Friends Service Committee's interracial activism in the first half of the twentieth century, filling a major gap in scholarship on the Quakers' race relations work from the AFSC's founding in 1917 to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the early 1950s. The book tracks the evolution of key AFSC projects, such as the Interracial Section and the American Interracial Peace Committee, that demonstrate the tentativeness of the Friends' activism in the 1920s, as well as efforts in the 1930s to make scholarly ideas and activist work more theologically relevant for Friends. Documenting the AFSC's efforts to help European and Japanese American refugees during World War II, the book shows that by 1950, Quakers in the AFSC had honed a distinctly Friendly approach to interracial relations that combined scholarly understandings of race with their religious views. Highlighting the complicated and sometimes controversial connections between Quakers and race during this era, the book uncovers important aspects of the history of Friends, pacifism, feminism, American religion, immigration, ethnicity, and the early roots of multiculturalism.

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