Setting Up the Voter Education Project, 1959–1962

Poll Power ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 29-56
Author(s):  
Evan Faulkenbury
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Education Project ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Willingness To Help ◽  
Do So

This chapter explains the origins of the VEP. Over four years, three very different sides came together to form the VEP: the Department of Justice, civil rights activists, and liberal philanthropists. After John F. Kennedy became President, the Department of Justice under his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, signalled a willingness to help African Americans vote. Civil rights activists worked with philanthropists like Stephen Currier to create a source of funds for widespread registration fieldwork. Working together, all parties sought tax-exemption for the project, and to do so, they kept the VEP idea discreet because they did not want to attract attention from segregationists in government.

Oregon’s K–12 Ethnic Studies Bill

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-195
Author(s):  
Shirley A. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
Racial And Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Protected Group ◽  
Social Minorities ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Racial Ethnic ◽  
Do So

In 2017, Oregon passed House Bill 2845 requiring Ethnic Studies curriculum in grades K–12. It was the first state in the nation to do so. The bill passed almost fifty years after the founding of the country’s first Ethnic Studies department. The passage of an Ethnic Studies bill in a state that once banned African Americans and removed Indigenous peoples from their land requires further examination. In addition, the bill mandates that Ethnic Studies curriculum in Oregon's schools includes “social minorities,” such as Jewish and LGBTQ+ populations which makes the bill even more remarkable. As such, it is conceivable for some observers, a watered-down version of its perceived original intent—one that focuses on racial and ethnic minorities. Similarly, one can draw analogies to the revision of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 when it included women as a protected group. Grounded in a socio-political history that otherwise would not have been included, this essay examines the productive and challenging aspect of HB 2845. Framing the bill so it includes racial, ethnic, and social minorities solved the problem of a host of bills that may not have passed on their own merit while simultaneously and ironically making it easier to pass similar bills.

West of Jim Crow

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn M. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
White Schools ◽  
Black Bodies

This book follows California’s history of segregation from statehood to the beginning of the long civil rights movement, arguing that the state innovated methods to control and contain African Americans and other people of color. While celebrated in popular discourse for its forward-thinking culture, politics, and science, California also pioneered new ways to keep citizenship white. Schools, streetcars, restaurants, theaters, parks, beaches, and pools were places of contestation where the presence of black bodies elicited forceful responses from segregationists. Black Californians employed innovative measures to dismantle segregation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they borrowed some tactics from race rebels in the South, others they improvised. West of Jim Crow uses California to highlight the significance of African American resistance to racial restrictions in places often deemed marginal to mainstream civil rights histories. Examining segregation in the state sheds light on the primacy of gender and sexuality in the minds of segregationists and the significance of black women, black bodies, and racial science, in the years preceding the modern civil rights struggle. California has much to teach us about the lives of African Americans who crossed the color line and the variety of tactics and strategies employed by freedom fighters across the United States.

Access to justice as a human right, organizational entitlement and precursor to diversity and inclusion

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 787-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quinetta Roberson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Organizational Policies ◽  
Corporate Leaders ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Policies And Practices

PurposeIn the wake of the death of George Floyd in the United States, many corporate leaders have released statements condemning racism and police brutality and committed their organizations to focus on diversity and inclusion. While such statements, intentions, and goals are laudable, they evade the phenomenon at the crux of the current social movement: access to justice.Design/methodology/approachThis essay draws upon theory and research across a variety of disciplines to examine the accessibility of justice for African Americans in society and in work organizations.FindingsAs corporate leaders have made statements decrying racism and police brutality and offered their support to civil rights groups and organizations fighting for racial justice, there is a need for that same level of scrutiny and support within their own organizations. As a precursor to diversity and inclusion initiatives, corporate leaders need to take actions to ensure the fairness of outcomes, policies and practices, and treatment by others for African Americans within their organizations.Practical implicationsStrategies for reviewing and revising organizational policies and practices to preserve fairness in the work experiences of African Americans and for creating and maintaining cultures of fairness are offered.Originality/valueThe author integrates historical documents, research, opinion, and literary devices to understand the meaning and practice of justice in society and organizations.

THE INFLUENCE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS ON CONGRESS

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135
Author(s):  
Charles Tien ◽  
Dena Levy
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Substantive Representation ◽  
House Floor ◽  
Long Term Impact ◽  
Over Time

AbstractIn this paper we approach, from a different angle than previous research, the question of whether gains in descriptive representation for African Americans result in losses in substantive representation. By looking at how the presence of African Americans has changed Congress over time, we assess the long-term impact of electing more African Americans to Congress on substantive representation. Specifically, we content analyze House floor debates on civil rights legislation, from 1957 to 1991, and find that Black members have influenced how White members talk about civil rights.

Race

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Business Regulation ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Status

This chapter examines the status quo before the start of the civil rights realignment, showing that civil rights was simply not viewed as part of the standard “liberal program” as of the early 1930s. Although African Americans were vocal in attacking Franklin D. Roosevelt's weak civil rights record, they were largely alone. When whites on the left pushed Roosevelt to be a more forthright liberal or progressive, they criticized him for inadequate support for labor, weak business regulation, and insufficient recovery spending—but not for his failure to back civil rights. At this early stage, the “enemies” of a liberal Democratic Party generally were not identified with the South but instead were probusiness Democrats from the Northeast, associated with Al Smith of New York. Economic questions were the key battleground in the eyes of white liberals, and civil rights did not figure in these debates.

A Changing Workforce

2020 ◽  
pp. 210-236
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Delton
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
National Association ◽  
Historically White ◽  
Right To Work ◽  
Workplace Rights ◽  
National Association Of Manufacturers

This chapter examines the overlap between African Americans' demands for jobs and conservatives' push for “right to work” laws. While compulsory union dues were very different from unions' exclusion of blacks, both movements targeted historically white unions and shared a language of workplace “rights.” Conservative “right to work” activists adopted the tactics of the civil rights movement and aligned themselves with blacks against exclusionary unions. Although this strategy failed to attract African Americans, it called attention to unions' historic and ongoing racism in a way that eventually divided the labor–liberal coalition. This dynamic is key to understanding the National Association of Manufacturers' complicated support for civil rights, equal opportunity, and affirmative action.

American Dream Deferred

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-260
Author(s):  
P. James Paligutan
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Coast Guard ◽  
Traditional Use ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Migratory Movement ◽  
Naval Officers ◽  
The U.S

This article examines a unique migratory movement of Filipinos to America: Filipino nationals recruited by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard between 1952 and 1970. Such recruits were seen as a solution to a mounting labor problem stemming from the Navy’s traditional use of minorities to fulfill duties as servants for naval officers. With African Americans' demands for equal opportunity reaching a crescendo during the Civil Rights era, the U.S. Navy looked to its former colony to replenish its supply of dark-skinned servants. Despite expectations of docility, however, such Filipino sailors were able to forge a culture of resistance manifested through non-confrontational acts of defiance, protest through official channels, and labor stoppage. Such actions ultimately resulted in the reversal of naval policy that relegated Filipinos to servile labor.

Racial Debts, Individual Slights, and Sleights of Hand in Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-207
Author(s):  
Mary A. Knighton
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Film Version ◽  
Clarence Brown ◽  
Black Man ◽  
Cover Art ◽  
Do So

William Faulkner's novel Intruder in the Dust (1948) thematizes racial debt as a form of racial reparations. Racial debt and its repayment emerge as the white boy Chick Mallison's obsession with defining and ridding himself of a debt he owes Lucas Beauchamp, a black man. When a lynch mob threatens Lucas, it becomes Chick's responsibility to save his life. Guided by Lucas in how to do so, Chick learns about cross-racial family ties and the collective profits and debts of history. Contemporary civil rights and anti-lynching movements, the actual lynching of Ellwood Higginbotham, as well as the shooting of the film version of Intruder in Faulkner's own Oxford, Mississippi in 1949 amplify the novel's debt and reparations theme. Despite publisher and studio warnings, Faulkner and director Clarence Brown render lynching central to Intruder's story while Kauffer's cover art encodes artists' resistance to censorship and marketing demands.

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