The Second Voter Education Project, 1965–1969

Poll Power ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 90-109
Author(s):  
Evan Faulkenbury
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Education Project ◽  
Black Candidates ◽  
The American South

This chapter chronicles the VEP’s impact on black southerners and politics after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Under the leadership of Vernon Jordan, the VEP went beyond voter registration and started programs to educate African Americans about the political process. The VEP also started hosting conferences designed to swell the number of black candidates running for various political offices across the South. During this period, not only did the VEP increase the number of black southern voters, it also grew black political power in a variety of ways at local and state levels across the American South.

The Voter Education Project, 1962–1964

Poll Power ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 57-89
Author(s):  
Evan Faulkenbury
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American South ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Voting Power ◽  
Education Project ◽  
Grassroots Movements ◽  
The American South

This chapter explores how the VEP empowered 129 separate African American voter campaigns during this period, spending over a million dollars, and registering 688,000 black southerners. This chapter argues that this surge of black voting power paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Wiley Branton led the VEP during this period, and their support, with philanthropic backing, energized thousands of black civil rights activists across the American South. This chapter chronicles how VEP money and support empowered grassroots movements across the South, and how the civil rights movement relied on the VEP.

Slavery and Class in the American South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Harriet Jacobs ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
The American South ◽  
Work Family

In this study of an entire generation of slave narrators, more than sixty mid-nineteenth-century narratives reveal how work, family, skills, and connections made for social and economic differences among the enslaved of the South. Slavery and Class in the American South explains why social and economic distinctions developed and how they functioned among the enslaved. Andrews also reveals how class awareness shaped the views and values of some of the most celebrated African Americans of the nineteenth century. Slave narrators discerned class-based reasons for violence between “impudent,” “gentleman,” and “lady” slaves and their resentful “mean masters.” Status and class played key roles in the lives and liberation of the most celebrated fugitives from US slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and William and Ellen Craft. By examining the lives of the most- and least-acclaimed heroes and heroines of the African American slave narrative, Andrews shows how the dividing edge of social class cut two ways, sometimes separating upper and lower strata of slaves to their enslavers’ advantage, but at other times fueling convictions among even the most privileged of the enslaved that they deserved nothing less than complete freedom.

Trust and Confidence in Police Officers and the Institution of Policing: The Views of African Americans in the American South

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 808-838
Author(s):  
Daniel K. Pryce ◽  
Joselyne L. Chenane
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
American South ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between the police and African Americans has been beset by a lack of trust for decades. Improving this relationship is important to scholars, practitioners, and citizens; as a result, we examine in this study African Americans’ trust and confidence in the police. Using trust questions found in the literature, we interviewed 77 African Americans in Durham, NC, to assess their views about the police. We found that for the police to earn the trust of African Americans, the police should treat African Americans equitably, invest in community policing, and respect African Americans. Although some respondents do not believe that their relationship with the police could be repaired, this is a small percentage of respondents, less than 5%.

The Gospel of the Sit-In

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Gershenhorn
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

During the 1960s, Austin lent his talents and his newspaper in support of the direct action movement in Durham and throughout the state. Unlike many other black leaders in the city, he immediately and enthusiastically embraced an early sit-in in Durham that began in 1957, three years before the more celebrated Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins. He also aided a boycott of white retail businesses that refused to hire black workers by publishing the names of those businesses in the Carolina Times. This strategy was quite effective in forcing white businesses to hire African Americans. Austin’s efforts and those of countless civil rights activists led to major freedom struggle successes with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

scholarly journals Jim Crow Downunder? African American Encounters with White Australia, 1942––1945

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Brawley ◽  
Chris Dixon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
White Americans ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The American South ◽  
The U.S

Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans——and American culture——around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans did encounter racism and discrimination——practices often encouraged by the white Americans who were also stationed in Australia during the war——there is compelling evidence that their experiences were not always negative. Indeed, for many black Americans, Australians' apparent open-mindedness and racial views of white Britons and others with whom African Americans came into contact during the war. Making use of U.S. Army censors' reports and paying attention to black Americans' views of their experiences in Australia, this article not only casts light on an aspect of American-Australian relations that has hitherto recieved scant scholarly attention and reveals something about the African American experience, but also offers insights into race relations within the U.S. armed forces.

Nixon, the NAACP, and the Courts, 1924–1934

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Ku Klux Klan ◽  
Social Climate ◽  
Local State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
The South ◽  
Legal Precedent

This chapter recounts how Nixon helped lay the foundation for Black voting rights in the South as the central plaintiff in two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: Nixon v. Herndon (1927) and Nixon v. Condon (1932), and the little-discussed case of Nixon v. McCann (1934), Nixon's third attempt to dismantle the all-white Democratic primary. Nixon, along with the NAACP, helped set legal precedent that ultimately led to the dismantling of all-white primaries throughout the entire South. The political and social climate at the local, state, and national levels during the 1920s, as well as the 1923 Texas law that barred African Americans from voting in the Democratic primaries, compelled Nixon and the NAACP to take action. As these changes were brewing in the South, many—such as the Ku Klux Klan—would come to see them as a threat.

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