African American History 1903 - 1954

 

The Souls of Black Folk 1903 Title page from book

W.E.B. Du Bois published THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, a collection of essays, in 1903. It was immediately acclaimed as an extraordinary work of literature. THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK explored a variety of subjects of black life, from the history of the Freedmen's Bureau and black music to Du Bois' experiences teaching in rural Georgia and Tennessee. His brief "Forethought" includes one of his most famous lines: "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line."

 

The Niagara Movement  1905 - 10 Niagara Movement members

In 1905, W.E.B. Du Bois, a professor at Atlanta University, exasperated by Booker T. Washington's continued conciliatory policies towards whites and his enormous power within the black community, called for a meeting of Washington's critics of at Niagara Falls, New York. The purpose of the meeting was to form an organization that would offer a militant alternative to Washington. Du Bois called his organization the Niagara Movement, named after the falls where the first meeting was held. The group was representative of some of the intellectual elite of the African-American community. The meeting had originally been planned to take place on the American side of the falls, but the delegates were denied accommodations by racially prejudiced hotel managers.

 

Atlanta Race Riot 1906  Atlanta newspaper headline

In 1902, a historian wrote: "There has never been a race riot in Atlanta. The white man and the negro have lived together in this city more peacefully and in better spirit than in any other city, in either the North or South." For many whites as well as black, Atlanta seemed to be the least likely place for a race riot at the turn of the century. Atlanta was a model city of the new South. Its economy was booming. Black business were springing up. There were jobs for working men and women. At the center of its cultural life were the six black colleges. The colleges, and the churches, provided much of the intellectual leadership for the black community.

 

NAACP Founded 1909 

In 1909, the country was still stunned from a race riot the year before in Springfield, Illinois, the city in which Lincoln had once lived. Eight blacks were killed and dozens injured as mobs of whites rampaged through the black community destroying homes, property, and businesses, forcing thousands to flee. After the riot, an Englishman by the name of William English Walling described how race prejudice was rampant in the North and called for "a powerful body of citizens to come to their aid." Walling received a letter from Mary White Ovington, a social worker who in 1904 had written a study on racial discrimination. In 1909 Walling and Ovington called a conference to which they invited a number of prominent civil-rights activists, black and white.

 

The Crisis Established 1910  Office of THE CRISIS

For the first twenty years of its existence, THE CRISIS, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was almost synonymous with W.E.B. Du Bois. According to Mary White Ovington, a founder of the NAACP, the name of the magazine was the result of a conversation she had had with another founder, William English Walling. "We were," she wrote, "having an informal talk regarding the new magazine. We touched the subject of poetry. There is a poem of Lowell's,' I said, 'that means more to me today than any other poem in the world -- The Present Crisis.' Mr. Walling looked up. 'The Crisis,' he said. 'There's the name for your magazine, THE CRISIS.'"

 

Segregation in the Government 1913  President Wilson at Cabinet meeting

In 1912 Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate for president, promised fairness and justice for blacks if elected. In a letter to a black church official, Wilson wrote, "Should I become President of the United States they may count upon me for absolute fair dealing for everything by which I could assist in advancing their interests of the race." But after the election, Wilson changed his tune. He dismissed 15 out of 17 black supervisors who had been previously appointed to federal jobs and replaced them with whites.

 

The Birth of a Nation 1915 Scene from "The Clansman"

On the evening of March 21, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson attended a special screening at the White House of THE BIRTH OF A NATION, a film directed by D.W. Griffith and based on THE CLANSMAN, a novel written by Wilson's good friend Thomas Dixon. The film presented a distorted portrait of the South after the Civil War, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan and denigrating blacks. It falsified the period of Reconstruction by presenting blacks as dominating Southern whites (almost all of whom are noble in the film) and sexually forcing themselves upon white women.

 

U.S. in WWI  1917 - 1918  Black soldiers marching

In 1917, Congress declared war on Germany. The black community supported the war, but with serious reservations; black soldiers, they knew, would suffer discrimination in a Jim Crow army. In the summer of 1917, soldiers of the all-black Third Battalion, 24th infantry, were assigned to Fort Logan outside of Houston, Texas. Houston had the largest black community in the state of Texas at the time, with a police force that was particularly aggressive towards black people.

 

Red Summer 1919

The Red Summer refers to the summer and fall of 1919, in which race riots exploded in a number of cities in both the North and South. The three most violent episodes occurred in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas. On the afternoon of July 27, 1919, a stone-throwing melee between blacks and whites began after a black youth mistakenly swam into territory claimed by whites off the 29th Street beach in Chicago. Amidst the mayhem, Eugene Williams, a black youth, drowned. When a white police officer refused to arrest the white men involved in the death, and instead arrested a black man, racial tensions escalated. Fighting broke out between gangs and mobs of both races.

 

Tulsa Riot 1921  Newspaper headline

By 1921, Tulsa was booming thanks to the discovery of oil, and many African Americans had also prospered. Most black people lived in the racially segregated "Greenwood" section of the city, which contained stores, shops, hotels, banks, newspapers, schools, theaters, and restaurants. Greenwood had several wealthy black entrepreneurs and was sometimes called the "Black Wall Street" of America. By 1921, membership in the Ku Klux Klan was rapidly spreading throughout America and an active chapter had been formed in Tulsa. The riot was triggered over a Memorial Day weekend by a report in two white newspapers that a black youth had tried to rape -- or at least assault -- a young white woman elevator operator.

 

Harlem Renaissance  1917 - 35   Black painter

The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. Many had come from the South, fleeing its oppressive caste system in order to find a place where they could freely express their talents.

 

Moore V. Dempsey  1923  Black men in field

The case known as Moore v. Dempsey was a major legal victory for the NAACP in 1923. The case involved twelve black farmers in Arkansas who were sentenced to death for allegedly killing whites during a riot. Five white men had been killed during the Elaine, Arkansas, riot of 1919, some probably shot accidentally by other whites. Over 700 blacks had been arrested, sixty-seven sent to prison, and twelve farmers tried by an all-white jury for the murder of whites. During the trial a mob surrounded the court building, shouting that if the accused black men were not sentenced to death, the mob would lynch them. Prisoners were tortured to confess or testify against others.
 

Fisk Protest  1925 - 1927  Fisk University building

At the end of May in 1925, a deeply troubled W.E.B. Du Bois boarded a train to visit Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, his alma mater. He had been disturbed by reports that Fayette McKenzie, the autocratic white president of the university, had instituted a dictatorial rule on campus. Magazines were censored, dating and dancing forbidden, and conversations between male and female students restricted. McKenzie had been seeking a million-dollar endowment from Northern foundations that were sympathetic to his request -- provided that McKenzie suppress any militancy on campus. The foundation wanted black schools to teach their students to accommodate to Jim Crow as Booker T. Washington had preached, and not to challenge it, as Du Bois was suggesting. On June 2, with the president of the university, the trustees, students, and alumni packing the chapel, Du Bois attacked McKenzie.
 

Great Depression 1929 - 1939  Employment agency sign

In 1929, the Great Depression devastated the United States. Hard times came to people throughout the country, especially rural blacks. Cotton prices plunged from eighteen to six cents a pound. Two thirds of some two million black farmers earned nothing or went into debt. Hundreds of thousands of sharecroppers left the land for the cities, leaving behind abandoned fields and homes. Even "Negro jobs" -- jobs traditionally held by blacks, such as busboys, elevator operators, garbage men, porters, maids, and cooks -- were sought by desperate unemployed whites. In Atlanta, Georgia, a Klan-like group called the Black Shirts paraded carrying signs that read, "No jobs for niggers until every white man has a job." In other cities, people shouted "Niggers back to the cotton fields. City jobs are for white men."
 

 

Scottsboro Case 1931  Scottsboro boys photo

During the 1930s, much of the world's attention was riveted on the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black youths falsely charged with raping two white women in Alabama. This case, more than any other event in the South during the 1930s, revealed the barbarous treatment of blacks. The case began on March 25, 1931, when a number of white and black youths were riding on a freight train, traveling to see if they could find work. A fight broke out between a group of black and white hobos, and the whites were thrown off the train. They reported the incident to a stationmaster, who wired ahead for officials to stop the train at a town called Paint Rock. Dozens of armed men rounded up nine black youths and took them to jail. They were about to be charged with assault when two white women, dressed in boys clothing, were discovered hiding on the train. Although there was no evidence connecting the youth to the women, the nine youths were charged with raping the women.

 

Gaines V. Canada 1938  The Hughes Court

In the mid 1930s, Charles Hamilton Houston, one of the few African Americans to graduate from Harvard Law School, joined the NAACP to head its legal attack on Jim Crow. As the United States Supreme Court began to make decisions favorable to black rights regarding criminal procedures, Houston felt the time was right to challenge Jim Crow in other areas. He understood that judges would not overturn previous constitutional interpretations unless absolutely necessary. If he confronted the "separate but equal" doctrine laid down in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the Court would most likely reject the challenge. But if Houston insisted that Plessy be enforced -- that is, if the NAACP sued a state to make its schools for black children equal to those for whites -- which Plessy did require -- then he could undermine segregation.

 

Proposed march on Washington 1941  Rally to promote march

In the summer of 1941, as war raged in Europe, defense industries began to boom in the United States. But while hundreds of thousands of whites found jobs in the defense industries, only a few thousand blacks were hired -- and most of them were porters and janitors. Over fifty percent of defense employers said they would not hire black workers no matter how skilled they were. Black leaders called a meeting in Chicago and the suggestion was made that blacks should march on the White House until the President opened up jobs for blacks. A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, seized upon the suggestion and called for a massive demonstration of blacks in the nation's capital on July 1.

 

U.S. in WWII 1941 - 1945  Black soldier in combat

Most of the black soldiers who enlisted in the armed services during World War II knew that they would serve in segregated units. The Marines and the Army Air Corps (the predecessor to the Air Force) refused to accept blacks until later in the war. The navy accepted them only as mess men. Most men in the army were used in non-combat military jobs. But some did get a chance to serve at the front lines. The Tuskegee Airmen won glory for providing fighter escorts for bombers over Germany. They never lost a single plane they protected. The 761st tank battalion saw action in Europe. For other soldiers, the war enabled them, through military service or employment, to discover the large cities of the North. Many encountered unimagined experiences for the first time.

 

Smith V. Allright  1944   Black voters registering

In 1870, the states ratified the 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, explicitly granting the right to vote to African Americans. It was the last of three amendments passed during Reconstruction to insure black rights. Slavery had been ended by the 13th amendment and citizenship for blacks had been established by the 14th. The white South, however, was determined to limit, if not deprive, African Americans of their right to vote. These devices, from the poll tax to physical violence, were only partially successful. One tactic white Southerners devised to rob blacks of the franchise was the white primary. Since the South was totally under the political control of the Democratic Party, this meant that the only really important election was the primary.

 

Jackie Robinson 1947  Jackie Robinson in dugout

In 1947, a major breakthrough of the color line in sports occurred when Jackie Robinson, a 28-year-old African-American ballplayer and war veteran, was brought up from the minor leagues to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The nation was divided at first. Many whites and nearly all blacks applauded the move and said it was long overdue. But a large number of whites, including many major league baseball players, objected to his presence. Although most of the press supported Robinson, some newspapers were opposed.

 

Truman supports Civil Rights 1947 - 1948  President Truman at NAACP meeting

By 1947, as the Cold War with the Soviet Union intensified and the nation was becoming increasingly anti-Communist and intolerant, Harry Truman astonished everyone by suddenly supporting civil rights. Truman had been outraged at the murder and assaults on dozens of black veterans of World War II. Although he once held strong racial biases -- he had used the word "nigger" freely in his speech -- in 1947 he decided to make civil rights a national issue. He authorized a fifteen-man committee on Civil Rights to recommend new legislation to protect people from discrimination. Speaking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Truman became the first president of the United States to address the NAACP. He promised African Americans that the federal government would act now to end discrimination, violence, and race prejudice in American life.

 

Brown V. Board of Education 1958  Mother and daughter on the steps of the Supreme Court

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says that no state may deny equal protection of the laws to any person within its jurisdiction. The 1954 decision declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal. Following a series of Supreme Court cases argued between 1938 and 1950 that chipped away at legalized segregation, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reversed an earlier Supreme Court ruling (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) that permitted "separate but equal" public facilities. The 1954 decision was limited to the public schools, but it was believed to imply that segregation was not permissible in other public facilities.