Kelvin Baided

4/3/10
Period 1
1939-1954

1941-March on Washington In the summer of 1941 in the war defense industries began to
boom in US. While hundreds of white people where being hired black people where not hired
even if they were skilled. The black leaders called a meeting in Chicago and planning to
march on the White House until the President opened jobs for them. 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.

1941-1945 World War ll Most of the black soldiers who enlisted in the armed services
during WW 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.

1944-Smith v. Allright 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.

1946-Morgan v. Virginia In the spring of 1946, Irene Morgan, a black woman, boarded a bus
in Virginia to go to Baltimore, Maryland. She was ordered to sit in the back of the bus, as
Virginia state law required. She objected, saying that since the bus was an interstate bus, the
Virginia law did not apply. Morgan was arrested and fined ten dollars. Thurgood Marshall and
the NAACP took on the case. They argued that since an 1877 Supreme Court decision ruled
that it was illegal for a state to forbid segregation, then it was likewise illegal for a state to
require it.

1947-Jackie Robinson 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.

1947-1948 Truman supports Civil Rights 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.

1954-Brown v. Board of Education 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.