Desegregation In African American Era

1080 Words5 Pages
Since the arrival of slaves to Jamestown in the 17th century, one of the biggest issue’s American society has faced is equal rights for African Americans. From their arrival to modern times, African Americans have always been treated, in some way, inferiorly. However, they have advanced, socially and economically, throughout the years. One such advancement occurred as a result of U.S President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights. This committee, established by Executive Order 9808, paved the way to equal rights by influencing executive orders, Supreme Court decisions and the Presidencies of Truman and his two successors, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson. Prior to Truman’s committee, African Americans had gained essential rights already…show more content…
Based on the Committee suggestion, President Truman set a precedent for desegregation by issuing Executive Order 9980 and Executive Order 9981 which desegregated the federal work force and desegregated the armed forces, reversing a decision made by Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War. This principle of desegregation diffused rapidly and made another appearance this time in education in the form of Brown vs. Board of Education. Previously, the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy vs Ferguson allowed desegregation in public facilities as long as they followed the “separate but equal” doctrine. However due to the changing public view on scientific racism and acceptance of the idea of desegregation, the Supreme Court declared the decision made “in Plessy vs Ferguson [as a] rejected” ruling and proclaimed a movement of disassembling segregated schools (Document A). This movement of desegregation did not just die out with one accomplishment, it took root in the minds of African Americans and began to spread to other areas of public facilities, such as buses and the Browder vs. Gayle case. Formal desegregation itself ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which stated it was unlawful to discriminate based on…show more content…
It didn’t matter that the white Southerners opposed this basic right because the South was under martial law under the agreement made in the Civil War between the two factions. However, when Reconstruction ended and federal troops receded, African Americans slowly lost their rights again. By the time Truman’s Committee was conceived, even though African Americas were legally allowed to vote in the South, due to the 15th Amendment, in practicality it was another situation. The Committee concluded that African Americans could not vote in actuality due to a variety of reasons. Some reasons it listed include the fact that African Americans received threats of violence from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan; poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy tests; and lose of employment. This dropped the African American voting turnout from over sixty present to about ten. Alarmed by the conclusion of Truman’s Committee, activists and African American leaders began to campaign for African American ability to vote with restrictions similar to a Caucasian man. They succeeded in outlawing the ability for a person to “intimidate, threaten, coerce or attempt to intimidate, threaten or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the
Open Document