History Notes
1950 - 1970
Introduction:
- The 60's were a decade of popular protests.
= The civil rights movement in the U.S.
= Showed how effective mass protests could be.
- Consequently, less descrimination against African Americans.
- People doubted the government and what was true after the Vietnam war.
- Women demanded equal rights and an end to gender discrimination.
- Widespread opposition to the American war in Vietnam, protests by students and
by those who called for international peace.
- Other minority groups were involved in different protests…
= Native Americans spoke of “Red Power” and wanted “Native Americans”.
= Mexican Americans wanted bilingual and bicultural education and to be called
“chicanos”
= Gay rights were also protested.
- 1968 was the year of widespread protest in many countries.
= Domination of Western capitalism.
= Soviet control over Eastern Europe.
= U.S presence in Vietnam.
- Was led by a younger generation, especially students who had grown up after
WW11
= They felt alienated from authority and the values of their parents' generation.
- Pulling away from anticolonism. (european control)
- Lots of independent countries.
- Younger generations are called the baby boomers.
, End of Civil War and Amendments:
- The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments are known collectively as the Civil Rights
Amendments.
= Designed to ensure equality for recently emancipated slaves.
- The 13th amendment bannes slavery and all involuntary servitude, except in the
case of punishment for a crime.
- The 14th amendment defined a citizen as any person born in or naturalized in the
US and equal protection rights for all people.
= Overturning the Dred Scott V. Sanders Supreme Court ruling stating that Black
people were not eligible for citizenship.
- The 15th amendment prohibited governments from denying U.S citizens the right
to vote based on race, colour or past servitude.
US Civil Rights Movement - Context:
- Society in the south had been established on the coat-tails of slavery.
= The south were forced to give up slavery.
- Within 10yrs of the Civil War (1861-1865), which freed slaves, laws were passed
to seperate races.
- The CRM took place in two events…
= Cold War AND the Red Scare.
= The emergence of Independent Africa. (end to European colonization)
- In the 1960s African Americans made up roughly 10% of the population in the
US.
- In the 1950s and 1960s a CRM emerged using non-violent tactics to demand
equality and end segregation.
Legal Segregation:
- Gradually conservative whites regain political control in Southern States of the
US.
= Through democratic selections.
- They passed laws which took away the voting rights of African Americans and
enforced strict segregation laws.
= The people who can’t read are not allowed to vote.
- They were called the “Jim Crow” laws.
= Laws to help segregation.
- Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) was a Supreme Court ruling that segregation was
legal as long as amenities were separate but equal.
- White supremacist sociey (extremist), the Ku Klux Klan, used violence and terror
to make segregation laws were followed.