Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Act of 1964
Considering the topic 'Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Act of 1964 Essay' we can say that the main aims of the Civil Rights movement in the classic ‘Montgomery to Memphis’ period of 1955-1968 were to establish laws and public institutions in an attempt to end de facto and de jure segregation and to eventually remove all racial disparities. The extent of success in achieving these aims has recently come under scrutiny, and the interpretations on this issue differ greatly among different historians. The argument of Charles Hamilton holds a more positive view, choosing to focus on the legal achievements of the Civil Rights movement, such as the Voting Rights Act, and applauding the strategy of a de jure attack on segregation. There is also some validity in the argument of Timothy Minchin, who denies the fact that the Civil Rights movement ended in 1968, and despite the existence of successful protests between 1953-1968, this period should be judged as the beginning, not the end of the Civil Rights movement, and whilst he does not excuse the Civil Rights movement for its failings, he does not wholly denounce or blame the movement for these problems. Wayne Santoro diverges from conventional means of judging the extent of success by focusing his attention on de facto segregation through the views of the African American community obtained through surveys that generally asked them if they thought that the Civil Rights Movement had reduced racial discrimination. Whilst his results show a slight majority in favor of the idea of a successful movement across all black social strata, Santoro concludes overall that the achievements of the Civil Rights movement disproportionately benefitted select members of the African American community over others.
Hamilton divides the Civil Rights movement into two main phases. The aims of the former were to end overtly racist laws, practices, and devices, and to establish laws that upheld the rights of African Americans outlined in the Constitution in the Fifteenth Amendment. The aims of the latter were to address de facto segregation and public discrimination. In Hamilton’s view, while the second phase is yet to be fulfilled, the first and most important phase was ‘unambiguously successful’ in achieving its aims. In achieving the first phase, Hamilton emphasizes the role of the federal government, and the combined legislative, executive, and judicial features of the US government, all of which are answerable to the US Constitution, Congress, the President and the Federal Courts. Hamilton examines its help in securing fundamental voting rights for African Americans, specifically by disallowing certain racist devices that resisted the Black vote, such as the Grandfather Clause, a voter registration test that relied on your grandfather’s ability to vote, thereby excluding most African Americans with slave ancestry. Additionally, there were mandatory literary tests were also often administered unfairly to further deny the Black vote. Hamilton argues that these racist practices were ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and of 1960, which forced the states to move towards, or at the very least maintain the appearance of, a color-blind voter registration system. It was the denouncement of these more explicitly racist laws as being unconstitutional that finally enforced the 15th Amendment of 1870, which gave African Americans the right to vote in name only and was frequently undermined by other contradictory laws, such as the Williams v. Mississippi case of 1898, where Black voting rights were directly endangered.
Hamilton also emphasizes the role of the courts in helping the Civil Rights movement to pass Civil Rights laws. It is indisputable that without the courts, the Civil Rights movement would have lost the sense of legitimacy that preserved its reputation, especially in the minds of the White Liberals and the multiple companies that supported or donated generously to Civil Rights organizations and causes, such as General Motors, Burger King, Anheuser-Busch, and Coca-Cola, who spent over $14 million on minority vendors.
This also helped preserve the Civil Rights narrative in other ways, since King and other Civil Rights leaders wanted to maintain the image of upholding the American status quo. This was helped by the mainly Christian protestors, King’s Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the growing presence of liberal Whites in support of the movement, and having the law (specifically the Constitution) on their side. This alliance with the Congress and federal judges, Hamilton argues, was just as important as the local protests and demonstrations at a local level.
There are serious grounds for criticism in Hamilton’s argument. He fails, unlike Minchin, to call attention to the less successful Civil Rights Acts that were passed in this period, for example, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, intended to reduce residential racial segregation. However, the impact of the Fair Housing Act remained largely symbolic after 1968, especially with the continued existence of the Black ghetto, which only grew in size and abundance as white people fled to fast-growing suburban communities. Furthermore, throughout Hamilton’s essay, he insists upon allyship between the federal government and the Civil Rights organizations, however, the evidence does not point to an amicable relationship between the two in the long term, for instance, Historian Adam Fairclough points to the purposefully vague wording of Brown v. Board of Education as contributing to ‘subterfuges and delays’ that damaged the Civil Rights movement’s cause. This vague wording also halted the spreading influence and acceptance of the court’s ruling in America. However, in other respects, the Supreme Court proved useful, through the upholding of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped to prohibit racial discrimination while in public places, such as schools, workplaces, and other public facilities. This also prevented the Civil Rights Act from becoming purely symbolic, like other unsupported legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which, despite its establishment of the US Commission on Civil Rights and the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, lacked substantial enforcement mechanisms.
It is also worth mentioning that Hamilton, unlike Santoro, dismisses the unfinished battle of de facto segregation as the less important secondary goal of the Civil Rights Movement, which neglects the fact that judicial pronouncements had little impact when not paired with the changing attitudes of the white populace. Indeed, after the Supreme Court passed Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and declared school segregation to be unconstitutional, efforts to integrate Little Rock Central High School were met with a considerably aggressive white mob and were only eventually subdued by Eisenhower’s Presidential intervention through the Arkansas National Guard. Furthermore, as stated by fellow historian William Chafe, the battle for legal rights alone secured equality of opportunity, not equality of result, therefore the success of these measures was limited and short-term. There is also a limitation in the period that the essay was written in, as it was published in 1986. Perhaps Hamilton’s more optimistic outlook of the successes of the attack on de jure segregation would have been challenged by statistics produced after the publication of his essay, such as the fact that 4.9% of Congress was African Americans in 1991, or that from 1989-93, President H.W. Bush only appointed one African American cabinet member.
On the other hand, this source is not altogether invalid. Hamilton has a rich background of research on the political and legal side of the Civil Rights movement, even having co-authored a book with Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, a prominent member of the more radical Black Nationalist movement, which seems to give him a better reputation, and also shows that he might not be quite as optimistic about the Civil Rights movement as this essay depicts.
Overall, Hamilton provides the least convincing argument because although Hamilton’s deep analysis of the role of the federal government and courts deserves appreciation, the lack of focus on the highly significant economic aspect of Black lives distorts the argument. Besides, since the essay does not analyze the movement in breadth, it is not possible to analyze any successful or unsuccessful changes over time, resulting in a somewhat static assessment of the success of the Civil Rights Movement.
A different perspective is presented by Minchin, who measures the extent of success of the Civil Rights movement against the widely accepted criteria, but through the lens of a ‘long Civil Rights movement’, that judges the period of 1955-1968 as the beginning of what Black Power Historian Peniel E. Joseph deemed a “Black freedom struggle”. Minchin argues that when the ‘golden age’ of the movement ended abruptly in 1968 with the assassination of Martin Luther King, the remaining Civil Rights organizations and groups were bequeathed with the unfulfilled goals of eventually resolving economic inequality and other forms of de facto segregation.
Minchin acknowledges the successes of the Civil Rights movement and that the fight against legal segregation had been initially successful, especially in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, both of which drastically improved Black social rights and voting registration rights in the short term. However, these efforts either did not induce any ‘concrete’ long-term reduction to de facto discrimination or it transmuted what was previously de jure discrimination to de facto discrimination. For example, after school segregation was outlawed by Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent supportive policies, many white parents withdrew their children from public schools as an act of resistance, which led certain schools to become resegregated. In 1977, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported that 'most black children in America attend predominantly minority schools that are intensely segregated'. Moreover, the personal racism of the average American did not dramatically improve in this period. For example, the Ku Klux Klan continued to gain support and influence post-1968, with 9.8% of respondents having a favorable attitude towards the Klan in 1979. All this shows that the fight against de jure discrimination was limited if not paired with a simultaneous fight against de facto discrimination, directly opposing Hamilton’s view that the de facto struggle was secondary.
Minchin also analyses the failure of the strategies of the Civil Rights movement in this period in contributing to the failure to attain economic equality. Minchin labels notable Civil Rights groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the former Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) as being ‘victims of their own success’. In Minchin’s view, the more dramatic direct action tactics they used such as demonstrating and protesting worked well when confronting de jure segregation, which could be symbolically ended, with the Civil Rights activists all rallied against the banning or the passage of the law as a common enemy. However, Minchin observes that this did not, and could not be sustained with economic disenfranchisement, which quickly became the principal focus of the remaining Civil Rights groups. This is exemplified in the case of the Chicago Freedom Movement, launched in 1965, which led to demonstrations against segregation in education and housing as well as employment discrimination, and led to the largely symbolic Fair Housing Act. The problems of unemployment and poverty were rooted deeply into American society, both in terms of the laws and the peoples’ outlook, and depended on multiple factors, some of which, like poor education or lack of skills, could not be easily undone. This shows that the Civil Rights movement was unsuccessful in its strategy in pursuing economic equality, but does not put the inaction of Civil Rights leaders as the root cause.
Minchin goes on to evaluate the period immediately before and the aftermath of King’s death, where the quest for economic equality became the main focus of the remaining civil rights groups and organizations after the period of 1954-1968 yielded poor results. King realized this when the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 failed in its principal aim in securing an economic Bill of rights, but his life was cut short before there were any further attempts to improve the situation.
After King’s death, other Civil Rights affiliated groups took up this mantle. The Black Panthers, who cited the abolishment of economic exploitation as the prerequisite of social equality, funded initiatives such as the Free Breakfast for Children Program and ran free medical clinics to alleviate the dire economic situation of many Northern African Americans. Whilst Minchin recognizes this, he also acknowledges that there were good short-term efforts to improve the economic situation. Jesse Jackson led some of the more effective efforts in this period including the economically oriented Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) in 1971 which targeted racist firms that didn’t hire and promote African Americans with threats of boycotts. Additionally, this gave Jackson a stronger foothold in the Presidential race in 1984. In this way, Minchin gives a more balanced view of efforts to improve black economic equality, whilst concluding that they were minimally successful.
However, these efforts were to be in vain. Despite the well-publicized progress that some African Americans had made, who understood themselves to be a new Black upper-middle class, the prospect of gaining economic equality was still bleak. As shown in Figure 1, the unemployment rate of African Americans remains consistently higher than their white counterparts from 1950 to 2015, with peak Black unemployment being 20% in 1982, around the time of the economic crisis. The unemployment rate is higher in 2015 compared to that of 1950. Of the diminished number of black employees, there was still a significant racial income gap. In 1954, the black median family income was $17,655. By 1964, the year of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, African American median family income had increased to $24,322[16]. All of this contributes to the conclusion that the battle for economic justice was far from won in and beyond 1968.
Minchin’s argument leaves little room for critique or dissent; However, there are problems generated by Minchin’s perspective. As Adam Fairclough states, the over-broadening of historical perspectives of the Civil Rights Movement can risk turning history into “a homogenized mush, without any sharp breaks or transformations”. As some of the surveys Santoro uses are relatively modern, with the latest survey being conducted in 2000, the risk of the participants becoming more detached from this crucial period, both in terms of memory and in the impact of the achievements of the movement. Another limitation of this particular article is the lack of focus on the period of 1954-1968, perhaps distorting the perspectives given.
He acknowledges that an overemphasis on the successful legislation (which disproportionately affected the South more than the North) will restrict the judgment made by most historians, which is found to be accurate in the case of Hamilton. However, the essay does not acknowledge the landmark successes of Congress and the Supreme Court. I appreciate Minchin's focus on the Civil Rights movement’s general neglect of the issues faced by Northern African Americans, which included poverty and housing problems, without succumbing to a wholly negative outlook.
As a Historian, Minchin is substantially reputable and focuses on a wide range of aspects of the Civil Rights movement including Black economic and labor rights. His perspective on the success of the movement appears to be balanced and even, so it is worth concluding that his argument is the most valid.
Santoro uses five surveys of Black views on the movement’s success conducted between 1968 and 2000 to substantiate his claim that success was inconsistently limited and unevenly distributed in the long term.
Although the opposite view tends to be emphasized by most historians, Santoro calls some attention to the generally positive feedback that the Civil Rights Movement received in this survey in 1968. He shows that 58% of participants reported success in reducing racial discrimination in the last 10-15 years, which indicates a general feeling of satisfaction among most Black people at the time.
However, Santoro also notes the small gap between those who perceived success (58%) and those who saw failure (42%), which seems to indicate that the majority was not a decisive one and that there were a considerable number of dissatisfied African Americans at this time.
According to Santoro, the failure of the Civil Rights Movement to properly address the economic plight of many Northern African Americans is directly reflected in their responses to the examined surveys. Those in a better socioeconomic position, like having a household income of more than $2,000 were far more likely to identify the movement overall, with the percentage of success acknowledgment rising from 48.1% to 58% in this case, following the trend of the rest of the data. This is supported by the growing amount of scholarship dedicated to the pressing issue of African American economic rights, without which many of the landmark successes of the golden period of 1955-1968 had a limited impact on many African Americans. As Louisiana, Civil Rights activist David Johnson put it, 'If you've got the dollar you can go where you want to”. Santoro also acknowledges the various biases among the Black participants in each survey and analyses the whole group separately from the Black participants of a lower socioeconomic standing, which allows us to see patterns and how the Black community was affected by certain events, such as the economic crisis of the 1980s, which diminished belief in the success of the movement. In direct contrast to this, Santoro also recognizes the differing goals and attitudes of the emerging Black middle class, who were far more optimistic in their view of the success of the movement. Santoro’s evidence, that decisive majorities of the Upper and Middle classes (63% and 59% respectively) said that the movement was successful, supports the view that the Black middle class was the main beneficiaries of the achievements of the Civil Rights movement. This is reflected in the movement’s comparable neglect of the poorer, ghettoized northern black communities. This sheds a negative light on the analysis of its success and supports the view of those who believe that the poor were ‘left behind’ by the landmark achievements of the movement.
