Access to History

for the IB Diploma

Civil rights and social movements

in the Americas
Vivienne Sanders

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 Contents

Dedication 1
Introduction 2
1 What you will study 2
2 How you will be assessed 3
3 About this book 6

Chapter 1   Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas 9

1 The indigenous population in Latin America 9
2 Native Americans in the USA 27
3 First Peoples in Canada 38
Examination advice 51
Examination practice 52

Chapter 2   African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement 53

1 African Americans to 1945 53
2 Short-term causes of the Civil Rights Movement 1945–55 57
3 Key debate: When did the Civil Rights Movement begin? 67
4 The end of segregation in the South 1955–65 68
Examination advice 86
Examination practice 89

Chapter 3   Martin, Malcolm and Black Power 90

1 The role of Martin Luther King Jr in the Civil Rights Movement 90
2 Key debate: Who or what played the most important role in the Civil Rights Movement? 100
3 The Nation of Islam and Malcolm X 101
4 The rise of Black Power in the 1960s 108
5 Key debate: How new and successful was the Black Power movement? 117
Examination advice 121
Examination practice 122

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 Chapter 4   Afro-Latin Americans 123
1 Afro-Latin Americans in the nineteenth century 123
2 Afro-Latin Americans in the twentieth century 124
3 The impact of the Afro-Latin American Civil Rights Movement 133
4 Key debate: Have Afro-Latin Americans attained equality through agency and
racial democracy? 138
Examination advice 140
Examination practice 141

Chapter 5   Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in

the Americas 142
1 The US government and civil rights 143
2 The Bolivian government and civil rights 154
3 Key debate: Were Latin American constitutional guarantees of indigenous rights due
to activism? 169
Examination advice 171
Examination practice 173

Chapter 6   Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s 174
1 Youth culture and protests in the USA 174
2 Key debate: How ‘new’, effective and widespread was 1960s’ US student radicalism? 185
3 Youth culture and protests in Canada 186
4 Youth culture and protests in Latin America 188
Examination advice 194
Examination practice 195

Chapter 7   Feminist movements in the Americas 196

1 Women’s movements in Canada 196
2 Women’s movements in Latin America 202
3 Women’s movements in the USA 221
4 Key debate: When and why did the modern women’s movement start? 234
Examination advice 235
Examination practice 238

Timeline 239
Glossary 241
Further reading 245
Internal assessment 248
Index 249

iv

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 Dedication

Keith Randell (1943–2002)

The original Access to History series was conceived and developed by Keith,
who created a series to ‘cater for students as they are, not as we might wish
them to be’. He leaves a living legacy of a series that for over 20 years has
provided a trusted, stimulating and well-loved accompaniment to post-16
study. Our aim with these new editions for the IB is to continue to offer
students the best possible support for their studies.

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 Introduction
This book has been written to support your study of HL option 3: Aspects of the
history of the Americas: Civil rights and social movements in the Americas of the IB
History Diploma Route 2.
This introduction gives you an overview of:
� the content you will study for Civil rights and social movements in the Americas
� how you will be assessed for Paper 3
� the different features of this book and how these will aid your learning.

1 What you will study

After 1945 and the end of the Second World War, growing political and social
movements had an effect on every country of the Americas. Groups that had
been ignored for centuries began to organize and push for greater inclusion
in their respective countries. These included native peoples, African
Americans, Afro-Latin Americans and women. These groups challenged
traditional power élites and sought rights that others possessed and took for
granted. How they were able to make progress and to overcome enormous
obstacles is the focus of this book. In many cases, advancement was slow.
Civil disobedience, violence, mass marches and the use of the courts all
marked this process of change.
This book covers the civil rights and social movement post-1945.
l Chapter 1 examines the situation of the native or indigenous peoples in
North and South America and how they organized themselves to win
greater rights.
l The origins, tactics and organization of the Civil Rights Movement in the
USA is examined in Chapter 2. The fight against segregation, particularly
in the South, is explored, as are the various organizations that pushed for
change both in the courts and at grass roots level.
l Chapter 3 traces the various strategies employed by Dr Martin Luther
King Jr, Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement as they challenged the
status quo.
l Afro-Latin American movements are investigated in Chapter 4 and
compared and contrasted with African American movements in the USA.
l The role of governments in assisting or holding back change in the
Americas is considered in Chapter 5.

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 Introduction

l Chapter 6 looks in detail at the youth movements in the 1960s and 1970s
in the region.
l Finally, Chapter 7 analyses the growth of feminist movements in the
Americas.

2 How you will be assessed

The IB History Diploma Higher Level has three papers in total: Papers 1
and 2 for Standard Level and a further Paper 3 for Higher Level. It also has
an internal assessment which all students must do.
l For Paper 1 you need to answer four source-based questions on a
prescribed subject. This counts for 20 per cent of your overall marks.
l For Paper 2 you need to answer two essay questions on two different
topics. This counts for 25 per cent of your overall marks.
l For Paper 3 you need to answer three essay questions on two or three
sections. This counts for 35 per cent of your overall marks.
For the Internal Assessment you need to carry out a historical investigation.
This counts for 20 per cent of your overall marks.
HL option 3: Aspects of the history of the Americas is assessed through
Paper 3. You must study three sections out of a choice of 12, one of which
could be Civil rights and social movements in the Americas. These sections
are assessed through Paper 3 of the IB History diploma which has 24 essay
questions – two for each of the 12 sections. In other words, there will be two
specific questions that you can answer based on Civil rights and social
movements.

Examination questions
For Paper 3 you need to answer three of the 24 questions. You could answer
either two on one of the sections you have studied and one on another
section, or one from each of the three sections you have studied. So,
assuming Civil rights and social movements in the Americas is one of the
sections you have studied, you may choose to answer one or two questions
on it.
The questions are not divided up by section but just run 1–24 and are usually
arranged chronologically. In the case of the questions on Civil rights and
social movements in the Americas, you should expect numbers 21 and 22 to
be on this particular section. When the exam begins, you will have five
minutes in which to read the questions. You are not allowed to use a pen or
highlighter during the reading period. Scan the list of questions but focus on
the ones relating to the sections you have studied.
Remember you are to write on the history of the Americas. If a question such
as, ‘Discuss the impact of the student movements on the society of one

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 country of the region’ is asked, do not write about Chinese student
movements. You will receive no credit for this answer.

Command terms
When choosing the three questions, keep in mind that you must answer the
question asked, not one you might have hoped for. A key to success is
understanding the demands of the question. IB History diploma questions
use key terms and phrases known as command terms. The more common
command terms are listed in the table below, with a brief definition of each.
More are listed in the appendix of the IB History Guide.
Examples of questions using some of the more common command terms
and specific strategies to answer them are included at the end of
Chapters 1–7.

Command term Description Where exemplified in this book

Analyse Investigate the various components of a Pages 51–2
given issue
Assess Very similar to evaluate. Raise the various Pages 121–2
sides to an argument but clearly state which
are more important and why
Compare and Discuss both similarities and differences of Pages 235–8
contrast two events, people, etc.
Evaluate Make a judgement while looking at two or Pages 171–3
more sides of an issue
In what ways and Be sure to include both ways and effects in Pages 194–5
with what effects your answer – that is how an event took place
and what the repercussions were
To what extent Discuss the various merits of a given Pages 86–9
argument or opinion
Why Explain the reasons for something that took Pages 140–1
place. Provide several reasons

Answering the questions

You have two-and-a-half hours to answer the three questions or 50 minutes
each. Try to apportion your time wisely. In other words, do not spend
75 minutes on one answer. Before you begin each essay, take five to seven
minutes and compose an outline of the major points you will raise in your
essay. These you can check off as you write the essay itself. This is not a waste
of time and will bring organization and coherence to what you write.
Well-organized essays that include an introduction, several well-supported
arguments and a concluding statement are much more likely to score highly
than essays which jump from point to point without structure.

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 Introduction

The three essays you write for Paper 3 will be read by a trained examiner. The
examiner will read your essays and check what you write against the IB mark
scheme. This mark scheme offers guidance to the examiner but is not
comprehensive. You may well write an essay that includes analysis and
evidence not included in the mark scheme and that is fine. It is also worth
remembering that the examiner who will mark your essay is looking to
reward well-defended and well-argued positions, not to deduct for
misinformation.
Each of your essays will be marked on a 0–20 scale, for a total of 60 points.
The total score will be weighted as 35 per cent of your final IB History. Do
bear in mind that you are not expected to score 60/60 to earn a 7: 37–39/60
will equal a 7. Another way of putting this is that if you write three essays
that each score 13, you will receive a 7.

Writing essays
In order to attain the highest mark band (18–20), your essays should:
l be clearly focused
l address all implications of the question
l demonstrate extensive historical knowledge
l demonstrate knowledge of historical processes such as continuity and
change
l integrate your analysis
l be well structured
l have well-developed synthesis.
Your essay should include an introduction in which you set out your main
points. Do not waste time copying the question but do define the key terms
stated in the question. The best essays probe the demands of the question. In
other words, there are often different ways of interpreting the question.
Next, you should write an in-depth analysis of your main points in several
paragraphs. Here you will provide evidence that supports your argument.
Each paragraph should focus on one of your main points and relate directly
to the question. More sophisticated responses include counter-arguments.
Finally, you should end with a concluding statement.
In the roughly 45 minutes you spend on one essay, you should be able to
write 3–6 pages. While there is no set minimum, you do need explore the
issues and provide sufficient evidence to support what you write.
At the end of Chapters 1–7, you will find IB-style questions with guidance
on how best to answer them. Each question focuses on a different
command term. The more practice you have writing essays, the better your
results will be.

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 The appearance of the examination paper
Cover
The cover of the examination paper states the date of the examination and
the length of time you have to complete it: 2 hours 30 minutes. Please note
that there are two routes in history. Make sure your paper says Route 2 on it.
Instructions are limited and simply state that you should not open it until
told to do so and that three questions must be answered.

Questions
You will have five minutes in which to read through the questions. It is very
important to choose the three questions you can answer most fully.
Remember that two questions will be on civil rights and social movements
after 1945. After mastering the material in this book, you may well decide to
choose the two questions that focus on this topic. That is certainly
permissible. After the five minutes’ reading time is over, you can take out
your pen and mark up the exam booklet:
l Circle the three questions you have decided to answer.
l Identify the command terms and important points. For example, if a
question asked, ‘Analyse the aims and impact of the Black Panthers in the
1960s and 1970s’, underline the words ‘aims’ and ‘impact’. This will help
you to focus on the demands of the question.
For each essay take 5–7 minutes to write an outline and approximately
43–5 minutes to write the essay.

3 About this book

Coverage of the course content

This book addresses the key areas listed in the IB History Guide for Route 2:
HL option 3: Aspects of the history of the Americas: Civil rights and social
movements in the Americas. Chapters start with an introduction outlining
key questions they address. They are then divided into a series of sections
and topics covering the course content.
Throughout the chapters you will find the following features to aid your
study of the course content.

Key and leading questions

Each section heading in the chapter has a related key question which gives a
focus to your reading and understanding of the section. These are also listed
in the chapter introduction. You should be able to answer the questions after
completing the relevant section.

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 Introduction

Topics within the sections have leading questions which are designed to help
you focus on the key points within a topic and give you more practice in
answering questions.

Key terms
Key terms are the important terms you need to know to gain an
understanding of the period. These are emboldened in the text the first time
they appear in the book and are defined in the margin. They also appear in
the glossary at the end of the book.

Sources
Throughout the book are several written and visual sources. Historical
sources are important components in understanding more fully why specific
decisions were taken or on what contemporary writers and politicians based
their actions. The sources are accompanied by questions to help you dig
deeper into the history of civil rights and social movements in the Americas.

Key debates
Historians often disagree on historical events and this historical debate is
referred to as historiography. Knowledge of historiography is helpful in
reaching the upper mark bands when you take your IB History examinations.
You should not merely drop the names of historians in your essay. You need
to understand the different points of view for a given historiographical
debate. You can bring these up in your essay. There are a number of debates
throughout the book to develop your understanding of historiography.

Theory of Knowledge (TOK) questions

Understanding that different historians see history differently is an
important element in understanding the connection between the IB History
Diploma and Theory of Knowledge. Alongside some of the debates is a
Theory of Knowledge style question which makes that link.

Summary diagrams
At the end of each section is a summary diagram which gives a visual
summary of the content of the section. It is intended as an aid for revision.

Chapter summary
At the end of each chapter is a short summary of the content of that chapter.
This is intended to help you revise and consolidate your knowledge and
understanding of the content.

Examination guidance
At the end of Chapters 1–7, you will find:
l Examination guidance on how to answer questions, accompanied by
advice on what supporting evidence you might use, and sometimes
sample answers designed to help you focus on specific details.
l Examination practice in the form of Paper 3 style questions.

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 End of the book
The book concludes with the following sections.

Timeline
This gives a timeline of the major events covered in the book, which is
helpful for quick reference or as a revision tool.

Glossary
All key terms in the book are defined in the glossary.

Further reading
This contains a list of books, websites and films which may help you with
further independent research and presentations. It may also be helpful when
further information is required for internal assessments and extended essays
in history. You may wish to share the contents of this area with your school or
local librarian.

Internal assessment
All IB History diploma students are required to write a historical
investigation which is internally assessed. The investigation is an opportunity
for you to dig more deeply into a subject that interests you. This gives you a
list of possible areas for research.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas
Chapter 1

Native Americans and civil rights

in the Americas
This chapter looks at the fate of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas after the
European conquest that began in the sixteenth century. It investigates the reasons for
the inequality they have suffered and how and to what extent they have attained civil
rights. You need to consider the following questions throughout this chapter:
� How and to what extent did the indigenous population of Latin America achieve equality
after 1945?
� How and to what extent did Native Americans achieve equality in the USA after 1945?
� How and to what extent did First Peoples achieve equality in Canada after 1945?

1 The indigenous population in

Latin America
Key question: How and to what extent did the indigenous population of
Latin America achieve equality after 1945?

Background: the Latin American indigenous What was the

population before 1945 situation of the
indigenous population
From the sixteenth century, the history of Latin America was dominated by before 1945?
tense interactions between conquerors (Spanish and Portuguese) and
conquered (the indigenous population). The culturally arrogant conquerors KEY TERM
created a hierarchical society based upon their notions of ‘race’ (see Source A,
page 10). At the bottom was the ‘inferior’ indigenous population, which Latin America The
countries in Central and
remained subjugated, despite frequent rebellions.
South America that gained
The newly independent republics in the nineteenth century their independence from
Spain and Portugal in the
The Latin American colonies gained independence in the nineteenth
nineteenth century.
century. The new national governments were not particularly interested in
indigenous land rights and culture, and invariably oppressed and exploited Indigenous Original/native
both the indigenous population and mestizos. By 1900, the indigenous inhabitants.
populations had lost a large proportion of their land, and were forced to pay Mestizos Offspring of
special taxes and provide unpaid labour services in nations such as Bolivia, Europeans and native
Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. peoples.

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 Source A

An extract from The History of Latin America by Marshall Eakin, published

Study Source A. Why might
by Palgrave, New York, USA, 2007, page 136.
some people find it offensive
to be described as of ‘the Race is a social construct that has no genetic basis, since every culture defines
Indian race’? what we call ‘race’ in different ways. Contemporary notions of race arise out of
nineteenth century social science that attempted to define races scientifically.
Scientists today, especially those working in genetics, almost universally reject
the notion of biologically defined categories of race. They tell us, in effect, that
there are no clear biological or genetic boundaries that separate the human
species sufficiently to define racial groups. What we tend to call race, is, in fact,
our own culture’s reading of physical appearance, in particular, skin tones. And
these readings are highly subjective and variable.

The indigenous population in Latin America 1900–45

KEY TERM In countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela, large mestizo
populations were incorporated into society and politics, but darker skinned
Mexican Revolution
peoples remained at the bottom of the Latin American hierarchy. The large
A revolt against the
dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz indigenous populations of Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia were
began in 1910 then impoverished and discriminated against. Resistance proved useless.
developed into a struggle However, by the 1920s, countries with large indigenous and mestizo
between several different populations such as Paraguay, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico
Mexican groups that lasted were glorifying population diversity as a national characteristic. After the
until about 1920. Mexican Revolution (1910–20), it suited the new Mexican government to
Aztecs Central Mexican try to create a sense of national identity by depicting the Spanish as evil
people conquered by Spain conquerors and the Aztecs as their noble victims, as in Diego Rivera’s
in the sixteenth century. propagandist murals (see Source B).

Source B

Detail from a Diego Rivera mural depicting Mexican history in the Palacio
What is the attitude of the
Nacional in Mexico City, painted between 1929 and 1935.
artist in Source B to the
Spanish conquerors and the
conquered indigenous
population?

10

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

The indigenismo movement, which was particularly fashionable in

KEY TERM
Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, saw indigenous culture as the source
of the best national values, revered the communal character of the Inca state, Indigenismo Latin American
and urged revitalization of indigenous communities through land movement that revered
redistribution and the incorporation of indigenous people as equal citizens indigenous culture as a
in the nation’s progress. However, despite all this glorification of the source of what was best in
national values.
indigenous past, Mexican President Cárdenas (1934–40) typified the attitude
of successive Mexican governments when he said the goal was to Inca Indigenous Peruvian;
‘Mexicanize’ the ‘Indians’, not to ‘Indianize’ Mexico. By 1945, Mexico was a the Inca Empire stretched
proudly mestizo nation but the indigenous peasants remained impoverished from Ecuador to Chile before
the Spanish conquest.
and regarded as socially inferior.

The indigenous population after 1945 Why and with what

results did indigenous
The proportion of indigenous people varied from state to state in the activism increase
twentieth century. They constituted over half of the population in after 1945?
Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia, one-third in Ecuador, and around one-tenth in
Mexico. Mestizos constituted the majority in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Judging from Source C,
what difficulties can statistics
present to the historian?
Source C

Comparative statistics from the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (III) and the World Bank, showing
numbers and percentages of indigenous peoples of national population in Latin America in 1994–5.
Country Indigenous population Part of the total population in per cent
III World Bank III World Bank
Argentina 350,000 360,000 1.00 1.10
Bolivia 4,500,000 4,150,000 63.00 56.80
Brazil 300,000 225,000 0.20 0.20
Chile 800,000 550,000 6.00 4.20
Colombia 600,000 300,000 2.00 0.90
Costa Rica 30,000 26,000 1.00 0.90
Ecuador 4,100,000 3,100,000 40.00 29.50
El Salvador 400,000 1,000 7.00 0.02
Guatemala 5,800,000 3,900,000 66.00 43.80
Honduras 600,000 110,000 12.04 2.10
Mexico 7,800,000 12,000,000 9.00 14.20
Nicaragua 160,000 48,000 5.00 14.25
Panama 140,000 99,000 5.05 4.10
Paraguay 100,000 80,000 3.00 1.90
Peru 8,400,000 9,100,000 40.00 40.80
Uruguay 0 – 0 –
Venezuela 400,000 150,000 2.00 0.80
Total of LA & the Caribbean 34,225,000 34,426,000 7.72 12.76
Sources: World Bank, Regional and Sectorial Studies: Indigenous Peoples & Poverty in Latin America, Washington,
DC, September 1994, and Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (III), América Indígena Vol. LV, No. 3, Mexico, 1995.

11

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 Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Venezuela, while the
population was of predominantly European descent in countries such as
Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

Reasons for increased Indian activism and unity

In 1945, countries with large indigenous populations were significantly
poorer than those without. The large indigenous populations of Mexico,
Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia were impoverished (around 90 per
cent of cultivable land was owned a small minority that was white or
mestizo) and greatly discriminated against (most were not allowed to vote).
So, it is not surprising that after 1945 they increasingly agitated for economic

0 1000 mls

0 1000 km

MEXICO
CUBA Atlantic
Ocean
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Mexico City BELIZE
Chiapas HONDURAS N

GUATEMALA NICARAGUA
EL SALVADOR GUYANA
COSTA RICA VENEZUELA SURINAME
PANAMA
FRENCH GUIANA
COLOMBIA

ECUADOR
on
Amaz
River

Pacific PERU BRAZIL

Ocean Lima
Ayacucho BOLIVIA
An

PA
des

Large indigenous populations R

AG
>50% Guatemala and Bolivia U
AY
>40% Ecuador and Peru CHILE

>20% Belize
>15% Mexico ARGENTINA
<14%
URUGUAY

Map showing Latin American nations with large percentages of indigenous populations in 2000

12

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

and political equality and respect for their culture. Increased indigenous
activism was also due to the politicization of the peasants, indigenous
organizations, liberation theology, economic problems, globalization and
sympathetic governments.

The politicization of the peasants

In 1945, the indigenous peasantry was generally illiterate, focused on
KEY TERM
scraping a living, and politically inactive. However, some started to become
politicized. For example, in the remote regions of the Andes, the radical left Andes South American
contributed to the politicization of indigenous peasants. Other contributory mountain range running
factors in Peru included: through Colombia,
Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru,
l labour union politicization of occasional labourers in the mines of Cerro Bolivia, Argentina and Chile.
de Pasco and the steel refineries of La Oroya
Radical left Communists,
l exposure to city life when doing temporary work in the Peruvian capital,
militant labour unionists.
Lima
l contact with friends and family who had gone to work on the coast and
Labour union An
organization of workers
remained there
seeking improved pay and
l increased literacy and access to political information.
working conditions.
Indigenous organizations Liberation theology Latin
Historian Guillermo de la Peña (1998) wrote of the ‘proliferation and American Catholic clergy
persistence’ of indigenous organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, despite the movement, inspiring
parishioners to work for
many authoritarian governments. Organizations such as the Colombian
change in this life, rather than
Regional Council of the Cauca Indians (CRIC), established in 1971, raised waiting for their reward in
ethnic consciousness, as did the international organizations that they joined, heaven.
such as the South American Indian Council (CISA), established in 1980.
These organizations emphasized ‘Indianism’, arguing that the physical
survival of Indians required their cultural survival and that they were entitled
to autonomy. These organizations gained national and international publicity
and made it difficult for governments and politicians to ignore the
indigenous population.

Liberation theology
In 1962, the Second Vatican Council concluded that the Catholic Church
needed to do more to help the poor and the Catholic Bishops’ conference at
Medellín, Colombia (1968) agreed. Followers of liberation theology
organized the poor into Christian Base Communities (CEBs), which
combined religious study with agitation for measures that would help the
poor, such as land redistribution, water rights and better wages. From the
1960s to the 1980s, a considerable minority of Catholic clergy fought for their
impoverished flocks’ rights, and helped to mobilize the indigenous
population. For example, in Guatemala in the early 1970s, the Catholic
Church collaborated with idealistic students in literacy projects for the
indigenous peasants. Some Catholic priests gave lessons in the Guatemalan
Constitution, Article 1 of which declared that all Guatemalans were equal
regardless of race or religion. However, many Catholics were uneasy about

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 the pronouncements of liberation theologians. For example, El Salvador’s
Archbishop Óscar Romero (1917–80) said, ‘When all peaceful means have
been exhausted, the Church considers insurrection moral and justified.’
In 1980, Pope John Paul II visited Brazil, forbade the clergy from holding
political office and condemned violence as a means of social change – and
the liberation theology movement declined.
Source D

An extract from the final document of the third conference of Latin

American bishops at Puebla, Mexico, 1979, attended by Pope John Paul II.
Quoted in A History of Latin America: Independence to the Present,
Volume 2, eighth edition by Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, published
Give reasons for and against by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, USA, 2009, page 307.
the usefulness of Source D in
any assessment of the We identify as the most devastating and humiliating scourge, the situation of
situation of the indigenous inhuman poverty in which millions of Latin Americans live, with starvation
populations of Latin America wages, unemployment and underemployment, malnutrition, infant mortality,
in 1979. lack of adequate housing, health problems, and labor unrest.

Economic problems
Economic problems triggered self-help movements among the indigenous
populations. For example, coca grower unions in Bolivia campaigned for the
KEY TERM
right to earn a living from growing coca (see page 161).
Coca Leaf that can be used
as a mild sedative or
Globalization
processed into cocaine. Coca From the 1980s, globalization accelerated developments in Latin American
tea is a traditional drink for culture and society. Technology and the mass media, along with migration
most Andean natives. from rural areas to cities, exposed the indigenous population to foreign ideas
Globalization Increasing on individualism and civil rights.
internationalization of national
Sympathetic governments
economies, finance, trade
and communications. Some governments recognized that racial divisions, discrimination and
inequality hampered national progress. Others simply sought indigenous
Quechua Member/language support. The resultant government demonstrations of sympathy generated
of an indigenous ethic group
activism. For example, the socialistic military regime of General Velasco
in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia,
Ecuador and Chile. Alvarado (1968–75) in Peru gave the Quechua language equal status with
Spanish and redistributed land to indigenous communities. This bequeathed
International Labour a legacy of militancy and a heightened cultural and racial self-awareness
Organization (ILO) An
among the Andean indigenous population.
agency of the United Nations
which seeks the promotion In 1989, Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO)
of social justice and required governments to ensure the equality of indigenous peoples. Many
internationally recognized
Latin American governments ratified that convention, and several amended
human and labour rights.
their constitution to recognize indigenous rights in ‘multi-ethnic’ and
Constitution The rules and ‘pluri-cultural’ states. Even when governments were slow to recognize such
system by which a country’s rights in practice, as in Bolivia, government commitment to such rights
government works.
provided a quasi-legal justification for increased indigenous assertiveness.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

From the 1990s, a series of progressive left-wing governments were elected

KEY TERM
in countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay,
Uruguay and Venezuela. The governments of this Pink Tide focused on Left wing Those
economic and social inequality and often worked to help indigenous sympathetic to the ideas of
peoples. For example, in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez introduced a new socialism, under which
system the national economy
constitution that allocated three seats to the elected representatives of the
is controlled by the
indigenous peoples. government to prevent
extremes in wealth or
Methods for obtaining equality poverty.
The methods by which Latin American indigenous populations tried to gain
equality included rebellions, organizations, publicity, protests and voting. Pink Tide The left-wing
governments elected in many
Rebellions and violence Latin American countries
Rebellions were a long-established but frequently unsuccessful means of from the end of the twentieth
protest, a notable exception being Bolivia in 1952 (see pages 157–9). century.
Rebellions against the military governments of Guatemala (see pages 21–2) Aymara Member and
and Nicaragua gained little. Violence was often counter-productive, as language of an indigenous
in Peru. ethnic group in Peru, Bolivia,
Argentina and Chile.
In 1960, the indigenous Aymara and Quechua constituted around half of
Agrarian reform The Latin
Peru’s population. Most lived in poverty in the Andean highlands and were
American indigenous
regarded as greatly inferior by the relatively prosperous coastal inhabitants. population owned a
President Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1963–8) promised agrarian reform but disproportionately small
did little. The indigenous peasant population therefore began to seize amount of land. Sometimes
cultivated land, arguing that they had paid for it with their labour over the governments redistributed
generations. In late 1963, the government sent in the military. Around the land to remedy this
8000 peasants were killed, 3500 imprisoned and 19,000 forced to leave inequality.
their homes. Communist Believer in the
economic system under
Landlessness, unemployment and underemployment remained endemic in which capitalism and the
the highlands. A splinter group of the Peruvian Communist Party set up the private ownership of property
guerrilla organization Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) that from 1980 are rejected and the land and
encouraged the peasantry to invade, occupy and rob élite-owned land. industry are controlled by the
Shining Path waged guerrilla war on the ‘establishment’, including tax state in order to attain
collectors and wealthy merchants. In 1982, the government responded with economic equality.
indiscriminate attacks on villages. From 1980 to 1988, an estimated and Guerrillas Groups of
mostly innocent 15,000 peasants were killed, roughly half by the military fighters who use tactics such
and half by Shining Path. Eventually, Shining Path’s violence totally alienated as sabotage, raids and
the peasantry. assassination, usually against
governments.
Organizations
Organizations were usually more effective than rebellions. In the 1960s, the
Brazilian government worked to convert the Amazon rainforest into
farmland and cattle ranches. Indigenous peoples were killed or evicted. What
the government described as ‘integration’, the indigenous population
described as extermination. In 1973, some influential figures in the Catholic
Church established the Indigenous Mission Council (CIMI), which organized
meetings of indigenous chiefs in 1974, 1975 and 1976. At these meetings,

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 massacres such as that perpetrated by ranchers in 1976 in the Brazilian state
of Matto Grosso were denounced. CEBs (see page 13) brought people
together to discuss legal tactics and form unions.
Unionization encouraged the Peruvian government to work to end forced
labour and to redistribute land but, despite the 1964 Agrarian Law, the land
tenure situation changed very little and the government became increasingly
repressive. However, even when activists faced setbacks, their continuous
pressure usually contributed to eventual improvement.

Publicity and protests

The effectiveness of publicity and protests was demonstrated in Bolivia,
where the daughter of an impoverished highlands family with only six years
of formal education, Domitila Barrios de Chúngara (1937–2012), drew
worldwide attention to the plight of workers. In 1965, the average lifespan of
a Bolivian tin miner was 35 years. If he died or was unable to work because
of an industrial accident, his wife received no aid. Domitila led the
Housewives’ Committee of Siglo XX, established in 1961 to co-ordinate
protest. She joined in labour movements, strikes and demonstrations aimed
at improving working conditions for miners and creating jobs for women.
Frequently arrested, she was mistreated and tortured in jail. After she
attended the United Nations (UN) International Women’s Year Tribunal in
Mexico in 1975, she wrote Let Me Speak!, published in 1978 (see Source E).
Her activism contributed to greater Bolivian government attention to
workers’ problems.
Source E

An extract from Let Me Speak! by Domitila Barrios de Chúngara,

How far would you trust the
testimony of the activist published by Monthly Review Press, New York, USA, 1978, page 187. She
Domitila Barrios de Chúngara refers to the clash between a group of labour organizers and
in Source E about the representatives of Bolivian dictator General Hugo Banzer (1971–8).
dictator General Banzer? Banzer’s men had destroyed Siglo XX’s radio transmitter in retaliation
for a strike.
We women, like the workers, repudiate this attempt against our culture and our
people … We won’t stand for this treatment. And we demand you immediately
return our property, which has cost us so much to get … General Banzer has
taken office in a country where no one elected him. He came in through the force
of arms, he killed a whole lot of people and among them are children and our
comrades. He machine gunned the university; he repressed and goes on
repressing a lot of people. Our resources are being turned over to foreigners,
especially to Brazil. Now I ask you, which measure has been in favor of the
working class?

Protests and publicity helped to internationalize the struggle for equality,

which generated further publicity, as when Guatemalan indigenous leader
Rigoberta Menchú won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize and when the UN

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

declared 1993 the International Year of the Indigenous Peoples of the World.
In 2007, the third Continental Summit of Indigenous Nations and Peoples
was held in Guatemala, and Guatemalan Mayans learned a great deal about
effective protest from contacts with more militant Bolivian and Ecuadoran
indigenous movements.

Enfranchisement
The vote was perhaps the most important method for gaining equality. Many
indigenous people were illiterate and therefore disenfranchised in Peru until
1979 and in Ecuador until 1980. However, once they had the vote, more
sympathetic politicians (including indigenous ones) could be elected, as in
Bolivia in 2005 and Ecuador in 2006.

Continuing indigenous inequality Why has equality not

been achieved?
Racism, greed, cultural clashes, internal divisions, unsympathetic
governments and financial issues made it difficult to end the long-standing
poverty, deprivation and social inequality of the indigenous population.

Racism
As the twentieth century progressed, official disapproval of racism increased.
However, according to the historians Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes
(2009), the indigenous peoples remained ‘the principal victims of racist
exploitation and violence’, which according to one estimate led to a decrease KEY TERM
in Brazil’s indigenous population from one million to 180,000 during the
twentieth century. Around 1000 of the 9000 Yanomamis living in Brazil and Yanomamis Amerindian
12,000 in Venezuela have been murdered since 1975, mostly by gold miners. tribe living in the Amazonian
rainforest.
Similar killings of Amerindians have been reported in Colombia, Mexico and
Guatemala.
Source F

An extract from A History of Latin America: Independence to the Present, According to Source F, what
Volume 2, eighth edition by Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, published is the position of revisionist
by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, USA, 2009, page 303. Mexican scholars on ‘the
‘The Indian problem,’ writes Mexican sociologist Pablo González Casanova, ‘is Indian problem’ in Mexico?
essentially one of internal colonialism. The Indian communities are Mexico’s
internal colonies … Here we find prejudice, discrimination, colonial forms of
exploitation, dictatorial forms, and the separation of a different population, with
a different race and culture.’ Some Mexican social scientists claimed that
Mexicans have long been blind to their own racism and discrimination. One
cited a paragraph written in 1985 by a leading historian, Enrique Krauze:
‘Mexico constructed a tradition of natural liberty and equality that was rooted in
the culture of the people and freed us very early from slavery, servitude, and
racism.’ These revisionist scholars assigned much of the blame for this blindness
to an indigenous policy that dated from the time of independence.

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 Culture clashes and divisions
Divisions within the indigenous communities have been important, as in
Bolivia where the Aymara and Quechua found it difficult to co-operate in
campaigning for equality. Divisions within national communities made
campaigns for indigenous rights problematic when some indigenous
customs (arranged marriages, public beatings and the prohibition of land
sales by individuals) were considered undesirable and unacceptable even by
some indigenous people. Furthermore, many indigenous people lived
outside their community in cities, where the implementation of their laws
would clash with the other legal system.

Unsympathetic governments
Some governments were unsympathetic. For example, the dictatorial
Somoza regime in Nicaragua killed thousands of indigenous peasantry, who
were mobilized by Sandinista guerrillas. However, after the Somoza regime
KEY TERM
collapsed in 1979, the new Sandinista government sought the speedy
Miskitos Indigenous assimilation of indigenous peoples into society. As a result, Miskitos
population resident on the rebelled and 15,000 fled into neighbouring Honduras.
Nicaraguan and Honduran
coasts. Some of the Latin American governments most opposed to social reform
were steadfastly supported by the USA, which valued their anti-
Cold War The state of
Communism during the Cold War. In 1999, US President Bill Clinton visited
extreme tension between
the capitalist USA and Guatemala and apologized for US support for murderous right-wing
Communist USSR and their Guatemalan governments (see pages 21–3).
allies 1945–91.
Divergent interest groups
Even sympathetic governments struggled to balance the interests of the
indigenous population and national prosperity, as in Peru, where Quechua
Alejandro Toledo, elected president in 2001, displeased other Quechua when
he allowed the privatization of oil and gas discovered in the Amazon region.
In 2009, during the presidency of Alan García Pérez, police clashed with
indigenous activists over the exploration. Thirty people died. Many cities
erupted in violent demonstrations by students and labour unions against a
free trade pact with the USA that gave rights to foreign companies in the
Peruvian rainforest without the consultation with the indigenous peoples
mandated by the ILO Convention 169 (see pages 14–15) and ratified by Peru.
The indigenous protesters said they had the right to determine the future of
their ancestral homelands. President García said the natural resources were
vital to Peru’s development and belonged to all Peruvians.

How do Mexico and Case studies of indigenous populations in Latin

Guatemala illustrate
the problems faced by
America
the indigenous Case study: Mexico and mestizo domination
populations of Latin
In the late nineteenth century, police turned Indians away from Mexico City’s
America after 1945?
centre on state occasions, so that foreigners would not see them. The
indigenous population had long suffered such discrimination and

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

humiliation, along with deprivation, at the hands of mestizos and whites.

KEY TERM
From the late 1930s, Mexican governments tried to protect indigenous
languages and cultures. Caciques and village councils had some of their Caciques Local leaders of
traditional authority restored, and native children were often educated in indigenous groups.
bilingual schools. However, the indigenous population remained Zapotec Indigenous people
impoverished and dissatisfied and turned to organizations, especially in the in Mexico’s Oaxaca province.
1970s. Popular front Alliance of
several leftist parties.
COCEI
In 1974, the indigenous peasantry and students established the Coalition of
Workers, Peasants and Students (COCEI) in Oaxaca, which had a long
tradition of indigenous rebellion over land rights. COCEI demanded the
restoration of land, electoral democracy, the defence of Zapotec culture and
economic self-government. COCEI candidates in municipal elections were
fraudulently deprived of victory in 1974, 1977 and in 1980, when COCEI
formed a popular front with the Communist Party. After great protests and
publicity, the COCEI candidate, Leopoldo de Gyves, became mayor of
Juchitán. He helped to revive Zapotec culture and made speeches in the
native language until the state government overthrew him in 1982.

Feet and race

The Mexican government found it hard to distinguish the indigenous
population from mestizos. According to the 1943 census, those wearing
shoes were mestizos, those without were indigenous people. This criterion
was only finally deleted in the 1980 census.

UCEZ
In western Mexico in 1979, the Unión de Comuneros Emiliano Zapata
(UCEZ) was established to defend indigenous property and communal
cultural traditions. Supported by some members of the Catholic clergy and
leftist political parties, UCEZ provided legal aid and organized mass
meetings to articulate and publicize grievances. It refused to participate in
electoral politics but was popular and effective. For example, it forced the
resignation of the corrupt delegates of the Ministry of Agrarian Reform in
Michoacán.

The Chiapas rebellion

Alan Sandstrom studied indigenous villages in the 1990s. He noted that the
indigenous population remained disproportionately poor, were considered
‘backward’ by ‘many’ urbanized Mexicans, and reflected Mexican racial
prejudice in that even they favoured children with lighter hair and skin.
Continuing discontent was demonstrated in Chiapas, a predominantly rural
state with a large indigenous population and one of the lowest literacy rates
in Mexico, and where the great landowners still owned around 40 per cent of
the land. Although Chiapas produced a large proportion of Mexico’s
electricity supply, 70 per cent of the local population went without.

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 In January 1994, around 12,000 guerrillas led by a council of 24 Mayan
KEY TERM
commanders and calling themselves the Zapatista Army of National
Mayan Indigenous person(s) Liberation (EZLN) took control of three cities in Chiapas and demanded
of southern Mexico or parts self-rule for indigenous communities. A counter-offensive of 14,000 Mexican
of Central America. army troops was launched, using aerial bombing of villages, executions
Campesinos Peasants. without trial and torture of suspects. Hundreds of guerrillas were wounded
and 145 died. The EZLN was quickly forced out of the cities, but the uprising
continued for several years, during which time landless campesinos
occupied nearly 100,000 acres of farmland (prompting over 100 wealthy
landowners to stage a hunger strike in Mexico City). The number of civilian
deaths caused considerable national unease and a 100,000-strong protest
march in Mexico City forced the government to halt the military operation.
The Chiapas rebellion demonstrated the importance of assistance from
outside the indigenous population, as shown in the roles of Bishop Samuel
Ruiz, who vociferously defended the poor Mayan campesinos in his diocese of
San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, and Subcomandante Marcos.
Subcomandante Marcos
White, pipe-smoking Subcomandante Marcos was a guerrilla leader in the
Chiapas rebellion, which he attributed to ‘500 years of poverty and
exploitation’. In Marcos, who many think is a former university professor,
Mexico’s Mayans acquired a spokesman of international renown who
expertly manipulated the media to gain national and international attention
for their plight. Such was his charisma that hundreds of women proposed
marriage to him.
Source G

Masked, white guerrilla leader Subcomandante Marcos, champion of the

Research Subcomandante
indigenous poor in the Mexican province of Chiapas, talking on the
Marcos, shown in Source G.
microphone, photographed in 2001.
Suggest reasons why he
wears the mask.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

In 2000, newly elected president Vicente Fox, keen to grant indigenous

communities greater self-government, withdrew the military from Chiapas,
and ordered the release of jailed rebels. Chiapas remained restless and in
spring 2001, Subcomandante Marcos led an EZLN march to Mexico City in
order to demand indigenous autonomy and control of their resources. En
route, they were greeted by thousands of supporters and received petitions
(see Source H). The Mexican Congress was unhelpful and indigenous
communities remained at the mercy of paramilitaries paid by the great
landowners and conservative politicians. Despite their organizations,
protests and guerrilla activities, ‘Indians continue to have second-class status’
in Mexico, according to historian Burton Kirkwood (2005).
Source H

An extract from ‘The Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of Morelos’,

In what ways does the
given to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation marchers in 2001.
declaration in Source H
Quoted in A History of Latin America: Independence to the Present,
suggest indigenous inequality
Volume 2, eighth edition by Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, published
and how far would you trust
by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, USA, 2009, page 303. its assessment of the
What do we want and demand? To be treated with respect as indigenous peoples. indigenous situation in
That we should not be jailed for defending our land … An end to industrial and Mexico?
commercial megaprojects in communal … land. An end to the destruction of our
forests, waters, and natural resources. An end to the neoliberal modernization
that is causing the disappearance of the indigenous peoples. That we be taken KEY TERM
into account when decisions are made. We want to be part of development, not a
Neoliberal Proponent of an
simple rung on which others step for their development.
economic system that
promotes free trade and
Case study: the Guatemalan indigenous population and private business rather than
government intervention to
genocide deal with inequality.
In 1945, Guatemala was one of the poorest Latin American nations; two per
cent of the population controlled 74 per cent of the arable land. The
indigenous Mayan majority was mostly illiterate, with a life expectancy of
less than 40, and the highest infant mortality rate in the Americas (over
50 per cent). The election of Juan José Arévalo in 1944 led to 10 years of
democracy. The vagrancy law under which most of the indigenous
population were forced to work on the estates of the white and mestizo élite
was abolished, land was redistributed, authority devolved to village
committees and racial discrimination criminalized.

Agrarian reform
Under Arévalo’s successor, Jacobo Árbenz, an agrarian reform law (1952) was
passed because the peasantry had been mobilized by the Guatemalan
National Peasant Confederation (CNCG), which had nearly 250,000
members and had contributed to a great increase in indigenous peasant
uprisings. As a result of the agrarian reform, over 100,000 peasant families
received land, credit and technical aid from new state agencies by 1954.
Middle-class anxiety about ‘the rise of the Indians against civilization’ and

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 the impact of land redistribution on the influential US-owned United Fruit
Company were important factors in the US-supported overthrow of Árbenz
KEY TERM
in 1954 and the reversal of the land reform. Once power was returned to the
Oligarchy Government by a traditional oligarchy, peasant unions became illegal.
privileged few.
Repression
Scorched-earth
Democracy ended in 1954 and under a series of white and mestizo military
campaign Destruction of
crops so the population lacks dictatorships and a civil war that lasted nearly four decades (1960–96),
food. Guatemala’s indigenous population struggled to survive. Over 200,000 died.

Genocide Deliberate Although ethnic tensions and clashes over land were more important, the
destruction of an ethnic persecution of the mostly indigenous peasantry was justified as part of
group. ‘fighting Communism’. That prompted increased US aid to the Guatemalan
government. In 1967, the Guatemalan military, deployed by Defence Minister
Colonel Rafael Arriaga Bosque and assisted by the US military, launched its
first scorched-earth campaign, in which around 8000 civilians were killed in
order to defeat around 300 guerrillas. The US embassy described Arriaga
Bosque as one of Guatemala’s ‘most effective and enlightened leaders’.

Organizations
The indigenous population of Guatemala was never passive in the face of
government hostility. The powerful Committee of Peasant Unity (CUC)
developed out of a variety of groups such as peasant leagues, Mayan cultural
associations and CEBs (see page 13). By 1980, it organized 150,000 workers
in strikes that halted cotton and sugar export production and gained wage
increases. In the 1980s, Mayan guerrilla groups wrought considerable
damage on the Guatemalan economy.

Genocide?
Increased guerrilla activity prompted the governments of Lucas García
(1978–82) and the Pentecostal lay minister General Efraín Ríos Montt
(1982–3) to try to pacify ‘Indian barbarism’ in the countryside. Ríos Montt
declared that his presidency was the ‘will of God’ and told Guatemala’s
indigenous population, ‘If you are with us, we will feed you; if not, we will
kill you.’ In his scorched earth policy against the indigenous majority, the
Guatemalan military systematically eliminated entire indigenous
communities, supposedly in order to eliminate the guerrillas. By 1983, the
army controlled the countryside. Although the violence peaked between
1981 and 1983, the civil war continued until 1996, when the Guatemalan
government and the coalition representing four guerrilla groups signed a
peace agreement.
In 1997, a UN commission concluded that Mayans were killed because they
were Mayan, not because the army believed that they were the support base
of the guerrillas, and that this was genocide. The commission found that
200,000 Mayans had been killed, tens of thousands tortured, and even more
made homeless and landless as hundreds of Mayan villages were eliminated.
40,000 people ‘disappeared’ and around 200,000 Guatemalans fled to

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Chiapas in Mexico. The Catholic Church estimated that more than one
million people (15 per cent of the population) had been displaced, some
temporarily, some permanently.
Source I

Guatemalan photographer Daniel Hernández-Salazar’s photograph for

What message is the
the Catholic Church’s 1998 report on the genocide in Guatemala entitled,
photographer trying to get
‘So That All Shall Know’. Combined with the image of a naked man, the across in the image in
bones were those of a victim of the civil war. Source I?

Source J

An extract from a declassified cable dated 21 October 1982, sent by the

Why might the US embassy’s
US embassy in Guatemala to the US Secretary of State. Printed in The
analysis in Source J have been
Guatemala Reader edited by Greg Grandin et al., published by Duke
incorrect?
University Press, Durham, USA, 2011, pages 382–3.
The Embassy has analyzed reports made in the U.S. by Amnesty International,
the Washington Office on Latin America and the Network in Solidarity with the
People of Guatemala and the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission. We
conclude that a concerted disinformation campaign is being waged in the US
against the Guatemalan government by groups supporting the Communist
insurgency in Guatemala. This has enlisted the support of conscientious human
rights and church organizations which may not fully appreciate that they are
being utilized. This is a campaign in which guerrilla mayhem and violations of
human rights are ignored … The campaign’s object is simple: to deny the
Guatemalan army the weapons and equipment needed from the US to defeat the
guerrillas … .

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 Survival and revival
Despite the genocide, the indigenous population survived and revived.
Indigenous peoples still constituted roughly half of the population and
became far more organized and vocal, encouraged by the 1992 Nobel Peace
Prize awarded to indigenous Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú for
raising awareness of indigenous rights. In 1993, thousands of indigenous
Guatemalans marched in the nation’s capital, contributing to a renaissance
of Mayan culture. The 1996 peace agreements committed the Guatemalan
government to recognize the identity and rights of the indigenous
populations, but the government did not live up to all of its promises and
disillusioned activists talked of creating an indigenous Guatemalan nation.

Does it matter to someone I, Rigoberta Menchú

studying the treatment of
indigenous Guatemalans Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú’s Mayan family were first
whether Rigoberta Menchú mobilized by a Catholic Action group, then by CUC (see page 22), and finally
included some events she by guerrillas (see page 22). As a 23 year old, she wrote a very dramatic account
never witnessed and greatly of the persecution of Guatemalan Indians, My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and
exaggerated others? This is How My Consciousness was Raised (1983), which was translated into
many languages. Some questioned its accuracy, but it turned world attention
to the persecution of indigenous people, especially the Guatemalan genocide.
  Rigoberta Menchú said,‘My story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My
personal experience is the experience of a whole people.’ In 1999, US
anthropologist David Stoll’s response to her book, Rigoberta Menchú and the
Story of All Poor Guatemalans, argued that she included events she never
witnessed and greatly exaggerated others. Stoll was criticized by other
anthropologists who pointed out that many of the indigenous population did
die, and her book did reflect the hardship and terrors faced by them.

The twenty-first century

In 2005, the government announced programmes to publicize Mayan
culture, yet simultaneously the military was violently evicting rural Mayans
from farms that they had been occupying for three years. More than half of
Guatemalans lived in chronic poverty, one-fifth in extreme poverty. Land
distribution remained highly inequitable. The average Mayan life expectancy
was 45 years, compared to 61 for other Guatemalans. The indigenous infant
mortality rate remained twice that of the non-indigenous population and
three-quarters of Mayan children suffered from malnutrition. Only one-
tenth of the indigenous population was literate. According to the historian
Thomas Pearcy (2006), there is still ‘ethnic hatred’ in Guatemala.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Source K

Rigoberta Menchú (centre) in a bus station during a 30-hour tour of

What is the significance of
different neighbourhoods of Guatemala City in November 2011.
Rigoberta Menchú’s clothing
in Source K?

Indigenous populations in Latin America: Have the indigenous

conclusions populations attained
equality?
Writing in 2010, historian Teresa Meade wrote that with the aid of radical
church groups, reformist political parties and domestic and international
agencies, ‘a new agenda is in motion’ in Latin America, calling for greater
equality and redress for centuries of abuse of indigenous peoples. Writing in
2000, historian John Kicza gave a similarly hopeful assessment of the
situation of the indigenous population of Latin America (see Source L).
However, while their situation has certainly improved since 1945, there is
still a long way to go before the indigenous population attains full equality.
Ultimately, as the historian Guillermo de la Peña noted in 1998, they are ‘still
the most underprivileged sector in Latin American society’.
Source L

An extract from The Indian in Latin American History: Resistance, Resilience

According to Source L,
and Acculturation, edited by John Kicza, published by SR Books,
what problems have native
Wilmington, USA, 1999, page xviii.
peoples of the Americas
The native peoples of the Americas have displayed remarkable cultural resilience faced, and how and with
in the face of demographic catastrophes; loss of land and local political what success have they
autonomy; recurrent infusions of outside technologies, animals, foods, and handled them? How far
procedures over the centuries; and disrespectful treatment of their values and would you agree with the
ways of life by the governments and citizens of those nations into which they assertions in Source L?
have been merged. To the extent possible, Indian peoples have been selective about
what aspects of the outside world they incorporate into their cultures. The
indigenous communities have not been without resources. They have used their

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 internal unity … to incorporate the changes forced upon them on the best terms
that they could muster. Nor were they cowed or passive before the impositions of
colonial and national governments. Both individual Indians and Indian
corporations commonly initiated petitions and lawsuits to demand remedies for
perceived injustices. Local rebellions by native peoples were endemic in large
parts of Latin America over the centuries; some indigenous communities had
well-earned reputations for insurrection. Occasionally, these rebellions became
widespread and threatened major regions and even national governments.
Through a combination of selective adaptation and peaceful (or sometimes
violent) resistance, the native peoples of Latin America… have been making their
own histories for 500 years.
Latin American Indians have been so successful in drawing upon their own
resources and capacities that today their numbers are growing and they
constitute a majority of the population in countries such as Guatemala and
Bolivia and a substantial plurality in Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru. Even in
countries where they do not make up a large part of the population – Brazil,
Colombia, and Chile, for example – native peoples have been able to assert their
rights and claims and make the national societies come to grips with the issues of
native autonomy and control over land and other resources.

Conquest and mistreatment of

Greed and racism New republics
indigenous population

Indigenismo Risings Political awakening of peasants

Organizations
Government sympathy
Political reform Some improvement Unions
Liberation theology Land redistribution

Globalization Publicity and protests

International collaboration Economic problems

Racism Indigenous divisions

Insoluble problems
Greed Insufficient improvement
Unsympathetic
governments
Culture clash US policies

Mexico Peru Guatemala

• Mestizo domination • Shining Path too violent • Genocide

Summary diagram

The indigenous population in Latin America

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

2 Native Americans in the USA

Key question: How and to what extent did Native Americans achieve
equality in the USA after 1945?

Background: Native Americans in the USA What was the

before 1945 situation of Native
Americans before
During the seventeenth century, Europeans created settlements on North 1945?
America’s east coast. They treated Native Americans as inferior and took
their lands. The 13 American colonies declared independence from Britain in
a Declaration of Independence (1776) that stated ‘all men are created equal’.
However, those that the Declaration called ‘merciless Indian Savages’ were
not given citizenship in the new United States of America.

Native Americans in the nineteenth-century USA

In the nineteenth century, white Americans moved westward and through a KEY TERM
combination of force and treaties took possession of Indian lands. Native
American tribes were either decimated or militarily defeated and placed on Reservation An area of land
reservations on land whites did not want. Many Native American children set aside for Native American
tribes in the nineteenth
were taken away from their parents and ‘civilized’ in federal-funded boarding
century.
schools in the 1880s.
Federal government The
Native Americans in the USA 1900–45 USA is a federal state, where
Successive US governments were either uninterested in or actively hostile to political power is divided
the defeated Native Americans. They were finally granted citizenship in 1924, between the federal
but this had few practical advantages. Their death rate exceeded their birth government (consisting of the
President, Congress and the
rate and a 1928 federal government report detailed disease, discontent and
Supreme Court, all located in
great poverty, all exacerbated after 1929 by the Great Depression. They Washington, DC) and the
suffered terrible racism. For example, from 1931 the state of Vermont states.
sterilized disproportionate numbers of the Abenaki tribe because they were
Great Depression
supposedly ‘immoral’, ‘criminal’ or ‘suspected feeble-minded’ (as late as
Worldwide economic
1973–6, according to the General Accounting Office of Congress, 3406 depression which began in
women were sterilized without their permission). 1929 and lasted for around
10 years.
The Roosevelt years 1933–45
The increasingly desperate Native American situation aroused some white Democrat The Democratic
sympathy. Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Commissioner for Party favours government
intervention on behalf of the
Indian Affairs, John Collier, assisted the preservation of Indian culture
less fortunate.
through educational programmes and sponsored the Indian Reorganization
Act (1934), which restored some tribal control over reservation land and Congress Legislative branch
of US government, consisting
facilitated federal loans to struggling tribes. Collier persuaded Congress that
of the Senate and the House
Native American schoolchildren should not be forced to attend Christian
of Representatives.
church services and that tribes should be allowed to practise their traditional
religion. Collier got Congress to stop trying to halt the use of peyote, a

27

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 substance obtained from a cactus that produced hallucinatory visions. The
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) employed more Native Americans, and
tribes acquired more land, better medical services, larger federal grants and
renewed pride in their culture.

Why and with what Native Americans in the USA 1945–60

results did Native
American activism The impact of the Second World War
increase after 1945? In the Second World War, around 75,000 Native Americans left the
reservations to serve in the armed forces and work in defence industries.
They returned with increased rights consciousness. For example, they
KEY TERM criticized the white-dominated BIA for dictatorial meddling, such as banning
alcohol (until 1953).
Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) Established in 1824, The Truman years 1945–53
the BIA had responsibility for Initially, Democrat President Truman continued Roosevelt’s sympathetic
Native Americans. From the
policies and Congress created the Indian Claims Commission, which aimed
late twentieth century, it
focused more on advice and
to compensate Native Americans for previous unjust land loss. From 1946 to
less on control. 1968, the commission distributed around $400 million, which contributed to
tribal economic development. Ironically, according to Native American
Pueblo Native American
historian Donald Fixico (2004), although intended to ‘solve’ the ‘Indian
tribe of the West.
problem’, the commission ‘mobilized and solidified Native people while
Republican The Republican making them keenly aware of the government’s long history of unfulfilled
Party tends to favour minimal obligations’.
government intervention in
the economy and society. In 1950, Truman appointed Dillon Myer as commissioner. Myer intervened in
tribal affairs in a dictatorial fashion. For example, he sold Pueblo tribal land
without their consent. He tried to break up reservations and scatter the
people. His relocation programme aimed to get Native Americans jobs in the
cities, but many ended up on welfare and one-third returned to their
reservations. Native Americans felt Myer was trying to destroy their
civilization and asked that jobs be brought to reservations.

The Eisenhower years 1953–61

Native American historian Angie Debo (1995) described the presidency of
Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–61) as ‘back to the bad old days’.

Termination of reservations
Congress disliked tribal self-government and in 1953 increased the state
governments’ jurisdiction over reservations. In order to try to stop taxpayers
having to subsidize Native Americans, and to release reservation lands for
white economic development, Congress ‘terminated’ some reservations,
especially where the Natives were few, poor, and on land that might prove
valuable to white men. For example, scattered bands of poor, illiterate Utah
Paiutes were ‘terminated’ because it was believed there was oil and uranium
on their land.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Lack of progress
Indians made less progress than African Americans in the Eisenhower years
because:
l African Americans had more contact with whites and used white
traditions such as national organization and litigation (see Chapter 2).
l Native Americans were fewer, less urbanized, and culturally disoriented.
l Separate tribes and geographical segregation worked against effective
national organizations and made Native Americans easier prey for an
administration that preached the virtues of self-help and minimal federal
intervention.
The Cold War retarded Native American progress because it generated
pressure for conformity and consensus, and a desire to promote assimilation
to US culture. Viewing reservations as divisive and racist, some white liberals
sought integration for Native Americans and encouraged Eisenhower’s
‘termination’ programme.

Increased Native American assertiveness How and why were

1960–80 Native Americans
more assertive in
Continued Native American problems 1960–80?
Reservation poverty, unemployment, poor housing and education were an
embarrassment to the world’s richest nation. Half of the 700,000 Native
American population lived short, hard lives on the reservations, where
unemployment ranged from 20 to 80 per cent and life expectancy in 1968
was 44 years (the national average was 64). Native Americans had
exceptionally high rates of suicide and alcoholism. Their continuing
deprivation was championed by presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, who
publicized appalling poverty on Native American reservations in Oklahoma
and New York State in 1968.
Native Americans gravitated to the cities but poor education ensured
low-paying jobs, poor housing, poor schools and a high crime rate.

National Congress of American Indians

Impressed by the progress of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) (see pages 55–6), Native Americans established
the first pan-Indian movement, the National Congress of American Indians
(NCAI), in 1944. The NCAI was invigorated by Eisenhower’s termination
policy, helped to bring about its end in 1958, then persuaded President
Kennedy (1961–3) to promise more jobs on reservations. The NCAI copied
NAACP’s litigation strategy, suing state and federal governments over
discrimination in employment and schooling and for breaking treaties. The
NCAI did not seek integration into US society but worked for the survival of
the separate Native American cultural identity.

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 During the 1960s’ rights revolution Natives gained in self-confidence and
KEY TERM
became more assertive, using direct action to attain their goals, and asking
Rights revolution to be called Native Americans rather than Indians. They became increasingly
Increasingly assertive critical of the BIA, and NCAI leaders who co-operated with it were despised
movements for equal rights as ‘apples’ (red on the outside but white on the inside) or ‘Uncle Tomahawks’
for minorities and women in (a variant on the African American ‘Uncle Tom’).
the 1960s.
Direct action Physical National Indian Youth Council
protest, such as occupation In 1961, 500 tribal and urban Native American leaders attended a national
of land. conference of Native political organizations in Chicago. This inspired some
Uncle Tom Uncle Tom in young, college-educated Native Americans to organize the National Indian
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Youth Council (NIYC).
novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1852) was perceived as Treaty rights
excessively deferential to Over the centuries, the US government made and then broke several
whites by twentieth-century hundred treaties with Native Americans. In 1969, Vine Deloria Jr wrote a
African Americans, who bestseller, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, in which he quoted
described obsequious President Lyndon Johnson talking about US ‘commitments’ and President
contemporaries as Uncle Richard Nixon decrying the failure of the USSR to respect treaties: ‘Indian
Toms. people laugh themselves sick when they hear these statements.’ Native
USSR Union of Soviet Americans began to draw attention to broken treaties.
Socialist Republics, the name
given to Russia from 1922, Native Americans directed their protests against all levels of government. An
also known as the Soviet old Washington state treaty took Native American land but left them
Union. exclusive fishing areas. State courts closed river areas to Native American
Sit-ins African American
fishermen in 1964. Inspired by African American sit-ins (see page 73), the
protesters sat in and refused NIYC staged a ‘fish-in’ to remind white Americans of Native American treaty
to move from white-only rights. In 1968 the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Native rights under the
restaurants in the mid- treaty, but said that the state could ‘regulate all fishing’ so long as it did not
twentieth century. discriminate against the Native Americans. Washington state authorities
Supreme Court The ignored the ruling and continued to arrest Indian fishermen. Protests, raids
judicial branch of the federal and arrests continued into the 1970s.
government, which rules on
the constitutionality of actions Red Power and American Indian Movement
and laws. Inspired by the separatist Black Power movement (see pages 108–16), a Red
Power movement developed. ‘We do not want to be pushed into the
Ghettos Areas in cities
inhabited mostly or solely by mainstream of American life’, said the NIYC president. NCAI’s director
(usually poor) members of a defined Red Power as ‘the political and economic power to run our own lives
particular ethnicity or in our own way’. Red Power militants used a variety of methods to achieve
nationality. their aims, including monitoring police racism, establishing survival schools,
gaining publicity through occupations, protest marches and writing, and
litigation. Most militant of all was the American Indian Movement (AIM).

AIM in the ghettos

AIM developed in one of the few Native American big-city ghettos, in
Minneapolis–St Paul, in 1968. When young AIM members monitored police
racism, the Native American population in the local jails dropped by 60 per

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

cent. With 40 chapters across the USA and Canada, AIM worked to improve
KEY TERM
ghetto housing, education and employment, and attracted members from
the reservations. AIM stressed positive imagery, and attacked white use of Chapters Local branches of
names such as the ‘Washington Redskins’ football team: ‘Even the name a national organization.
Indian is not ours. It was given to us by some dumb honky [white] who got Survival schools Under
lost and thought he’d landed in India.’ AIM was important in one of the most Title IV of the Indian
famous examples of Indian activism, at Wounded Knee (see page 32), after Education Act (1972), Native
which it established survival schools. Schools such as Heart of the Earth Americans could control their
Survival School, established by AIM in Minneapolis in 1972, instructed urban children’s education.
children in Native languages and culture.

Occupation
Occupation was an effective way to gain publicity.

IAT and the occupation of Alcatraz, November 1969 to June 1971

Alcatraz Island was an unused federal prison in San Francisco Bay. Inspired
by the loss of San Francisco’s Indian Center, 14 members of the Indians of
All Tribes (IAT) occupied the island in 1969 and made headlines. Within a
month, over 600 Native Americans from over 50 different tribes occupied
Alcatraz. After the federal government cut off telephones, electricity and
water, most left. Federal forces then invaded the island and physically evicted
the remainder.
Source M

An extract from the Proclamation of the ‘Indians of All Tribes’ from

How effective is this
Alcatraz in 1969, quoted at http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=
proclamation in Source M?
ALCATRAZ_Proclamation
Give reasons for your
We feel that this so-called Alcatraz Island is more than suitable for an Indian answer.
reservation, as determined by the white man’s own standards. By this we mean
that this place resembles most Indian reservations in that:
  1. It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of
transportation.
  2.  It has no fresh running water.
  3.  The sanitation facilities are inadequate …
  5.  There is no industry and so unemployment is very great.
  6.  There are no health care facilities.
  7.  The soil is rocky and non-productive and the land does not support game.
  8.  There are no educational facilities.
  9.  The population has always exceeded the land base.
10. The population has always been held as prisoners and dependent upon
others.
… We will work to de-pollute the air and waters in the Bay Area… [and to]
restore fish and animal life.

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 AIM, the Trail of Broken Treaties and the occupation of the
BIA 1972
In 1972, AIM activists marched from San Francisco to Washington, DC along
what they called ‘The Trail of Broken Treaties’, in order to publicize the need
for compensation for multiple US government violations of nineteenth-
century treaties with Native Americans. The protesters occupied the BIA
building in Washington. The Nixon administration took notice (see page 33).
KEY TERM
AIM and the occupation of Wounded Knee 1973
Sioux Native American In 1890, Sioux people were massacred at the village of Wounded Knee on
tribe, mostly resident in the the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 1973, Wounded Knee was occupied by around
Great Plains. 300 Sioux people in order to publicize the reservation’s problems. It had over
Mohawk Native American, 50 per cent unemployment and exceptionally high suicide and alcoholism
resident on the US and rates. Life expectancy was only 46 years. The trigger event for the occupation
Canadian east coasts. of Wounded Knee was the killing of Wesley Bad Heart Bull by a white man
whose indictment for manslaughter could have led to his release within a
decade. When the murdered man’s mother protested, she was arrested on a
charge that could have led to 30 years’ incarceration.
The occupation force demanded free elections of tribal leaders, an
investigation of the BIA, and the review of all treaties. Many of the protesters
were members of AIM, brought in, according to a female participant,
‘because our men were scared. It was mostly the women that went forward
and spoke out’. Several hostages were held at gunpoint and heavily armed
federal forces quickly besieged Wounded Knee. Two Natives were killed.
After 71 days, peace was agreed and the federal government promised an
investigatory commission. Although the commission said the 1868 treaty was
superseded by the federal government’s power to take land, the occupation
paid off. The federal government became more sensitive to Native American
concerns.

Writers
Writers such as Vine Deloria Jr (Custer Died for Your Sins, 1969) and Dee
Brown (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 1971) raised national awareness of
the mistreatment of Native Americans.
Source N

An extract from the Mohawk newspaper Akwesasne Notes by Vine

According to Source N, what
is the typical non-Indian view Deloria Jr (1968), quoted in A People’s History of the United States by
of the history of the American Howard Zinn, published by Longman, Harlow, UK, 1996, page 517.
Indian? How does the writer Every now and then I am impressed with the thinking of the non-Indian. I was
ridicule that view? in Cleveland last year and got to talking with a non-Indian about American
history. He said that he was really sorry about what has happened to Indians,
but that there was a good reason for it. The continent had to be developed and he
felt that Indians had stood in the way, and thus had had to be removed. ‘After
all,’ he remarked, ‘what did you do with the land when you had it?’ I didn’t

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

understand him until later when I discovered that the Cuyahoga River running
through Cleveland is inflammable. So many combustible pollutants are dumped
into the river that the inhabitants have to take special precautions during the
summer to avoid setting it on fire. After reviewing the argument of my non- KEY TERM
Indian friend I decided that he was probably correct. Whites had made better use
Cheyenne Native American
of the land. How many Indians could have thought of creating an inflammable tribe in the western USA.
river?
Navajo and Hopi Native
Americans of Arizona, Utah
Litigation and New Mexico.
Native American lawyers gained some successes in the law courts, as shown War on Poverty President
over mineral rights. Traditionally, the federal government leased mineral Johnson’s programmes to
rights on reservations to private companies and Native Americans gained help the poor, e.g. Social
little. In 1973, the Northern Cheyenne of Montana won a federal court Security Act (1965).
victory enabling them to renegotiate mineral contracts. Sometimes, victories Welfare dependency
took time. In 2005, the Peabody Coal Company had to stop mining on Reliance on federal aid.
Navajo and Hopi reservation lands after 50 years of protests, controversy
and litigation.

The federal government and Native How did the federal

Americans 1960–80 government respond
to increased Native
Increased Native American assertiveness made the federal government more American
helpful. assertiveness?

President Lyndon Johnson (1963–9) and Native Americans

Native Americans were among the greatest beneficiaries of Johnson’s
War on Poverty, although some of them disliked the resulting welfare
dependency culture. Johnson appointed a Native American to head the BIA
in 1966, and his 1968 Civil Rights Act contained an ‘Indian Bill of Rights’,
designed to protect Native Americans from both white and tribal
dictatorship. It faciliated access to better health services, housing, education,
welfare and poverty benefits, and employment (Native Americans had to rely
heavily on federal job creation schemes as the limited pool of skilled
workers, poor communications and distance from markets made reservations
unattractive to private industry). However, some Native Americans resented
the interference in tribal affairs.

President Richard Nixon (1969–74) and the

Self-Determination Act
In 1975, Congress passed Nixon’s Indian Self-Determination Act, which
restored the special legal status of Native American tribes. It gave them most
of the powers exercised by state governments, some control over federal
programmes on their lands, and increased control over education.

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 Source O
Look at Source O. Other US Indian population – census details.
than a natural increase in
population, what might 1960 – 523,591
explain the dramatic increase 1970 – 792,730
in persons describing 1980 – 1.37 million
themselves as ‘Indians’ to 1990 – 1.8 million
census-takers?

Court decisions
In response to Native American litigation, the Supreme Court recognized the
‘unique and limited’ sovereignty of Native American tribes in US v. Wheeler
KEY TERM (1978). Court decisions in 1979 resulted in the restoration of 1800 acres
(730 ha) to Narrangansetts in Rhode Island and $100 million compensation
Narrangansetts Native
to the Sioux for ‘dishonourable dealing’ in the acquisition of the Black Hills in
American tribe of eastern
USA. South Dakota (the Sioux rejected the money and demanded the land
instead).
Ironically, as historian Paula Marks (1998) noted, ‘All of this governmental
activity to address Indian problems and concerns actually fed activism rather
than defused it.’

The President (the  Congress (the legislative 
executive branch) branch)
• Can recommend • Consists of two houses: 
legislation to the Senate and the House
Congress and can of Representatives
veto their bills • Each state elects two
• Appoints to the senators
The
cabinet and federal • Congressmen who sit in
American
bureaucracy the House of
people 
• Head of state Representatives represent
vote for
congressional districts. The
number of Representatives
per state depends on that
state’s population
• Congress passes bills,
which then become laws

The Supreme Court (the judicial branch)
• Judges are appointed by the President but his
nominees need the Senate’s approval
• Approves laws, decides whether they are
‘constitutional’ (i.e. that they do not go against
the US Constitution)
• Issues rulings (does not make laws)

The federal system of government in the USA

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_156621_AHIB_Civil Rights.indb 35

CANADA

WASHINGTON
81,000

NEW
YORK
MICHIGAN 63,000
56,000

CALIFORNIA
242,000 NORTH
CAROLINA 80,000
NEW OKLAHOMA
ARIZONA 252,000 N
204,000 MEXICO
134,000
Pacific Ocean

Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

TEXAS
66,000

Atlantic Ocean

N
ALASKA Gulf of Mexico
86,000
MEXICO
0 250 500 mls

0 250 mls 0 500 km

0 500 km
05/12/2012 12:40

Map showing US states with the largest Native American populations, based on data from the US Bureau of the Census 1990
35
 Had Native Native Americans in the late twentieth
Americans achieved
equality by 2000?
century
By the end of the twentieth century the USA contained 2.5 million Native
Americans (one per cent of the national population), a quarter of whom
lived on reservations. With greater pride in their ethnicity and protection
from the federal government, their lives had improved since 1945. However,
although their income had improved by a third during the 1990s, it was still
only half the national average. Their disease, poverty, unemployment, suicide
and alcoholism rates remained the highest of all ethnic groups.
Problems with self-government remained (see Source P). Native Americans
continued to clash with state and federal authorities over land rights and
customs. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978) was ‘effectively
gutted’ (Donald Fixico, 2004) by the increasingly conservative Supreme
Court, which in 1990 refused to review a decision restricting the use of
peyote. Under the unsympathetic Republican President Ronald Reagan
(1981–9), self-determination was interpreted as justification for a decrease in
federal financial aid. In contrast, under the Democrat President Bill Clinton
(1993–2001), the 1996 Native American Housing and Self-Determination
Act (NAHASDA) gave block grants to allow tribes to build their own
housing and thereby attract unsuccessful urban Native Americans back to
the reservations.
Source P

An extract from an open letter from Native Americans to President

What point is Source P
George H.W. Bush, who attacked Iraq in 1991 in order to liberate Kuwait
making? Is it effective?
from Iraqi occupation, quoted in A People’s History of the United States by
Howard Zinn, Longman, Harlow, UK, 1996, page 615.
Dear President Bush. Please send your assistance in freeing our small nation
from occupation. This foreign force occupied our lands to steal our rich resources.
They used biological warfare and deceit, killing thousands of elders, children and
women in the process. As they overwhelmed our land, they deposed leaders and
people of our own government, and in its place, they installed their own
government systems that yet today control our daily lives in many ways. As in
your own words, the occupation and overthrow of one small nation … is one too
many. Sincerely, An American Indian.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Key debate Do Native Americans

have meaningful
Vine Deloria Jr and Clifford Lytle (1984) argued that the 1975 Indian Self-
self-determination?
Determination and Education Act and American Indian Policy Review
Commission Act promised more than they delivered, mostly due to
insufficient funding. Others were more positive. Stephen Cornell (1988) said
Native Americans gained more influence over federal actions and over their
own financial and organizational resources. Donald Parman (1994) argued
that the educational provisions were successful, especially in the growth of
community colleges, and that the 1975 legislation paved the way for other
helpful laws such as the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (1976).
Some historians see Native Americans as victims (often passive) of federal
and state government policies, but Donald Fixico (2004) argued that while
these policies ‘undoubtedly’ changed Native lives, the changes ‘rarely’ Is it ever possible for
reflected policymakers’ desires: termination failed, relocation did not manage indigenous cultures of
to cut ties to the reservations, and Reagan’s interpretation of self- the Americas to receive
determination led to increased Native assertiveness and sovereignty, as the same amount of
respect as members of
demonstrated by the construction of more gambling casinos on reservation
the majority/ruling
land. These currently earn tribes over $1 billion annually, but are unpopular population? (Social
with state governments, because they have a competitive advantage over Sciences, Emotion.)
state-regulated gambling.

Colonial era Conquest, racism, inferiority 

19th century Military defeat, reservations, boarding schools 
1900–50 Citizenship –
Poverty 
Indian New Deal 
1950–2000 Termination 
Organizations, activism, militancy, made federal 
government increasingly sensitive to needs, but
still worst off of all ethnic minorities  Summary diagram

Native Americans in the USA

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 3 First Peoples in Canada
Key question: How and to what extent did First Peoples achieve
equality in Canada after 1945?
KEY TERM

First Nations Indigenous Background: First Peoples before 1945

peoples in Canada. More From the seventeenth century, First Nations peoples struggled in the face of
recently, members of the
European settlers who took their land, pressure to adopt ‘Canadian culture’,
various nations refer to
themselves by their tribal or and governments and law courts based on alien European concepts. From
national identity. the 1870s, many First Nations peoples signed treaties with the federal
government that established reserves on which they were to live and farm.
Reserves Areas officially
designated as living space for The Indian Act 1876
Canada’s indigenous The Indian Act of 1876 gave white officials ultimate authority over the First
population.
Nations peoples. Responsibility for their education was given to the
Indian Act The 1876 Indian Churches, which practised forced cultural assimilation in residential schools
Act said how reserves and that took children away from their parents and the reserves, prepared them
tribes should operate and
for traditionally low-paid occupations, and punished them for speaking their
who should be recognized as
own language or practising their own religion.
‘Indian’. It was amended on
many occasions.
Resistance
Inuit Indigenous people in In the late nineteenth century there were roughly 10,000 Inuits, 10,000
Canada, formerly known as Métis and 120,000 other First Nations people. Some refused to seek
Eskimos. permission from Indian Agents to sell their produce or leave their reserves
Métis Of mixed European and ignored bans on cultural practices such as Sun Dances and potlatches.
and First Nations or Inuit The Métis rebelled over land loss in 1870 and 1885, but the government
blood. quashed them and did nothing to alleviate the poverty and discrimination
Indian Agents Canadian from which they continued to suffer in the twentieth century.
government representatives
with ultimate authority over First Nations people 1900–45
reserves. The League of Indians in Canada was established in 1919 because:
Sun Dances Religious l Indian Acts of 1905 and 1911 enabled the Canadian government to
ceremonies of prairie First expropriate or exchange reserve lands so as to ‘encourage’ indigenous
Nations peoples. people off their communal land and further assimilation
Potlatches Ceremonial l the Department of Indian Affairs was unsympathetic
exchange of gifts by coastal l other Canadians were hostile or indifferent
First Nations peoples of l shared experiences in the First World War increased pan-Indian
British Columbia. consciousness.
Department of Indian
Afflicted by internal divisions, police surveillance, accusations of
Affairs Canadian
government department set Communism, harassment by the Department of Indian Affairs and
up under the 1880 Indian Act leadership problems, the league nevertheless inspired more militant
to regulate First Nations successors.
peoples.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

The forgotten people

In 1934, an Albertan provincial commission investigated the Métis’ shocking
living conditions and concluded they suffered intense discrimination and
were facing extinction. Around 90 per cent had tuberculosis, and paralysis,
blindness and syphilis were rampant. According to historians Alvin Finkel
and Margaret Conrad (1993), they became ‘the forgotten people, invisible
even in the census until 1981’, when they were recognized for the first time
as an ethnic group.

Canada’s indigenous population 1945–70 Why and to what

extent did the
In 1945, the average lifespan of impoverished Natives was half that of other position of First
Canadians, infant mortality rates remained at over four times the national Nations people
average, and many died from excessive alcohol drunk to numb the sense of improve 1945–70?
social, cultural and economic despair. On the reserves they suffered from
poor nutrition and inadequate housing. Off the reserves, they were
discriminated against in employment, housing and schools, where they were
streamed into non-academic courses. Many Native children remained in the
hated residential schools.

Beaufort Sea
Baffin N
Bay

NUNAVIT
YUKON 25,000
7900
NORTHWEST
TERRITORIES
21,000
NEWFOUNDLAND
and LABRADOR
Hudson 23,000
BRITISH Bay
COLUMBIA
196,000
SASKATCHEWAN

ALBERTA MANITOBA
QUEBEC
188,000 175,000
142,000

108,000 NEW PRINCE

BRUNSWICK EDWARD Is.
ONTARIO 18,000 1700
242,000
NOVA
SCOTIA
24,000
0 500 mls
Atlantic Ocean
USA
0 1000 km

Map showing the indigenous populations of the Canadian provinces (based on the 2006 census)

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 However, there were some hopeful signs. The Aboriginal population had
KEY TERM
begun a numerical recovery after 1930. Some organizational experience had
Aboriginal Canadian term been gained. When many Church-educated Indians became advocates of
for the indigenous Native rights, the Churches adopted less aggressively assimilationist policies.
populations. In 1945, responsibility for Native health was transferred from the
Status Indians Also known Department of Indian Affairs to the Department of National Health and
as registered Indians; listed Welfare, which contributed to some improvement in Indian health. Although
on Indian Register and a special parliamentary committee report on the Indian Act (1948)
entitled to benefits under the ‘demonstrated continued Euro-Canadian disregard for the traditions of
Indian Act. Canada’s first peoples’ (Finkel and Conrad, 1993), the revised Indian Act of
Bands First Nations tribes. 1951 ended the ban on potlatches and Sun Dances. The 1956 Citizenship Act
granted formal citizenship to Inuit and status Indians, who were given the
vote in provincial then federal elections in 1960. Elected band councils were
given more decision-making powers although the Department of Indian
Affairs could overrule their decisions.

Increased militancy
Native progress was traditionally hampered by poor education, geographical
dispersal and internal divisions, especially between status Indians who
benefited from the Indian Act, and the Métis and non-status Indians who
did not. In 1961 the National Indian Council (NIC) was created to improve
Native unity and lives but disagreements between status Indians, non-status
people and Métis led non-status Indians and Métis to establish their own
Native Council of Canada, and status Indians formed the National Indian
Brotherhood (NIB) (1968). These bodies proved more successful in
negotiating with the new Department of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development (established in 1966) over matters relating to land and rights.
Why did Native people respond to continued subjugation with increased
organization and militancy after 1960?
l They had the organizational traditions of the League of Indians on which
to build.
l The 1960s was characterized by the militancy of the less privileged and
each group’s actions inspired others. Some First Nations peoples were
inspired by AIM (see page 30).
l The 1961 Canadian Bill of Rights inspired rights-consciousness (the
Canadian Supreme Court began to hear cases based on it in 1970).
l Other Canadians grew increasingly affluent after 1945 and First Nations
people sought to decrease the disparity by regaining lost lands and the
observation of treaty rights.
l The discovery and exploitation of new raw materials in the North of
Canada threatened Aboriginal lifestyles and prompted activism.
l Sometimes government insensitivity encouraged activism, as with the
Trudeau government’s White Paper.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Queen Elizabeth II (Head of State)

appoints

Governor General

appoints
Executive branch of
federal government
(always the leader
Prime Minister of the largest party
in the Commons)

advises Governor General to appoint

Cabinet

Parliament (in the capital, Ottawa)

Senate House of Commons

Legislative branch of
federal government
105 senators, appointed by 308 members of parliament
the Governor General on the (MPs) elected by Canadian
advice of the Prime Minister people

Supreme Court
Judicial branch of
federal government Nine justices, appointed by the Governor General on the
advice of the Prime Minister, hear appeals from lower courts

The constitution empowers the legislatures of the provinces

Provincial to tax and to legislate on certain subjects. Only the
government
parliament in Ottawa can legislate on First Nations matters.

The federal system of government in Canada

The Trudeau government’s White Paper

In the Trudeau government’s 1969 White Paper (see Source Q, page 42),
Minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chretien proposed that:
l the Indian Act be abolished
l the Department of Indian Affairs be dismantled and responsibility for
Aboriginal people devolved to the provinces
l Aboriginal land claims be rejected
l First Nations people lose their special status and be assimilated into the
general Canadian population with ‘other ethnic minorities’ status.

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 Produced without any real consultation with the indigenous population, the
White Paper prioritized individual rights over traditional Native collective
rights. NIB led the attack on the White Paper, pointing out that Natives
wanted self-government and the reassertion of their culture not assimilation.
They claimed that the White Paper policy would constitute ‘cultural
genocide’. Surprised by this outraged reaction, the Trudeau government
dropped the White Paper, but ignored the demand for self-government.
Trudeau established an Indian Claims Commission in 1969 to settle land
claims but the government was so slow to deal with them that the Natives
looked to the courts for redress.
Source Q

Using Source Q and your An extract from A History of the Canadian Peoples by J.M. Bumsted,
own knowledge, give published by Oxford University Press, Toronto, Canada, 2007, page 418.
arguments for and against The White Paper was consistent with federal policy towards all minorities,
Trudeau’s assimilationist including French Canadians, at the end of the 1960s. It called for the
position on Canadian Indians. enhancement of the individual rather than the collective rights of Native Peoples:
‘The Government believes that its policies must lead to the full, free, and
non-discriminatory participation of the Aboriginal people in Canadian society.
Such a goal requires a break with the past. It requires that the Aboriginal
people’s role of dependence be replaced by a role of equal status, opportunity, and
responsibility, a role they can share with all other Canadians’ (Statement of the
Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969:5). An assimilationist
document, the White Paper insisted that treaties between the Crown and
Aboriginals had involved only ‘limited and minimal promises’ that had been
greatly exceeded in terms of the ‘economic, educational, health, and welfare needs
of the Indian people’ by subsequent government performance (Statement of the
Government of Canada on Indian Policy 1969:5). Allowing Aboriginal people
full access to Canadian social services (many of which were administered
provincially) would mark an advance over existing paternalism.
Ottawa seemed surprised that Native people responded so negatively to the
White Paper, conveniently ignoring its implications for the concepts of treaty and
Aboriginal rights. Prime Minister Trudeau defended the policy as an enlightened
one, noting that ‘the time is now to decide whether the Indians will be a race
apart in Canada or whether they will be Canadians of full status.’ He added, ‘It’s
inconceivable, I think, that in a given society one section of the society have a
treaty with the other section of the society. We must all be equal under the law’
(Indian-Eskimo Association of Canada, 1970: Appendix 8).

Harold Cardinal 1945–2005

A member of the Sucker Creek Reserve band, Harold Cardinal became
president of Alberta’s Indian Association in 1968. Natives considered his
bestselling response (see Source R) to the 1969 White Paper to be the first
effective statement of their grievances.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Source R

Extracts from The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s Indians by

What were Harold Cardinal’s
Harold Cardinal (1969), quoted and described in A History of the Canadian
grievances in Source R, and
Peoples by J.M. Bumsted, published by Oxford University Press, Toronto,
how justified were they?
Canada, 2007, pages 417–18.
Cardinal described the White Paper as a ‘thinly disguised programme of
extermination through assimilation’, adding that the federal government, ‘instead
of acknowledging its legal and moral responsibilities to the Indians of Canada and
honouring the treaties that the Indians signed in good faith, now proposes to wash
its hands of Indians entirely, passing the buck to the provincial governments.’
Cardinal … [observed] that while ‘Canadian urbanites have walked blisters on
their feet and fat off their rumps to raise money for underdeveloped countries
outside Canada’, Canadians generally did not ‘give a damn’ about the plight of
their own Native people. He also attacked ‘Uncle Tomahawks’ among his own
people who continually apologized for being Aboriginal… Cardinal was also a
critic of Canada’s ‘two founding peoples’ [English and French] concept, pointing
out that it did not recognize ‘the role played by the Indian even before the
founding of the nation state known as Canada’. He insisted that the First
Nations were not separatists; they merely wanted their treaty and Aboriginal
rights recognized so that they could take their place ‘with the other cultural
identities of Canada’.

Continued problems 1970–2000 What difficulties did

the indigenous
Despite their increased activism and greater visibility in Canadian society,
population face in the
which had resulted in higher government expenditure, Natives still suffered late twentieth
problems in the 1970s. Those who lived in the cities were rarely fully century?
assimilated. Uneducated and discriminated against in housing and
employment, they lived in urban ghettos with poor housing, poverty and
frequent drunkenness. Natives and Métis ran Friendship Centres and
addiction programmes in order to help urban dwellers. However, band
leaders generally felt it better to live on the reserves, even though infant
mortality and overall death rates remained high, conditions were frequently
characteristic of nations far less developed than Canada, and there were
usually great economic problems.

Industry versus the indigenous population

White-owned industries frequently impacted on Natives, who were
particularly angry when industrial developments near reserves depleted the
wildlife and poisoned the waters on which they depended, but did not offer
them jobs (companies preferred to employ trained personnel from outside).
For example, in 1970 severe mercury poisoning was found in First Nations
people in the province of Ontario, due to water pollution by Dryden
Chemicals Company. This contributed to the eventual establishment of the
Indian Health Transfer Policy, which prepared the way for First Nations
people to take control of their own health services.

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 Control of education
The residential school system was gradually phased out from the 1960s, and
pressure from NIB and provincial associations forced the government to
increase Native responsibility for their education. From 1973, it became
common for Native children to attend local schools controlled by band
councils, particularly at elementary level. However, the national government
did not build high schools near to reserves, so many children had to spend
several hours daily travelling to and from school, or live in towns.

Legal inequality
Nova Scotia and Manitoba initiated Royal Commissions to investigate
discrimination against Aboriginals in the criminal justice system.

KEY TERM
Donald Marshall
In 1986, Nova Scotia set up a Royal Commission to examine the wrongful
Mi’kmaq Aboriginal of 11-year imprisonment of Donald Marshall, a Mi’kmaq, for a murder he did
eastern Canada. not commit. Its report concluded that he had been the victim of repeated
Aboriginal title Claim to instances of incompetence and cover-up, partly due to his being Aboriginal.
land based on centuries of
residence by the indigenous Helen Betty Osborne
population. The Manitoba Public Inquiry into the Administration of Justice and
Aboriginal People was sparked by the murder of Helen Betty Osborne in The
Pas, a town in Manitoba, in 1971. Boarding in The Pas while attending high
school, she was abducted by four white youths. When she refused to have
sex with them they stabbed her over 50 times. Although the murder was
common knowledge among the white population, and one of the youths
even bragged about the incident, no one would give names to the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). After 14 years, one was convicted. The
provincial attorney general said that the RCMP would have acted with
greater urgency if the victim had been white. The RCMP blamed the
conspiracy of silence among the white community. The inquiry concluded
that racism was behind the miscarriage of justice.

Land disputes
From the first arrival of Europeans in Canada, the great issue with the
Natives was control and use of land. This remained a focal point of
contention throughout the twentieth century.

Successes
After the Trudeau government established the Indian Claims Commission in
1969, a series of landmark court decisions, many by the Canadian Supreme
Court, reaffirmed the principle of Aboriginal rights. In 1973, the Canadian
Supreme Court ruled in the Calder case that the Nisga’a band of British
Columbia had Aboriginal title to their land that had never been and could
not be extinguished (see Source S), although it was 1999 before British
Columbia finally created a reserve.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Source S

From the ruling of Mr Justice Wilfred Judson of the Supreme Court of

What is Source S’s
Canada in the Calder case (1973), quoted in A History of the Canadian
justification for ‘Indian title’?
Peoples by J.M. Bumsted, published by Oxford University Press, Toronto,
Canada, 2007, page 516.
The fact is that when the settlers came the Indians were there, organized in
societies and occupying the land as their forefathers had done for centuries. This
is what Indian title means. What they are asserting in this action is that they
had a right to continue to live on their lands as their forefathers had lived, and
that these rights have never been lawfully extinguished. What emerges from the
evidence is that the Nishgas in fact are and were from time immemorial a
distinctive cultural entity with concept of ownership indigenous to their culture
and capable of articulation under the common law.

Another landmark development in the history of land disputes took place in

the Mackenzie Valley, where the Trudeau government supported proposed oil
and gas pipeline projects, but appointed Justice Thomas Berger to study the
issue. Berger listened to the indigenous population, concluded that pipelines
would damage the environment and the lifestyle of the Natives, and
recommended in 1977 that the construction be halted for a decade. Trudeau
agreed. Berger brought the Aboriginal perspective on proposed industrial
developments to public attention in such a way that in future it would prove
impossible for politicians to ignore Aboriginal peoples.
The 1982 Constitution Act
‘Existing Aboriginal rights’ and treaty rights were recognized in the 1982
Constitution Act, but individual cases had to be decided by the courts. In the
resultant flood of litigation, in which the Supreme Court never defined
‘existing Aboriginal rights’, Natives sometimes obtained quite favourable
rulings. The Inuit of the east Arctic got 350,000 km² (135,000 square miles) of
land in 1992 and in 1999 the eastern Arctic became a separately administered
territory called Nunavit (‘the people’s land’ in Inuktitut) where 17,500 of the
22,000 population were Inuit. Many considered Nunavit a bold experiment
in Native self-government. Others said Nunavit was not really run by the
Inuit, but was more like a traditional colony, as the territory contained federal
agencies and co-management boards.

Land disputes: problems

l Resolution of land claims did not always bring economic advancement. In
the 1980s, a federal study of Inuit and Cree of north Quebec found them
living in poverty, despite financial compensation from the provincial
governments for the surrender of land claims in 1975.
l Sometimes the courts were unsympathetic. In 1991, Chief Justice Allan
McEachern rejected Aboriginal rights to exclusive land ownership and
self-government, mostly because he rejected the oral history on which
their claims were based (in 1997 the court overruled him).

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 l The courts frequently disagreed. In 1993, Donald Marshall (see page 44)
was arrested again and charged under the Fisheries Act for catching eels
during the closed season in Nova Scotia. Although his lawyers argued that
he was exempt from the fishery regulations because of treaties between
the Crown and the Mi’kmaq dating from 1760–1, Marshall was found
guilty. That decision was upheld by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, but
rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999, which ruled that he
had a treaty right to a ‘moderate livelihood’ from the natural resources of
his region. This ruling led to tension, bitterness and violence in some
maritime communities when non-Native fishermen and fisheries and
oceans officials tried to stop Mi’ kmaq lobster fishers claiming their
‘treaty right’.
l The federal government was slow to settle any land claims but especially
those by non-treaty Indians who lacked reserves or treaty Indians who
claimed more territory than the government allotted them. In 1990, there
were over 500 claims outstanding, but only three or four were settled per
year. Frustration over land claims bogged down in bureaucracy and in the
courts led some to greater militancy.

Land disputes and militancy

Some Natives gained inspiration from AIM in the USA (see page 30). The
federal government had done little to protect the Aboriginals when the
British Columbian government had ignored treaties and seized lands for
industrial and urban expansion. In the 1980s, several British Columbian
bands clashed with loggers despoiling traditional Aboriginal lands. In 1991,
the government of British Columbia responded to increased Native militancy
by agreeing to negotiate land issues.
The most sensational confrontation occurred in Quebec in 1990, when
provincial police clashed with Mohawk Warriors over the development of a
golf course on sacred Mohawk land at a reserve near Oka. In the ensuing
violence, one policeman died and provincial Premier Robert Bourassa called
in the Canadian army. Not all Mohawks liked the Warriors, who ran
gambling casinos and smuggling operations, but there was unanimity over
this land. The federal government criticized the Warriors as terrorists but
their activism forced the government to buy the lands and give them to the
Mohawks. Violence paid off.

Provinces vs the federal government: the 1982 charter

The Constitution Act of 1982 incorporated a Charter of Rights and Freedoms
that prohibited discrimination over gender and colour. However, Native
lobbies failed to get an amendment guaranteeing self-government, because
British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec traditionally favoured
the rights of developers over the rights of the Aboriginals, feared losing the
right to control provincial resources, and opposed the charter.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Elijh Harper and the Constitution Act

At Meech Lake in 1987, the provinces agreed to Quebec’s demands for
modification of the 1982 Constitution in order to preserve provincial rights.
KEY TERM
Aboriginals criticized this Meech Lake Accord as sacrificing Native self-
government for provincial rights. The first treaty Indian to be elected to the Treaty Indian Status
Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, Cree leader Elijah Harper, gained national Indian.
publicity in 1990 when he exploited procedural methods to stop Manitoba
passing the accord, which lapsed, killed off by Aboriginal peoples and the
misgivings of several provinces.

The Charlottetown Accord

After the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, the provincial governments and
some Native leaders produced the Charlottetown Accord in 1992, which
called for ‘the recognition of the inherent right of self-government’ that
would preserve Native ‘languages, cultures, economies, identities,
institutions, and traditions’ and gave the Métis the opportunity to access to
some Aboriginal programmes and services. However, opposition grew. The
Parti Québécois leader, Jacques Parizeau, said that under the accord,
Aboriginal peoples would end up controlling most of Canada. Many Natives
were critical, saying the accord did nothing to speed up land claim
negotiations. Some status Indians asked why, as sovereign peoples, the
accord said that they had to negotiate with the federal and provincial
governments. The Charlottetown Accord was therefore rejected.

The residential schools

During the 1990s, the First Nations were increasingly perceived as a very
important Canadian political problem in relation to land rights, self-
government and compensation for earlier mistreatment.
The federal government and the Churches were slow to respond to
complaints about mistreatment in the residential schools, so in the 1990s
ex-pupils took them to court. In 1998, the Canadian government announced
its Aboriginal Action Plan to deal with past injustices, as part of which the
federal government acknowledged its role in the residential schools,
apologized, and offered $350 million in compensation. However, no
agreement resulted. Legal fees over these Aboriginal suits bankrupted many
Churches (see Source T), dioceses and religious orders.
Source T

An extract from the ‘United Church Apology to First Nations Peoples

What can you infer from
Regarding Residential Schools’, read by the Right Reverend Bill Phipps Source T about the differing
(1998), quoted in A History of the Canadian Peoples by J.M. Bumsted, viewpoints on the United
published by Oxford University Press, Toronto, Canada, page 522. Church’s involvement in the
On behalf of the United Church of Canada I apologize for the pain and suffering residential schools system?
that our church’s involvement in the Indian Residential School system has
caused. We are aware of some of the damage that this cruel and ill-conceived
system of assimilation has perpetrated on Canada’s First Nations people. For this

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 we are truly and most humbly sorry … We know that many within our church
will still not understand why each of us must bear the scar, the blame for this
horrendous period in Canadian history. But the truth is we are the bearers of
many blessings from our ancestors, and therefore we must also bear their
burdens.

The Royal Commission report of 1996

In 1991, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney created the Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples. Its 1996 report proposed self-government for First
Nations people, said that the Canadian government should negotiate ‘nation
to nation’ with a First Nations government, recommended a $2 billion grant
to the governments of the First Nations, and ‘set out a 20-year agenda for
change’. Inspired by the commission, the federal government announced the
Aboriginal Right to Self-Government Policy in 1995, which recognized the
right of the indigenous population to decide on a suitable form of self-
government. As a result of the commission, the Indian Health Transfer Policy
granted self-determination in health and several accords were signed
between First Nations people and federal and provincial governments.
However, long-standing tensions over land ownership, land use and Native
political rights continued into the twenty-first century.

Was the Aboriginal The indigenous population in the twenty-first

population equal after
2000?
century
The strength of the Native lobby, led by the Assembly of the First Nations
(formerly NIB), had forced reconsideration of the rights of Natives, but
Natives remained aggrieved and their problems continued:
l The indigenous population’s living conditions remained unsatisfactory. In
2005, Health Canada investigated Escherichia coli and skin disease among
the Kashechewan First Nation, and found that local operators who ran the
water treatment plants were unqualified (chlorine was not being used in
the water treatment) and that the skin disorders were due to living in
unhygienic conditions.
l First Nations people suffered higher rates of poverty, unemployment,
incarceration, suicide, substance abuse and health problems than other
Canadian citizens.
l The life of expectancy of the 500,000 Natives was 8.1 years shorter for
males and 5.5 years shorter for females.
l Natives remained below the national average in educational attainment.
l While two-thirds of status Indians lived on over 2600 reserves, the
remainder lived mostly in larger southern cities such as Winnipeg,
Manitoba, where disaffection led to increasing numbers of gangs.
l Self-government gave chiefs councils wide-ranging and self-regulatory
powers that some people criticized as excessive, likely to fragment
Canada, and poorly exercised.

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l Many Aboriginals demanded more powers and financial compensation

for centuries of mistreatment. A 2005 meeting of first ministers and
Aboriginal leaders in Kelowna, British Columbia, led to Prime Minister
Paul Martin’s announcement that $5 billion of federal funds would be
committed to Aboriginals over five years in order to try to decrease the
gap in living standards between them and other Canadians, but Martin’s
Liberal government fell and the new Conservative government dumped
the Kelowna Accord.
On the other hand, there were positive signs. During the twentieth century,
the Aboriginal population increased 10-fold, suggesting improved healthcare
and a better standard of living. National Aboriginal Day, first celebrated in
1996, recognized the cultures and contributions of the First Nations, Inuit
and Métis peoples, although few provinces regarded it as a statutory holiday.
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the residential school
system. Following Trudeau’s establishment of the Indian Claims
Commission, a series of landmark court decisions, many from the Supreme
Court, established the Aboriginal right to hold lands and to negotiate over
them with the government.

Early 20th century

Pre-1900
• More white sympathy
• Conquest
• Vote
• Culture despised, land taken
• First World War
• Reserves – poverty, boarding schools
• League of Indians

Later 20th century

• Increased organization, militancy
• 1960s’ spirit
• Increased white affluence
• Trudeau’s White Paper
• Government sympathy – Royal Commissions
Still worst off of all Canadians • 1982 Constitution Act – Charter
• Control schools – apologies for boarding schools
• 1982 Constitution Act
• Berger and Supreme Court rulings on land
• Pollution by white industries
• White search for raw materials

Summary diagram

First Peoples in Canada

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 the colonial regime and the new republic. Native
Chapter summary Americans were put on reservations and their children
frequently ‘civilized’ in boarding schools. Their situation
was desperate by the early twentieth century, but
Native Americans and civil rights in the under Roosevelt the indigenous population gained
Americas some federal government respect for their culture and
The Spanish and Portuguese conquest deprived Latin some control over their reservations.
America’s indigenous population of land and respect. After 1945, Native American activism increased as a
There was no improvement under the new Latin result of the Second World War, the Indian Claims
American republics, even when in the early twentieth Commission and the African American example. New
century republics such as Mexico glorified their and more militant Indian organizations such as NIYC
indigenous heritage in order to create a national and AIM were established. They publicized continuing
identity. Countries with indigenous majorities such as indigenous problems in occupations, litigation and
Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru were among the writings. The federal government responded with
poorest in Latin America and within Latin American greater aid and support for self-determination, although
countries the indigenous population was invariably the clashes over land use and possession and cultural
most impoverished. practices continued.
The Latin American indigenous population became The conquered First Peoples in Canada also
more vociferous in the later twentieth century, when suffered from land loss, white cultural arrogance,
unions, improved communications, organizations, segregation on reserves and boarding schools. The
globalization, liberation theology and sympathetic First Peoples entered the twentieth century in great
governments all helped to put their rights on the poverty and deprivation, but from the 1960s became
national political agenda. Methods for obtaining equality increasingly organized and militant, inspired by previous
included rebellion, protests and publicity, and most organizational experience, African Americans, AIM, the
importantly, the franchise. Still, equality proved Canadian Bill of Rights, the increased affluence of other
impossible to achieve, owing to racism, greed, cultural Canadians, the exploitation of raw materials on their
clashes, internal divisions, unsympathetic governments lands and Prime Minister Trudeau’s assimilationist
and the financial cost of ending long-standing proposals in the 1969 White Paper. In the late
indigenous poverty. Peru’s Shining Path illustrated how twentieth century, First Peoples continued to suffer
violence failed to bring about improvement. Mexico from poverty, discrimination and the impact of
demonstrated how mestizos dominated the indigenous white-owned industries on their environment, but
population, and Guatemala unsuccessfully attempted indigenous organizations pressured the government
genocide of the indigenous majority. into granting greater self-determination and
Overall, despite some cause for optimism, the investigations of legal inequality and land disputes.
indigenous populations of Latin America had not Although the First Peoples did not gain all they wanted,
attained equality by 2000. their rights were very much on the federal and state
In what became the USA, the Native American agendas, and their situation had improved since the
population was deprived of land and despised under start of the twentieth century.

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 Chapter 1: Native Americans and civil rights in the Americas

Examination advice
How to answer ‘analyse’ questions
When answering questions with the command term analyse you should try
to identify the key elements and their relative importance.

Example
Analyse the effectiveness of a Native American organization in one country
in the region after the 1960s.
1 To answer this question successfully, you need to discuss what constituted
success or effectiveness and what constituted failure for one Native
American organization. Your focus should be on one country only. You
could write about a group in the USA, Canada or a Latin American country
such as Bolivia. In questions such as these, you need to set the terms and
then answer the question using these parameters. For example, if you were
to write about the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the USA, you
could discuss how effective the group was politically and/or socially. You
should also define for whom the group was effective. In other words, was
AIM effective for Native Americans or the US population or both?
2 Take several minutes and write down the goals, successes and failures of
the AIM. This will help you with your essay when you need to analyse
how effective the group was. An example is given below.

Goals
Improve housing, education, employment.
Bring attention to problems Native Americans faced.
Receive compensation for US treaty violations.

Successes
F ewer jailed when Minneapolis–St Paul police monitored.
1 972: Trail of Broken Treaties March from San Francisco to
­Washington, DC, gained attention.
1 973: Wounded Knee incident gained attention – Nixon
administration responded.
1 975: Indian Self-Determination Act. Some control regained on
­r eservations.

Failures
Continued poverty, high disease rates.
Governmental attention was not sustained.

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 3 In your introduction, briefly explain what the AIM tried to achieve and to
what extent the group was effective. Order the successes from most
important to least important. Be sure to provide the historical context, as
well. An example of a good introductory paragraph is given below.

In the wake of the rise of student and women’s groups in the 1960s,
Native American groups such as the American Indian Movement
(AIM) also sought to bring attention to the serious problems faced by
the original inhabitants of North America. AIM carried out a
number of actions meant to raise awareness for both Native
Americans and the rest of US society. These included a march on
Washington, DC, as well as the seizure of the small town of Wounded
Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973. While these actions did
lead to the restoration of some rights for Native Americans through
Congressional action, significant and long-term achievements were
lacking.

4 For each of the key points you raise in your introduction, you should be
able to write one or two long paragraphs. Here, you should provide your
supporting evidence. Be sure to make a judgement about each item’s
effectiveness.
5 In the final paragraph, you should tie your essay together stating your
conclusions. Do not raise any new points here.
6 Now try writing a complete answer to the question following the advice
above.

Examination practice
Below are two exam-style questions for you to practise on this topic.
1 In what ways and with what effects did the political struggle of the Native
Americans change in the 1960s and 1970s? Support your answer with
examples of two countries in the region.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘In what ways and with what effects’
questions, see pages 194–5.)
2 Compare and contrast the success of Bolivian indigenous movements
(see pages 154–68) with Canadian First Nations organizations.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘compare and contrast’ questions, see
pages 235–8.)

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement
Chapter 2

African Americans and the Civil

Rights Movement
This chapter traces the history of African American oppression through slavery and
then segregation. It looks at the long- and short-term origins of the Civil Rights
Movement and the debates as to when exactly that movement began. It explores
what tactics African Americans used to try to gain equality and which were the most
effective. The relative importance of the reasons for improvement is also discussed.
You need to consider the following questions throughout this chapter:
� What were the long-term causes of the Civil Rights Movement?
� What was the main reason for the mass activism that began in 1955?
� When did the Civil Rights Movement begin?
� How and why was de jure segregation ended?

1 African Americans to 1945

Key question: What were the long-term causes of the Civil Rights
Movement?

The Civil Rights Movement originated long before the famous period in
which Martin Luther King Jr led African American protests against
discrimination.

African Americans before 1900 How ‘free’ were

slaves after
In the seventeenth century, Europeans conquered and colonized North
emancipation?
America. They considered importing and enslaving Africans acceptable
because they needed cheap and plentiful labour and because Africans, with
their non-Christian culture, were perceived as uncivilized.
KEY TERM
African Americans in the Constitution
The Constitution of the newly independent United States of America said Civil Rights Movement
black slaves were ‘worth’ only three-fifths of a white person. The vast Movement for legal, social,
majority of slaves were in the Southern states (see the map on page 69). The political and economic
Constitution gave states great power over education, transportation, voting equality for African
Americans.
and law enforcement, making jurisdictional clashes with the federal
government likely.

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 The Civil War 1861–5 and Reconstruction
Relations between blacks and whites were usually tense. Blacks resented
enslavement, while whites feared revolt, the loss of unpaid labour,
competition from freed slaves, and threats to white domination and racial
purity. There were also tensions between Northern and Southern whites
over slavery when the USA expanded westward: Northerners who no longer
owned slaves clashed with Southerners over whether slavery should be
KEY TERM allowed within the new territories. Republican presidential candidate
Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) opposed the extension of slavery to the western
Confederacy The 11
territories, so his election prompted the Southern states to secede from the
Southern states that left the
Union of the United States and to establish the Confederate States of
Union became the
Confederate States of America. Lincoln was determined not to allow the South to leave the Union,
America. and in the Civil War (1861–5) Lincoln’s North defeated the Confederacy. It
was primarily military necessity that made Lincoln begin the process of
Amendment The US
Congress could amend the
ending slavery with the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.
Constitution if 75 per cent of After the defeat of the South, the black population was given theoretical
the states approved. equality in three very important constitutional amendments. The 13th
Reconstruction When the Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment (1868) said
11 ex-Confederate states black people were citizens, and the 15th Amendment (1870) said black males
were rebuilt, reformed and should be allowed to vote. During the Reconstruction of the South (1865–
restored to the Union. 77), black people voted and had more access to education, but their sudden
Jim Crow A popular 1830s release from slavery meant most struggled economically.
comic, black-faced, minstrel
character developed by white Segregation
performing artists. Post- The federal government soon tired of the South’s ‘race’ problem and left the
Reconstruction Southern region to its own devices. Southern whites quickly restored their supremacy
state laws that legalized over state governments, and in the late nineteenth century introduced Jim
segregation were called ‘Jim Crow laws that discriminated against black people, legally enforcing their
Crow laws’.
segregation from whites in schools, houses and public facilities such as
De jure segregation The transportation and education. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court
legal segregation of the races, ruled that ‘separate but equal’ facilities were not against the 14th
set down in laws in the South
Amendment. The black population was certainly in separate facilities, but
until 1964.
they were not equal.
De facto segregation
Segregation of the races in Segregation in the South was enshrined in state law (de jure segregation).
fact rather than in the law. Segregation in the North, evidenced in schools, housing and some public
facilities, was segregation in fact rather than in law (de facto segregation).
Lynching Unlawful killing
(usually by hanging). Even in the North, African Americans had little protection from the law and
lynching was not uncommon.

What factors and African Americans 1900–45

tactics brought about
In the first half of the twentieth century, the origins of the Civil Rights
improvement to the
conditions of African Movement were to be found in black inequality, individual activists, greater
Americans? black consciousness, the labour movement, the New Deal, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and two
world wars.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

Individual activists
African Americans did not always passively accept their inferior political,
social, economic and legal status, but in the early twentieth century they
KEY TERM
disagreed over tactics for improvement. Many black Southerners went North
after 1910 in search of a better life in the Great Migration. A few began to Great migration Early
organize protests, although the historian Adam Fairclough (2001) described twentieth-century northward
them as ‘sporadic and uncoordinated’. Black Southern educationalist movement of black
Southerners.
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) advocated accommodationism, which
concentrated on economic improvement, while black Northern academic Accommodationism
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) waged a propaganda war against the status quo Booker T. Washington’s
and helped to establish the NAACP in 1909 (see below). philosophy, which advocated
initial black concentration on
Greater black consciousness economic improvement
In the first half of the twentieth century, black consciousness greatly rather than on social, political
and legal equality.
increased, through labour unions, newspapers such as the Baltimore Afro-
American, the flowering of black culture in New York City’s Harlem ghetto
(the Harlem Renaissance) and organizations. The two most significant
organizations in the first half of the twentieth century were the integrationist
NAACP, with its predominantly middle-class membership and litigation
tactic (see below), and flamboyant West Indian-born Marcus Garvey’s
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which favoured armed
self-defence and the separation of the races. UNIA was the first black mass
movement in the USA, boasting around half a million members by 1925.

The labour movement

In 1925, left-wing African American A. Philip Randolph set up and led an
all-black labour union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
Membership reached 15,000 by the 1940s, giving Randolph a great deal of
influence. He successfully put pressure on President Franklin D. Roosevelt
(1933–45) to decrease discrimination in federal employment during the
Second World War (see page 56).

The New Deal

Following the Wall Street crash (1929), the USA was plunged into the Great
Depression. In 1933, President Roosevelt introduced his New Deal, a
hitherto unprecedented programme of government intervention to stimulate
the economy and help the poor. As the majority of African Americans were
poor, many benefited, even though New Deal officials frequently practised
discrimination. The programme helped to awaken African Americans to the
power and potential of federal government aid, and black voters began to
turn from the ‘Great Emancipator’ Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party to
Roosevelt’s Democratic Party.

NAACP
NAACP’s litigation tactic aimed to bring about a slow but steady erosion of
the Jim Crow laws. NAACP-initiated cases brought about a Supreme Court

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 ruling that ended the grandfather clause (1915). In the 1930s, the
KEY TERM
organization focused on obtaining a ruling that unequal expenditure on
Grandfather clause black and white education was against the 14th Amendment. Star black
Southern state laws allowed lawyer Thurgood Marshall argued successfully for equal salaries for black
the illiterate to vote if they teachers in Maryland and Virginia in 1935–40. He focused first on equality in
could prove an ancestor had graduate schools, where fewer whites would be affected, and there would be
voted before Reconstruction,
fewer complaints. In Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938), the Supreme
which no African American
could do. Court decreed that all races had the right to the same quality of graduate
education. As a result of NAACP’s Texas campaign against all-white
Primaries Elections to
primaries, the Supreme Court declared the exclusion of African Americans
choose a party’s candidate
from the primaries unconstitutional under the 15th Amendment in Smith v.
for elective office.
Allwright in 1944. The NAACP also lobbied Congress for anti-lynching
Poll tax Tax levied on legislation (the House of Representatives passed the bill in 1937 and 1940
would-be voters that made it
but the Senate rejected it) and arranged protests, for example, against
harder for blacks (who were
usually poor) to vote.
segregated lunch counters in Topeka, Kansas.

US involvement in two world wars

When the USA fought in two world wars (1917–18 and 1941–45), black
soldiers noticed the disparity between US government rhetoric about
freedom and democracy and their own reality. The Second World War in
particular raised black consciousness and promoted black activism:
l In 1941, Adam Clayton Powell led a bus boycott in Harlem, which led to
the employment of more black bus drivers.
l In 1941, A. Philip Randolph threatened to bring Washington to a standstill
unless there was equality in the segregated armed forces and in the
workplace, so President Roosevelt reluctantly established the Commission
on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC), which promoted equality in the
defence industries in which two million black people were employed.
l In 1942, Christian socialist James Farmer set up the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), which organized sit-ins (see page 73) at de facto
segregated Chicago restaurants and demanded the desegregation of
interstate transport.
l In New Orleans in 1943, a bus driver ordered a black soldier to sit at the
back of the bus, in accordance with state and city laws. All 24 black
passengers ended up in jail for demonstrating solidarity with him.
l NAACP membership rose during the war from 50,000 to 450,000. For
example, in 1942, Rosa Parks (see pages 62–5) joined the NAACP, which
she said ‘was about empowerment through the ballot box. With a vote
would come economic improvements.’ She ‘failed’ the literacy test in 1943
but successfully registered to vote in 1945, although paying the $16.50
poll tax was expensive for a part-time seamstress. She resented her
brother being drafted by a democracy in which he could not vote.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

De jure segregation in the South De facto segregation in the North

Accommodationism

USA in First
Great Migration
World War

Factors/tactics
New Deal bringing about
NAACP
improvement
USA in Second
World War UNIA

Harlem Renaissance
African American newspapers

Labour unions

Summary diagram

African Americans to 1945

2 Short-term causes of the Civil

Rights Movement 1945–55
Key question: What was the main reason for the mass activism that
began in 1955?

Underlying the Civil Rights Movement was the long-standing inequality of

the Southern black population, but it could be argued that the trigger for the
mass activism that began in 1955 was the sympathy demonstrated by
President Truman and the Supreme Court.

A sympathetic president: Harry Truman How did Truman help

African Americans?
1945–53
Although a self-confessed racist, President Truman did more for African
Americans than any president since Lincoln.

Attacks on black soldiers

Like many contemporaries, Truman was horrified by attacks on black
servicemen returning from the Second World War. The worst attacks were in
the Deep South and Truman gave US citizens a moral lead, saying that legal
equality was the black man’s basic right, ‘because he is a human being and a
natural born American’.

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 Source A

Extracts from two letters written by President Truman in 1948, quoted in

Look at Source A and at
Truman by David McCullough, published by Simon & Schuster, New York,
Source H on page 69.
Suggest why returning black USA, 1992, pages 721–2.
soldiers received particularly My very stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from
bad treatment in Mississippi overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten.
and South Carolina. Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as President
I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this … I am not asking for social
equality, because no such things exist, but I am asking for equality of opportunity
for all human beings … When a mayor and a City Marshal can take a Negro
Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up and put out one of his eyes,
and nothing is done about it by the State Authorities, something is radically
wrong with the system.

‘To Secure These Rights’

In 1946, Truman established a liberal civil rights committee to investigate
racist violence. Their report, ‘To Secure These Rights’ (1947), said the USA
could not claim to lead the free world while black people were not equal. It
called on the federal government for anti-lynching legislation, abolition of
the poll tax, voting rights laws, a permanent FEPC, and an end to
discrimination in interstate travel and in the armed forces.
In his 1947 and 1948 State of the Union addresses, Truman urged Congress
to pass the civil rights legislation suggested by the committee. In 1948, under
the threat of mass protest organized by A. Philip Randolph, he set an
example by issuing executive orders to end discrimination in the armed
forces and to guarantee fair employment in the civil service. He set up the
Fair Employment Board (1948) to try to give minorities equal treatment in
federal hiring, and established a Committee on Government Contract
Compliance (CGCC) that threatened to withhold federal government
contracts from employers who discriminated against black workers. He
made some significant appointments, such as an African American governor
of the US Virgin Islands. Most importantly of all, he put the full moral weight
of the presidency behind the struggle for civil rights. Truman’s lead
encouraged further black activism.

Sympathetic state and city governments

By 1952, 11 states and 20 cities had fair employment laws, 19 states had
legislation against some form of racial discrimination, and only five states
retained the poll tax.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

NAACP and a sympathetic Supreme Court How and why did the
1945–55 Supreme Court
catalyse change?
NAACP’s legal challenges to segregation, especially in education (see
page 56), were vital in eroding Jim Crow laws and inspiring further black
activism.

Supreme Court rulings 1950

In response to the work of NAACP lawyers against ‘separate but equal’ in the
law courts, the Supreme Court made three civil rights decisions in 1950 that
almost overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (see page 54). It held that:
l Segregation on railway dining cars was illegal under the Interstate
Commerce Act (Henderson v. US).
l A black student could not be physically separated from white students in
the University of Oklahoma (McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents).
l A separate black Texan law school was not equal to the University of Texas
Law School to which the black petitioner had therefore to be admitted
(Sweatt v. Painter).

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Kansas was one of 17 states that had legally segregated schools. Oliver
Brown, a Church minister in Topeka, Kansas, could not send his daughter to
a whites-only school five blocks away. In order to get to the all-black school
20 blocks away, she had to walk across railroad tracks. He decided to
challenge the segregated school system. The NAACP supported Brown’s
litigation, believing there was a good chance of success as Kansas was not a
Southern state.
Thurgood Marshall argued before the Supreme Court that segregation was
against the 14th Amendment. In Brown v. The Board of Education, Topeka,
Kansas (1954), Chief Justice Earl Warren and the Supreme Court adjudged
that even if facilities were equal (they never were), separate education was
psychologically harmful to black children.

Results and significance of Brown

The Brown ruling was highly significant:
l A great triumph for the NAACP’s long legal campaign against segregated
education, Brown seemed to remove all constitutional sanctions for racial
segregation by overturning Plessy v. Ferguson.
l The victory was not total: the Supreme Court gave no date by which
desegregation had to be achieved and said nothing about de facto
segregation.
l The NAACP returned to the Supreme Court and obtained the Brown II
(1955) ruling that integration be accomplished ‘with all deliberate speed’,
but there was still no date for compliance. Warren believed that schools
and administrators needed time to adjust. The white reaction suggests
that he was right.

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 Source B

Williams school in Ruleville, Sunflower County, Mississippi, in 1950:

What can you infer from
‘separate’ but clearly not ‘equal’.
Source B about the
educational opportunities for
black children in Mississippi in
1950?

l White Citizens Councils were quickly formed throughout the South to

defend segregation. By 1956, they boasted around a quarter of a million
members. The Councils challenged desegregation plans in the law courts
KEY TERM
and Southern politicians, all of whom were white, were supportive. The
Ku Klux Klan Violent, Ku Klux Klan was revitalized once more.
white supremacist l Acceptance of the Brown ruling varied. In the peripheral and urban South
organization. desegregation was introduced quite quickly: 70 per cent of school districts
in Washington, DC and in the border states of Delaware, Kentucky,
Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma and West Virginia desegregated schools
within a year. However, in the Deep South, in Georgia, South Carolina,
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, schools remained segregated. Some
school boards maintained white-only schools by manipulating entry
criteria. From 1956 to 1959, there was a ‘massive resistance’ campaign in
Virginia: whites closed some schools rather than desegregate. Virginia
labour unions financed segregated schools when the public schools
were closed.
l Brown inspired further activism. Rosa Parks recalled, ‘You can’t imagine the
rejoicing among black people, and some white people.’

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

Emmett Till
In 1955, 14-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till visited his Southern relations.
Either unsure or defiant of Southern conventions, he wolf-whistled at a
white woman. Several days later, his mutilated body was dragged out of a
Mississippi river. For the first time white men were charged with murdering
a black male in Mississippi. Their defence argued that Till was really alive and
well in Chicago and that this was all an NAACP plot! After the all-white
jury’s verdict was ‘not guilty’ (journalist William Bradford Huie paid the killers
of Emmett Till to describe how and why they murdered him), more black
people became civil rights activists.
Source C

An extract from an article in Look magazine by journalist William

Judging from Source C, what
Bradford Huie, published in 1956. He paid Emmett Till’s killers to
motivated the murder of
describe how and why they murdered him. Quoted at www.pbs.org/
Emmett Till?
wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_look_confession.html
Milam: ‘Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I’m no bully; I
never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers – in their place – I know how
to work ’em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice.
As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in
their place. Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control
the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids. And when a
nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he’s tired o’ livin’.
I’m likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got
some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw
that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m
tired of ’em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you,
I’m going to make an example of you – just so everybody can know how
me and my folks stand.’

Source D

The coffin of Emmett Till.

Look at Source D. Why do
you suppose Emmett Till’s
mother wanted an open
coffin funeral service?

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 Why was the The Montgomery bus boycott 1956
Montgomery bus
Many see the Montgomery bus boycott as the real start of the Civil Rights
boycott important?
Movement.

The arrest of Rosa Parks

In December 1955, Mrs Rosa Parks returned home by bus after a hard day’s
work as a seamstress in a department store in Montgomery, Alabama. The
bus soon filled up. A white man was left standing. The bus driver ordered
four black passengers to move. Mrs Parks refused. She was arrested and
charged with a violation of the Montgomery city bus segregation ordinance
that forbade black passengers sitting parallel with whites.

Rosa Parks and the NAACP

Many writers portray 42-year-old Rosa Parks as a tired old lady who had
been exhausted by the day at work and could not take any more, but her
defiance was premeditated. She had joined the NAACP in 1943 and became
Montgomery branch secretary, working very closely with the branch leader
E.D. Nixon, a railroad porter inspired by and close to A. Philip Randolph (see
page 55). The branch had been looking to challenge Montgomery’s bus
segregation laws. They had contemplated using Claudette Colvin, arrested in
March 1955 for refusing to give up a seat to a white passenger, but Colvin
was a pregnant, unmarried teenager accused of assault. As Parks said, the
white press would have depicted her as ‘ a bad girl’. As the challenge would
cost the NAACP half a million dollars, Nixon decided that ‘respectable’ Rosa
Parks was a safer test case.

The mobilization of Montgomery’s black community

Weeks before the Rosa Parks incident, a black mother had boarded a
Montgomery bus, two babies in her arms. She placed the babies on the front
‘white’ seats in order to free her hands to pay her fare. The driver yelled, ‘Take
the black dirty brats off the seats’, then hit the accelerator. The babies fell
into the aisle. Many of the Montgomery black community had had enough.
After Rosa Parks’ arrest, the NAACP and the black teachers and students of
Alabama State College mobilized for a bus boycott in protest. Students
copied and distributed propaganda leaflets to elicit total support from the
black community. Believing that Church involvement would increase
working-class black participation and decrease the possibility of disorder,
NAACP worked with local Church leaders, especially Dr Martin Luther
King Jr. The 26-year old Baptist minister had already rejected an offer to lead
the local NAACP branch, but he let his church be used as a meeting place to
plan the boycott. The church would provide organization, location,
inspiration and some financial aid.

The boycott
Boycotts hit white pockets and were a traditional and effective mass weapon.
Black passengers boycotted streetcars throughout the South between 1900

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

and 1906 and used their economic power (most bus passengers were black)
KEY TERM
to gain bus seating on a first-come, first-served basis in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, in 1953. These Baton Rouge tactics were now adopted in First-come, first-served
Montgomery. Montgomery’s black community successfully boycotted buses Southern buses were divided
on the day of Rosa Parks’ trial, demanding first-come, first-served, courteous into black and white sections.
drivers and the employment of black drivers. No one as yet demanded an Sometimes black people
would be standing while the
end to segregation on the buses. When the city commissioners rejected the
white section was empty.
proposed changes, the one-day boycott became a year-long one. They therefore sought
seating on a first-come,
The Choice of Leader: Martin Luther King Jr first-served basis.
The community agreed that King would be a good leader of the boycott.
Some historians say he was a compromise candidate, others that there was Passive resistance
no better alternative: the national NAACP did not want to get involved and Non-violent refusal to
comply with a particular
also lacked the influence of the Church, while Alabama State College
policy.
employees risked dismissal. King therefore headed the new umbrella
organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).

Black unanimity
A successful long-term boycott required unanimity and sacrifice among
Montgomery’s 50,000 black population. For the most part, it was achieved.
On one occasion during the boycott, an African American used the bus. As
he got off, an elderly black woman with a stick raced toward the bus. ‘You
don’t have to rush, auntie’, said the white driver. ‘I’ll wait for you.’ ‘In the first
place, I ain’t your auntie’, she said. ‘In the second place, I ain’t rushing to get
on your bus. I’m jus’ trying to catch up with that [man] who just got off, so I
can hit him with this here stick.’
Source E

An extract from an interview with Rosa Parks in 1997 on http://teacher.

Using Source E and your
scholastic.com/rosa/interview.htm#brave
own knowledge, suggest
[Q] What was it like walking all those miles when the bus boycott was going on? reasons why the black
[A] We were fortunate enough to have a carpool organized to pick people up and community in Montgomery
give them rides. Of course, many people walked and sometimes I did too. I was was able to sustain the bus
willing to walk rather than go back to the buses under those unfair conditions. boycott for one year.

Black vs white
The Montgomery White Citizens Council organized the opposition. Its
membership doubled from 6000 in February 1956 to 12,000 by March. The
council was dominated by leading city officials who ordered harassment of
blacks. In January 1956, King was arrested for the first time for driving at
30 mph (48 km/h) in a 25 mph (40 km/h) zone. His house was bombed. His
family urged him to quit. He said later he was tempted but felt called by God
to continue. King’s speeches were inspirational and even appealed to some
whites (see Source F, page 64). He stressed this was ‘non-violent protest’, but
it was not passive resistance, it was ‘active non-violent resistance to evil’.

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 Source F

What appeal might Source F An extract from a Martin Luther King Jr speech to the MIA, December
have to white people in 1955, quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., III, edited by
1956? Clayborne Carson, published by University of California Press, Berkeley,
USA, 1997, page 73.
If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the
Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth
was merely a … dreamer.

When Montgomery whites used the state of Alabama’s law against boycotts
against the black community, their mass indictments attracted national
media coverage, inspiring Northerners to make collections for the MIA. King
was the first boycott leader to be tried. Found guilty, he chose a fine rather
than 368 days in jail.
This white hostility made the MIA up the stakes. After litigation partly
funded by the NAACP, a federal district court said segregation on buses was
unconstitutional, citing Brown. Montgomery city commissioners appealed to
the Supreme Court but it backed the federal district court in Browder v. Gayle
(1956). When desegregated buses began operating (December 1956), the
boycott was called off.

Results and significance of the Montgomery bus boycott

l Rosa Parks is the best remembered female participant in the Civil Rights
Movement, but it could be argued that her defiance and the boycott were
very much a product of the whole black community of Montgomery. As
she said, ‘Every day in the early 1950s we were looking for ways to
challenge Jim Crow laws.’
l The boycott did not just come out of the blue: a boycott had long been
discussed and planned by the Montgomery NAACP and the Women’s
Political Council at Alabama State College. Bus boycotts were not new.
Montgomery blacks used tactics used at Baton Rouge in 1953. However,
there had never been a boycott as long, well organized, well supported
and well publicized as the Montgomery one.
l It demonstrated the power of a whole black community using direct but
non-violent action. Montgomery whites could not believe local blacks had
started and sustained the movement: ‘We know the niggers are not that
smart’. ‘Our leaders’, responded Claudette Colvin, ‘is just we ourselves’.
This was what was new. Here was an alternative to NAACP’s litigation
tactic.
l It demonstrated the importance of the Churches in the fight for equality.
l It showed the importance and potential of black economic power. Black
shoppers could not get downtown without the buses, so businesses lost
$1 million. White businessmen began to work against segregation.
l It demonstrated how white extremism frequently helped to increase black
unity and determination.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

l It revealed the hatred and determined racism of many white Southerners,

but also the idealism of a handful of Southern whites like Reverend
Robert Graetz, minister at a black Lutheran church in Montgomery, who
supported the boycott. His house was bombed.
l It brought King, with all his inspirational rhetorical gifts, to the forefront
of the movement. In 1957 he helped to establish a new organization, the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (see pages 72–3). This
proved particularly important as the NAACP had been persecuted in the
Deep South since Brown, although it also aroused jealousy among other
black leaders and organizations. King claimed the Montgomery bus
boycott signalled the emergence of ‘the New Negro’, although Roy
Wilkins bitterly disagreed (see Source G, page 66).
l It showed the continuing effectiveness of the NAACP strategy of working
through the law courts (it took the Browder decision to finally get the
buses desegregated) and the importance of dedicated individuals such as
Rosa Parks.
l In Montgomery itself, the boycott was a limited victory. Apart from the
buses, the city remained segregated. Some whites retaliated violently, but
when the Ku Klux Klan responded to Browder v. Gayle by sending 40
carloads of robed and hooded members through Montgomery’s black
community, the residents did not retreat behind closed doors as usual, but
came out and waved at the motorcade, showing how black morale had
been boosted.
l It inspired similar successful bus boycotts in 20 Southern cities, individuals
such as Melba Pattillo (see page 68), more Northern white support and
more co-operation between Northern and Southern blacks.

Martin Luther King Jr and controversy in 1955

As soon as he gained fame during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King
became involved in great controversies. First, a friend noted that:
King’s colleagues felt that he was taking too many bows and enjoying them … he
was forgetting that victory … had been the result of collective thought and collective
action.
King felt the need to reassure people:
I just happened to be here … If M.L. King had never been born this movement
would have taken place … there comes a time when time itself is ready for change.
That time has come in Montgomery, and I had nothing to do with it.
One local activist agreed: it was ‘a protest of the people … not a one-man
show … the leaders couldn’t stop it if they wanted to’.
Second, when King claimed the boycott signalled the emergence of ‘the new
Negro’, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins disagreed (see Source G, page 66).

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 Source G

NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, talking in 1956 about the ‘New Negro’,
Study the content of
quoted in Sweet Land of Liberty by Robert Cook, published by Longman,
Source G and give reasons
that help to explain Wilkins’ Harlow, UK, 1998, page 39.
viewpoint. Do you think The Negro of 1956 who stands on his own two feet is not a new Negro; he is the
there was a ‘New Negro’? grandson or the great grandson of the men who hated slavery. By his own hands,
through his own struggles, in his own organized groups – of churches, fraternal
societies, the NAACP and others – he has fought his way to the place where he
now stands.

Attacks on black soldiers

NAACP and a
sympathetic Rulings – 1950
President Truman Supreme Court +
Brown
Moral lead

Emmett Till case

Sympathetic state 1955 – mass activism

and city governments in Montgomery –
White Montgomery
WHY?
mistreatment, resistance
NAACP +
E.D. Nixon in Montgomery Montgomery churches
Women’s Political
Rosa Parks Council in Montgomery

Made King famous New organization – SCLC

Rosa Parks
gained heroic status Some helpful Southern whites

Not out of the blue White extremism

fuelled black activism
New negro? Results/significance Importance of black
of Montgomery economic power
Shift from NAACP litigation bus boycott
tactic to active Buses desegregated
non-violent resistance but Montgomery still
segregated in other ways

Inspired other Southerners Black community

and Northern donations Showed importance empowered
of NAACP and church

Summary diagram

Short-term causes of the Civil Rights Movement 1945–55

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

3 Key debate
Key question: When did the Civil Rights Movement begin?

Was the Second World War a great turning point?

Historians disagree over the extent and impact of black militancy during the
Second World War. In the 1970s, historian Harvard Sitkoff contended that
new black militancy during the war (see page 56) led to violence in 47 cities
in 1943, but in 1997, he emphasized that patriotism led blacks to decrease
the direct action that had grown up in the 1930s. While Sitkoff later saw no
direct line of continuity between wartime civil rights activism and 1960s’
activism, historian Mark Newman (2004) disagreed, pointing out that the
foundations for the 1960s were laid during the Second World War. Historian
Dr Stephen Tuck (2001) described the Second World War as ‘absolutely key’ in
transforming the black situation (see pages 57–8).

Did the Civil Rights Movement begin before 1955?

After Martin Luther King Jr’s death in 1968, most historians took the classic
phase of civil rights activity to be the years of King’s ascendancy, from 1955
to 1965. However, subsequent studies of local community action
emphasized that the Civil Rights Movement had its origins in the 1930s and
1940s, owing much to the impact of the New Deal, the Second World War
and the continuing work of NAACP. Historian Adam Fairclough’s study of
Louisiana (1995) emphasized the importance of pre-King labour unions,
schools, teachers, businessmen and organizations such as NAACP. Studies
of individual states by historians such as John Kirk (Arkansas, 1996) and
John Dittmer (Mississippi, 1994) confirmed that at the very least there was a
‘civil rights struggle’ if not a ‘civil rights movement’ long before 1955.
However, Fairclough admitted the ‘earlier challenges did not seem to have
the force of post-1955 protests’: the ‘undercurrent of discontent’ was
‘unstructured and ineffective; the countless instances of individual defiance
did not add up to collective resistance’. For example, when A. Philip
Randolph called for a one-day boycott of segregated transport in 1943,
Southern blacks ignored him.
E.D. Nixon’s biographer, John White, confirmed that the ‘classic’ period had
its roots in preceding decades. Probably the main, if subsequently
unheralded, force behind the Montgomery bus boycott, Nixon was inspired
by and participated in Randolph’s black labour movement in the 1920s and
NAACP activities in the 1930s and 1940s. Nixon’s actions in 1955–6 clearly
did not ‘come out of the blue’.
While many historians date the start of the Civil Rights Movement to the
1950s, they disagree over the crucial events. Sociologist Aldon Morris (1984)
dated it to the Baton Rouge bus boycott (1953). Harvard Sitkoff (1993) saw

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 the Brown decision (1954) as the start of the struggle, but law Professor
Michael Klarman (1992) concluded that Brown ‘was a relatively unimportant
motivating factor for the Civil Rights Movement’, and that its real
significance was to generate a vicious white backlash. Historian David
Garrow (1994) disagreed, saying that Brown inspired the Montgomery bus
boycott. Studies of Georgia and Louisiana suggest Brown did not generate
civil rights activism immediately, although many activists attested its
inspirational importance. While Garrow thought the Montgomery bus
boycott signalled the start of the Civil Rights Movement, historian Mark
Given that history is a Newman (2004) said it ‘did not spark a mass movement’, and cited SCLC’s
continuum, is it ever early ineffectiveness as proof. Charles Payne (1998) argued that the sit-ins
possible to determine (see pages 73–4) ‘were a definitive break with the past, the beginning of a
definitively when a
period of sustained mass activism’. William Chafe (1980) saw the Greensboro
process ‘began’?
(History, Logic, sit-ins as spontaneous, owing little to existing civil rights organizations, and
Language.) as a great turning point, while Morris (1984) linked them to a pre-existing
network of churches, colleges and civil rights groups.

4 The end of segregation in the

South 1955–65
Key question: How and why was de jure segregation ended?

De jure segregation in the South was ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Organizations such as NAACP and
individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr played a vital part in this, as did
the federal government and changing white opinion.

What were the causes NAACP and Little Rock 1957

and consequences of
the Little Rock Crisis? Causes of the crisis
The city of Little Rock planned full compliance with Brown by 1963. Central
High School was to be the first integrated school and nine black students
reported there in September 1957. Struggling to get re-elected, Arkansas
Governor Orval Faubus decided to exploit white racism to ensure victory. He
KEY TERM
declared it his duty to prevent the disorder that would arise from integration
National Guard State- and ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround the school and to
based US armed forces keep black students out.
reserves.
Melba Pattillo
One of the nine students, Melba Pattillo, wrote about her experiences years
later. She had volunteered to be a guinea-pig when asked by the NAACP
and church leaders. Her father was against it, saying it endangered her and
his job. A white man violently assaulted her crying, ‘I’ll show you niggers the

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_156621_AHIB_Civil Rights.indb 69

A map showing racial tensions in the USA.

Source H
N
CANADA

 By the late nineteenth

century, Northern cities
like Chicago and New York
WASHINGTON had ever-increasing
black populations. MAINE
MONTANA NORTH MINNESOTA
DAKOTA

VER
OREGON NEW N.H.

M.
WISCONSIN Boston
YORK .
IDAHO SOUTH MASS
Minneapolis MICHIGAN Buffalo Rochester
DAKOTA Paterson RHODE I.
CONN.
WYOMING Detroit Newark * New York City
Jersey City
*
PENNSYLVANIA
Elizabeth
IOWA Cleveland Philadelphia
NEW JERSEY
San NEBRASKA Chicago
NEVADA Baltimore Atlantic City

INDIANA
Francisco
OHIO DELAWARE
UTAH ILLINOIS *
Washington MARYLAND

RG ST
Oakland

IA
DC

IN
VI WE
COLORADO
Las
Topeka
* Kansas City Louisville VIRGINIA Hampton
CA

KANSAS Danville

**
Vegas KENTUCKY
MISSOURI
LIF

Greensboro
Winston- NORTH
OR

Salem CAROLINA
TENNESSEE
NI

ARKANSAS Rock Hill

A

SOUTH

Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

Los Angeles ARIZONA NEW OKLAHOMA Memphis
Atlanta CAROLINA
MEXICO
* *
Augusta

MISSISSIPPI
Little Rock Birmingham

*
Pine Bluff
ALABAMA GEORGIA
Tuskegee
Dallas Jackson
*
Selma
***
Lowndes County
Montgomery
*Albany
TEXAS Alexandria Mobile
St. Augustine
LOUISIANA
Austin Houston Baton Rouge * * New Orleans  The colonies on the East
*

FL
Tampa Coast were settled

OR
Mississippi Delta primarily by Britons.

ID
MEXICO  The slave-owning states of These early settlers

A
rioting in the 1960s?
activism and African American
of peaceful African American
Source H about the location
What can you infer from

the South fought against dispossessed the Native

Lincoln’s Union (1861–5) Americans and introduced
slavery.
Brownsville

0 500 mls
* Centres of African American activism
during the classical period of the Civil
Cities where there were large-scale
African American riots during
the 1960s 0 500 km
Rights Movement (1955–65)
05/12/2012 12:40

69
 Supreme Court cannot run my life.’ Others cried ‘Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t
gonna integrate’, ‘Keep away from our school’, ‘Go back to the jungle’, ‘Lynch
the niggers’. Pattillo was inspired by the ‘self-assured air’ of Thurgood
Marshall, and had the backing of her mother and grandmother, many blacks
and a few whites. A white boy, whom she trusted despite the warnings of
her family, befriended her at school, where she was pushed down the stairs
and had burning paper and chemicals thrown at her. Subsequently though,
she wondered ‘what possessed my parents and the adults of the NAACP to
allow us to go to school in the face of such violence’.

Eisenhower’s intervention
President Eisenhower (1953–61) said before the crisis that he could never
envisage sending in federal troops to enforce the federal court ruling, which
doubtless encouraged Faubus. Eisenhower did not believe in federal
government activism, but was forced to intervene. Little Rock’s mayor told
him the mob was out of hand and begged him to act, and the Constitution
and federal law seemed threatened. Eisenhower said he had an ‘inescapable’
responsibility for enforcing the law against ‘disorderly mobs’ and ‘demagogic
extremists’, and that Soviet propaganda about Little Rock damaged the
USA’s international ‘prestige and influence’.
So, to Southern cries of ‘invasion’, Eisenhower sent in troops to protect the
black children.

Results and significance of Little Rock

l Little Rock showed that Supreme Court rulings like Brown met
tremendous grassroots resistance in practice. Although the NAACP tried
to push desegregation along faster at Little Rock, there was still no
dramatic immediate improvement. Faubus got re-elected four times.
l Neither local nor national authorities were keen to enforce Brown. Faubus
did what Eisenhower had always feared and closed the schools rather
than integrate. Eisenhower did not respond. It was not until 1960 that
Central High School was integrated. Little Rock’s schools were only fully
integrated in 1972. However, some cities, such as Atlanta, desegregated to
avoid Little Rock-style violence and publicity.
l The image of black children being harassed and spat at by aggressive
white adults in Little Rock (see Source I) influenced moderate white
opinion throughout the USA. On-site television reporting was pioneered
at Little Rock, which drew national television crews.
l The Supreme Court ploughed ahead. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958) it said any
law that sought to keep public schools segregated was unconstitutional.
l Finally, and perhaps most significantly, African Americans realized that
they needed to do more than rely on court decisions. They needed to
create a crisis that would demand federal intervention.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

Source I

Elizabeth Eckford, one of the ‘Little Rock nine’, trying to enter Central
What can you infer from
High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.
Source I about race relations
in Little Rock?

Read Source J. Confusingly,

some books quote
Source J
Eisenhower as saying ‘bucks’
rather than ‘Negroes’. Why
President Eisenhower’s defence of Southerners to Chief Justice Earl do other books use
Warren, quoted in Eisenhower by Stephen Ambrose, published by Simon ‘Negroes’? If Eisenhower
& Schuster, London, UK, 2003, page 380. actually said ‘bucks’ should
All they are concerned about is to see that those sweet little girls are not required that be reprinted in books
to sit in schools alongside some big overgrown Negroes. such as this one?

Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Acts Why were the acts

Eisenhower told his speechwriter that although he might call for equality, passed and how
important were they?
that did not mean that blacks and whites had ‘to mingle socially or that a
Negro could court my daughter’. He explained his unease about Brown by
referring to the ‘great emotional strains’ and the likely violence against blacks
that would arise from the desegregation of schools. As a Republican, he was
ideologically averse to large-scale federal government intervention in any
great issue, which was why he made no comment on the fate of Emmett Till
or the Montgomery bus boycott, and why he was reluctant to use federal
power to enforce Brown until Little Rock forced his hand. Nevertheless, he
called for an end to racial discrimination, worked against it in federal
employment and hiring, and was behind the first Civil Rights Acts since the
Civil War era.

The 1957 Civil Rights Act

Hoping to win black votes in the 1956 elections, the Eisenhower
administration drew up a civil rights bill that aimed to ensure all citizens
could exercise the right to vote (only 20 per cent of Southern blacks were

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 registered to vote). In his State of the Union address in January 1957,
Eisenhower praised the bill, expressing ‘shock’ that only 7000 of Mississippi’s
900,000 blacks were allowed to vote, and that registrars were setting
impossible questions (such as ‘How many bubbles are there in a bar of
soap?’) for those trying to register.
Democratic senators worked to weaken the bill, believing it would damage
national and party unity. They claimed it sought to use federal power ‘to force
a co-mingling of white and Negro children’. Eisenhower then cravenly
claimed he did not really know what was in the bill (‘there were certain
KEY TERM
phrases I did not completely understand’) and did not fight to keep it intact.
Filibuster Use of tactic to Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina filibustered for 24 hours to try
delay congressional voting on to kill the bill. It passed as a much-weakened act that did little to help blacks
a bill. exercise the vote (any public official indicted for obstructing a black voter
Justice Department would be tried by an all-white jury). However, it established a Civil Rights
Branch of the federal Division in the Justice Department to prosecute violations of civil rights
government in Washington, and a federal Civil Rights Commission to monitor race relations. As the first
DC with special responsibility such act since Reconstruction, it pleased some black leaders. Others felt it
for enforcing the law and
was a nauseating sham.
administering justice.
The 1960 Civil Rights Act
In late 1958, Eisenhower introduced another bill because he was concerned
about a recent spate of bombings of black schools and churches. While
Eisenhower considered the bill to be moderate, Southern Democrats again
diluted its provisions. It finally became law because both parties sought black
votes in the presidential election year. The act made it a federal crime to
obstruct court-ordered school desegregation and established penalties for
obstructing black voting.
These Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 added few black voters to the
electoral rolls (70 per cent of Southern blacks remained disenfranchised in
1960), but constituted an acknowledgement of federal responsibilities and
encouraged civil rights activists to work for more legislation.

What tactics did black Organizations

organizations use, and
Whereas the NAACP had focused on litigation, organizations established
with what success?
after the Montgomery bus boycott emphasized different tactics.

SCLC 1957–60
The SCLC was established because King felt that a specifically Southern and
Christian organization was needed at a time when the NAACP, a national
organization, was persecuted in the South because of Brown, and CORE
lacked dynamism. King hoped that a Church-based organization would be
less likely to be persecuted. He also felt that new tactics were needed.
Although the NAACP’s legal challenges had demolished ‘separate but equal’
in the law courts, de jure segregation continued in the South. CORE had
attempted direct non-violent action to effect change in the past (see

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

page 56), but had failed to mobilize large numbers of people and to make
headlines. However, the Montgomery bus boycott had shown that now such
tactics could be successful.
Drawing attention to abuses was King’s favourite tactic, and the easiest
method was to organize a march. His 1957 march in Washington, DC
attracted around 20,000 people, but even King admitted that the SCLC
achieved little else in its first three years of existence. Poorly organized and
without a salaried staff or mass support, SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship, a
grassroots campaign designed to encourage blacks to vote, failed.
NAACP leader Roy Wilkins disliked King and SCLC (see pages 65–6).
‘Jealousy among black leaders is so thick it can be cut with a knife’, said the
African American Pittsburgh Courier. Wilkins was jealous of King and the
SCLC, and they disagreed over tactics. Wilkins and the NAACP favoured
litigation; King preferred mass action. A new organization, SNCC, preferred
empowerment of local communities.

Sit-ins and the birth of the SNCC 1960

In 1960, four black college students spontaneously ignored a request to leave
the all-white Woolworth’s cafeteria in Greensboro, North Carolina. Other
students took up and retained the seats, day after day, forcing the lunch
counter to close. These ‘sit-ins’ across the South were joined by 70,000
students, better educated than their parents and more impatient with the
slow progress towards equality. Responsibility for this mass action can be
attributed to the original four, or the students who joined them, or the other
black protesters who had pioneered the same technique in Chicago in the
Second World War and in Oklahoma and Kansas in 1957–8, or the press,
which covered Greensboro extensively.
When a Greensboro SCLC member contacted him, King quickly arrived to
encourage the students and assure them of full SCLC support, saying, ‘What
is new in your fight is the fact that it was initiated, fed, and sustained by
students.’ Atlanta students persuaded King to join them in sit-ins. Although
critics such as disgruntled SCLC employee Ella Baker implied that King
always had to be in the forefront, King’s leadership was characterized by a
willingness to be led by others when their methods were effective.

The significance of the sit-ins

The sit-ins confirmed that the focus of black activism had switched from
legal challenges to direct action. They helped to erode Jim Crow. Loss of
business made Woolworth’s desegregate all its lunch counters by the end of
1961 and 150 cities soon desegregated various public places. Black students
had been mobilized, although when they set up the Student Non-Violent
Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced SNICK), inter-organizational
strife increased. SNCC accused SCLC of keeping donations intended for
SNCC, NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall refused to represent ‘a bunch of
crazy colored students’, while King’s public acknowledgement of NAACP/

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 Source K

A sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi,

What can you infer about the
in May 1963.
sit-ins from Source K?

SCLC divisions infuriated Roy Wilkins. Blacks desperately needed a single

leader who could unite all activists. King never managed to fulfil that role,
for which others such as the prickly Wilkins were probably far more to blame
than he was.
Encouraged by Ella Baker, the students felt their actions had rendered King’s
cautious programme and ‘top-down’ leadership obsolete. SNCC worked to
empower ordinary African Americans and from 1961 to 1964, mobilized
many in places like Danville (Virginia), Lowndes County (Alabama), Albany
(Georgia), Pine Bluff (Arkansas) and the Mississippi Delta.

CORE and the Freedom Rides 1961

CORE’s ‘Freedom Rides’ electrified the Civil Rights Movement. A small,
integrated group (see Source L) travelled the South testing Supreme Court
rulings against segregation on interstate transport (Morgan v. Virginia, 1946)
and on interstate bus facilities (Boynton v. Virginia, 1960). CORE had used the
tactic in 1947 without success. Now CORE’s director James Farmer explained
that:
We planned the Freedom Ride with the specific intention of creating a crisis. We
were counting on the bigots in the South to do our work for us. We figured that the
government would have to respond if we created a situation that was headline
news all over the world, and affected the nation’s image abroad.
As expected, racists attacked black passengers. In Alabama, they used clubs
and chains and burned the buses. SNCC sent in reinforcement riders.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

The Freedom Rides publicized white racism and lawlessness in the South
and led Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the Interstate Commerce
Commission to try to enforce the Supreme Court rulings on desegregated
interstate travel in November 1961, demonstrating yet again the importance
of exposing Southern white lawlessness and provoking federal intervention.
However, black divisions remained. CORE insisted SCLC announce that
CORE had originated the Freedom Ride!
Source L

Extracts from transcripts of interviews with Freedom Riders (no date

What can you infer about the
given), quoted on www.outreach.olemiss.edu/Freedom_Riders/Resources/
Freedom Riders as a group
1. Charles Person, African American: and about their motives from
I grew up in Atlanta … at a time when America needed scientists … My [test] Source L?
scores and my [grades] were good enough to get me accepted at MIT
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology], but Georgia Tech was also the number
one engineering school in the South, so I applied to Georgia Tech, and of course
rejected my application. So I could not understand, here we were competing with
the Russians, because the Russians had launched Sputnik, and we say we needed
scientists, yet I was being denied an opportunity to go to a school which I was
eminently qualified to go to, so that gave me the impetus to get involved in all the
civil rights activities that were happening on campus … So this was a great
time, the energy on campus with all the kids being involved in all those kind of
activities, it just snowballed. Once I got involved, it was infectious.
2. Sandra Nixon, African American:
I grew up in New Orleans … I was … in college at Southern University in New
Orleans and met some … members of the Congress on Racial Equality. After
listening to them talking about the social injustices that were going on in the city
of New Orleans, I decided to become a member of … CORE.
3. Joan Trumpower Mulholland, white
I was born in Washington DC … My involvement came about from my religious
conviction, and the contradiction between life in America with what was being
taught in Sunday School. I was at Duke University in Durham [North
Carolina], which was the second city to have sit-ins, and the Presbyterian
chaplain arranged for the students … to come over and talk with us about what
the sit-ins were about and the philosophical and religious underpinnings … At
the end, they invited us to join them on sit-ins in the next week or so, and that
started a snowball effect.
4. Albert Gordon, white:
Why some of us have been ready to do things, and others not? In my own past, I
was born in Europe, and I did see the Nazis, and most of my family was killed by
the Nazis during World War II in the concentration camp, because I was Jewish
… So those things can explain in part my social conscience, but by no means all
together … When I saw the young people first in the first sit-ins and the courage
that they had to have, and then saw a couple of years later the bus in Anniston,
and Jim Peck being so brutally beaten, I thought I just had to do something, and
simply volunteered and proceeded.

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 The Albany Movement 1961–2
In late 1961, SNCC organized black students from Albany State College,
Georgia, in sit-ins in Albany’s bus station, which had ignored the Interstate
Commerce Commission’s order to desegregate. Hundreds were arrested.
White businesses were boycotted but the city authorities still refused to
desegregate, despite pressure from Attorney General Kennedy.
Older leaders of the ‘Albany Movement’ invited King to join them, which
angered SNCC leaders who stressed that the Albany Movement was ‘by and
for local Negroes’. King led a march and came to a promising agreement
with the city authorities, but after he left, the authorities reneged on the
agreement.

How and why had the Albany Movement failed?

The Albany Movement petered out in a series of decreasingly supported
protests. King considered Albany a major defeat. Although the interstate
terminal facilities were desegregated, and more black voters were allowed to
register, the city closed the parks, sold the swimming pool, integrated the
library only after removing all the seats, and refused to desegregate the
schools.
The Albany Movement had failed to generate helpful publicity (when blacks
became violent, the local police chief was careful not to respond in kind).
Black divisions had been damaging: some were paid informants of the white
city leadership, local black leaders resented ‘outsiders’, and the NAACP,
SNCC and SCLC failed to co-operate.
On the other hand, the entire black community of Albany had been
mobilized and local leaders claimed that fear of white power had greatly
decreased. SNCC demonstrated that its ‘jail not bail’ strategy could fill the
jails with protesters and bring the courts and jails to a standstill. King
learned that SCLC intervention in an area without a strong SCLC presence
was inadvisable and that it was probably more effective to focus on one
particular aspect of segregation. He said that as blacks had little political
power, it was unwise to concentrate on talks with the white authorities; it
made more sense to boycott white businesses so businessmen would
advocate negotiations. All these lessons suggested tactics for Birmingham,
Alabama.

Birmingham, April to May 1963

In 1963, King concentrated on segregation and unequal opportunities in
Birmingham, Alabama. King chose Birmingham for several reasons:
l Faced with competing civil rights organizations and the increasing
attractiveness of black nationalism (see Chapter 3), the SCLC had to
demonstrate that it could be dynamic and successful.
l The SNCC and NAACP were relatively inactive in Birmingham, where the
local black leader was affiliated to the SCLC and King’s own brother was
a pastor.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

l White divisions looked promising. While white businessman felt racism

held the city back, white extremists had recently castrated a Negro,
prohibited the sale of a book that featured black and white rabbits, and
campaigned to stop ‘Negro music’  being played on white radio stations.
l King described Birmingham as ‘by far’ the USA’s ‘worst big city’ for racism.
It was likely to produce the kind of violent white opposition that won
national sympathy. Birmingham’s Public Safety Commissioner ‘Bull’
Connor was a hot-tempered, determined segregationist who had ensured
that Freedom Riders under attack from a racist Birmingham mob were
unprotected by his police, to whom he gave the day off for Mother’s Day.
Bull and Birmingham would show the media segregation at its worst. ‘To
cure injustices’, said King, ‘you must expose them before the light of
human conscience and the bar of public opinion’.
l King was impatient with the Kennedy administration’s inactivity: ‘The key
to everything is federal commitment’, he said. He hoped Connor would
elicit a response from Kennedy.

Events in Birmingham
In Birmingham, King was leading rather than led. He made miscalculations.
The SCLC failed to recruit enough local demonstrators, because many felt
that the recent electoral defeat and imminent retirement of Connor made
action unnecessary. King admitted that there was ‘ tremendous resistance’ in
the black community to his planned demonstrations. The SCLC had to use
demonstrators in crowded areas to give the impression of mass action and to
encourage onlookers to participate.
Then, as expected, Connor attracted national attention. His police and their
dogs turned on black demonstrators. King defied an injunction and marched,
knowing his arrest would gain national attention and perhaps inspire others.
Kept in solitary confinement and not allowed private meetings with his
lawyer, he wrote the inspirational ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’  in which he
eloquently defended direct action. His wife Coretta’s phone call to President
Kennedy obtained his release.
It remained difficult to mobilize sufficient demonstrators. ‘You know, we’ve
got to get something going’, said King. ‘The press is leaving.’ Despite
considerable local opposition and King’s doubts about the morality of the
policy (the black nationalist Malcolm X said, ‘Real men don’t put their
children on the firing line’), the SCLC enlisted black school children, some
as young as six. This proved successful. Soon, 500 young marchers were in
custody and Birmingham was creating headlines again. Connor’s high-
pressure water hoses tore clothes off students’  backs and SCLC succeeded in
its aim of ‘ filling the jails’. A leading SCLC official ‘thanked’  Bull Connor for
his violent response, without which there would have been no publicity.
An agreement was reached to improve the situation of Birmingham blacks,
but the Klan tried to sabotage it, bombing King’s brother’s house and
King’s motel room. Blacks began to riot, a policeman was stabbed, and

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 Birmingham degenerated into chaos, which President Kennedy said was
‘damaging the reputation’ of Birmingham and the USA. Robert Kennedy
feared this could trigger off national violence, and urged his brother to
protect the Birmingham agreement: ‘If King loses, worse leaders are going to
take his place.’

Results and significance of Birmingham

Birmingham was the first time King really led the movement. He had
correctly assessed how Connor would react and how the media would depict
his reactions. ‘There never was any more skilful manipulation of the news
media than there was in Birmingham’, said a leading SCLC staffer. King had
shown that he could lead from the front and force desegregation, if through
rather artificially engineered violence. He recognized that non-violent
demonstrations ‘make people inflict violence on you, so you precipitate
violence’. However, he excused it: ‘We are merely bringing to the surface the
tension that has always been at the heart of the problem.’ Critics accused
him of hypocrisy. One said, ‘He marches for peace on one day, and then the
very next day threatens actions we think are coldly calculated to bring violent
responses from otherwise peaceful neighborhoods.’
While little changed in Birmingham itself, SCLC’s campaign immediately
inspired protests throughout the South and showed the USA and the world
Southern segregation at its worst. The Kennedy administration admitted
that Birmingham was crucial in persuading President Kennedy to push the
bill that eventually became the 1964 Civil Rights Act. ‘We are on the
threshold of a significant breakthrough’, said King, ‘and the greatest weapon
is the mass demonstration’.

The March on Washington, August 1963

Marches were a favourite tactic of civil rights activists, and the nation’s capital
was a favourite location. Masterminded by A. Philip Randolph, the March on
Washington of August 1963 aimed to encourage passage of the civil rights
bill and executive action to increase black employment. Initially, NAACP
leader Roy Wilkins was not supportive, which worried King, who felt the
march would maintain black morale and advertise the effectiveness of
non-violent protest. He feared that non-violence was decreasingly popular
among blacks, many of whom were embittered by the slow pace of change.
The march proved a great success. The predominantly middle-class crowd
was around a quarter of a million, roughly 25 per cent of whom were white.
King’s memorable speech (see Source M) made a powerful appeal to white
USA, with its references to the Declaration of Independence and the Bible,
and emphasis on the Old Testament God who freed his enslaved people.
This was King the leader at his best, involved in an action the morality of
which could not be doubted, and the effectiveness of which he
immeasurably increased by helping to persuade Wilkins to participate and by
making a superb speech.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

Source M

An extract from Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, 1963,

Using the extract in Source M
quoted on http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/about/encyclopedia/
and your own research into
documentsentry/doc_august_28_1963_i_have_a_dream/
the speech, give reasons why
I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a this speech has become so
dream that one-day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its famous.
creed – we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …
I have a dream that my four little children will one-day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character. I have a dream today! …
Let freedom ring … When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from
every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to
speed up that day when all of God’s children – black men and white men, Jews
and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – will be able to join hands and sing in
the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last; thank God
Almighty, we are free at last.’

The significance of the march

The March on Washington was the first time the major civil rights leaders
collaborated on a national undertaking (the unity did not last). It impressed
television audiences across the world. Historians disagree over the extent to
which its emotional impact helped the passage of civil rights legislation:
while many contemporaries were thrilled by the march, the New York Times
described Congress as unmoved by it, and Malcolm X was unimpressed (see
Source N).
Source N

Extracts from Malcolm X on the March on Washington (1. Told to an

Read Source N. Why and
Amsterdam News reporter, 1963. 2. Speech, 4 December 1963, quoted on
how fairly did Malcolm X
http://politics.lilithezine.com/Malcolm-X-December-4-1963.html. 3. From
criticize the March on
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published by Penguin, London, UK,
Washington?
1965, pages 278–81).
1. The Negroes spent a lot of money, had a good time, and enjoyed a real circus
or carnival type atmosphere.
2. Now that the show is over, the black masses are still without land, without
jobs, and without houses. Their Christian churches are still being bombed,
their innocent little girls murdered. So what did the March on Washington
accomplish? Nothing.
3. How was a one-day ‘integrated’ picnic going to counter-influence those
representatives of prejudice rooted deep in the psyche of the American white
man for 400 years?

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 SNCC and Mississippi
The SNCC’s finest hour was the Black Freedom Movement in Mississippi,
where in 1960, only 5.2 per cent of black adults could vote (the Southern
average was over 30 per cent). White voter registrars set impossible
questions and opened offices at inconvenient hours to stop black voter
registration. Although half of Mississippians were black, there had been no
elected black official since 1877. With black people politically powerless,
Mississippi whites spent three times more on white students and 70 per cent
of Mississippi’s black population were illiterate. With only six black doctors
in Mississippi, black babies were twice as likely to die as white babies. Half a
million black Mississippians had migrated north to escape to a better life.
King’s close associate Andrew Young confessed that the SCLC ‘knew better
than to try to take on Mississippi’. In 1961, NAACP activists, increasingly
victimized, called for help from the SNCC, knowing that SNCC’s white
volunteers would attract media attention to Mississippi’s racist horrors.

SNCC activities and achievements in Mississippi

Unprotected by the federal government and in fear of white extremists,
SNCC worked at the local community level, establishing Freedom Schools to
educate would-be voters and get them registered. It was the local, poorer
black people such as sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer, not the black middle
class, who responded when the SNCC organized the ‘Freedom Vote’ (a mock
KEY TERM
election for disenfranchised blacks) in 1963, and promoted another voter
Freedom Summer SNCC registration drive (the Mississippi Summer Project, or Freedom Summer), in
voter registration campaign in 1964. Predominantly white Northern volunteers poured into Mississippi to
Mississippi in 1964. help. All of the USA took notice of ‘Mississippi Freedom Summer’ after three
National Convention young activists (two were white) were murdered by segregationists.
Before the presidential
SNCC also helped to organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
election, the Republicans and
Democrats hold conferences (MFDP) delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City
in which each party selects or in 1964. The MFDP delegates pointed out that while half of Mississippi’s
confirms its candidate for the population was black, the Mississippi delegation for the Democratic Party
presidency. was ‘lily-white’. Although the MFDP delegation was not welcomed in
Atlantic City, MFDP successfully politicized many poor black Mississippians
(especially women), developed new grassroots leaders, and brought black
Mississippi suffering to national attention.
Disillusioned with the lack of federal protection, the SNCC became far more
militant, which contributed to the disintegration of the civil rights coalition.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act

During 1963, the Kennedy administration finally introduced a civil rights bill
to Congress, where it remained stuck when Kennedy was assassinated and
Vice President Lyndon Johnson became president.

Johnson’s motivation
Johnson was determined to get Kennedy’s civil rights bill through Congress.
He envisioned a ‘Great Society’ for America, with ‘an end to poverty and

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

racial injustice’. He believed that discrimination was morally wrong, and

described how, when his black cook drove to Texas, she could not use the
whites-only facilities in a petrol station:
When they had to go to the bathroom, they would … pull off on a side road, and
Zephyr Wright, the cook of the vice-president of the United States, would squat in
the road to pee. That’s wrong. And there ought to be something to change that.
Johnson remained convinced that reform would help the economic, political
and spiritual reintegration of the South within the nation. He felt duty-
bound to see the late president’s bill through, his sense of obligation
increased by the tragic circumstances of Kennedy’s death. When Johnson
told Roy Wilkins he was ‘free at last’ from his Texas constituency and as
president could help blacks, Wilkins considered him ‘absolutely sincere’.

How and why the bill passed

The civil rights bill faced considerable opposition in Congress, including the
longest filibuster in Senate history, but finally became an act because:
l Black activists had drawn the attention of the nation and its legislators to
injustices. ‘The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro’, said
Johnson.
l NAACP, trade unionists and the Churches had lobbied Congress
KEY TERM
incessantly.
l Kennedy had won over the Republican minority leader Everett Dirksen Minority leader Leader of
before his death. the party with fewer
l The nation was saddened by Kennedy’s death. Passing his bill seemed an members in Congress.
appropriate tribute. Johnson made emotive appeals to Kennedy’s memory Hispanics Spanish-speaking
and to national traditions and ideals. people in the USA, usually of
l Important congressional leaders such as Hubert Humphrey worked hard Latin American origin.
on the bill.
l A Johnson aide gave the credit for the passage of the bill to the president
himself, who devoted a staggering amount of his time, energy and
political capital to breaking the Senate filibuster and ensuring the passage
of the act.
l Johnson won over a few Southerners by appealing to their self-interest, as
when he emphasized how the bill would help to get blacks and
Hispanics working (see pages 148–9).
l The bill had increasing national support: by January 1964, 68 per cent of
US citizens favoured it. After Birmingham, national religious organizations
increasingly supported the measure. Congress could not afford to ignore
this marked swing in public opinion.

The significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The 1964 Civil Rights Act gave the federal government the legal tools to end
de jure segregation in the South, prohibited discrimination in public places,
furthered school desegregation and established an Equal Employment
Commission.

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 However, the act did little to facilitate black voting, and little to improve race
relations. Many black people felt the act had not gone far enough. They still
suffered from poverty and discrimination. The weeks following the passage
of the act saw riots in the black ghettos of many East Coast cities and there
were signs of a Northern working-class white backlash in the popularity of
Alabama’s racist Governor George Wallace in presidential primaries. Johnson
was hurt and angry. He knew ‘we [Democrats] just delivered the South to
the Republican Party for a long time to come’. He felt he had done a great
deal and at great cost to help black people and now rioters embarrassed him
and the party.

Selma 1965
Despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act, little changed in Selma, Alabama, where
about half of the 29,000 population was black and had segregated schools,
buses, churches, restaurants, playgrounds, public toilets and drinking
fountains. They used a different library and swimming pool. They could only
have certain jobs and houses. White neighbourhoods had paved streets,
black ones had dirt roads. The average white family income was four times
that of black families. The local newspapers kept the black and white news
separate. Despite an SNCC campaign, only 23 blacks were registered to vote.
Lawsuits initiated by Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department were still bogged
down in the courts.
King announced Selma ‘has become a symbol of bitter-end resistance to the
Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South’. It promised exploitable divisions
within the white community. Selma’s Sheriff Jim Clark could be trusted to
react as brutally as Bull Connor, which would result in national publicity and
revitalize the SCLC and the whole Civil Rights Movement. While some local
black activists feared the SCLC would ‘come into town and leave too soon’ or
ignore them, others said that as the SNCC had lost its dynamism there it
was an ideal opportunity for the SCLC. Concentration on Selma was the
most specific thing the SCLC had done for a year, a year in which King said
he and the others had ‘failed to assert the leadership the movement needed’.
King led would-be voters to register at Selma County Court building, but
despite a federal judge’s ruling, there were no registrations. Several incidents
made headlines. A trooper shot a black youth who was trying to shield his
mother from a beating. Whites threw venomous snakes at blacks trying to
register. Keen for the media to show brutality, King held back men who tried
to stop Clark clubbing a black woman. He publicly admitted in a letter to the
New York Times that he wanted to be arrested to publicize the fact that Selma
blacks were not allowed to register to vote: ‘This is Selma, Alabama. There
are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.’
However, when Selma did not prove as explosive as King had hoped, the
SCLC and SNCC organized a march from Selma to Montgomery (Alabama’s
capital) to publicize the need for a Voting Rights Act. Eighty Alabama whites
joined the march. Television viewers saw state troopers attack the marchers

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

with clubs and used tear gas, and this ‘Bloody Sunday’ aroused nationwide
criticism of Selma’s whites. President Johnson asked King to call off the next
march, but King felt that constituted a betrayal of his followers. Without
informing the SNCC, King got the marchers to approach the state troopers
then retreat. SNCC felt betrayed and accused him of cowardice.

How significant was Selma?

Historian Stephen Oates (1994) described Selma as ‘the movement’s finest
hour’. King thought the nationwide criticism of ‘Bloody Sunday’ was ‘a
shining moment in the conscience of man’ (there were sympathetic
interracial marches in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York and Boston).
Johnson had the voting rights bill ready before Selma, but Selma and ‘Bloody
Sunday’ constituted a dramatic reminder that there were US citizens who
could not vote and could be attacked without redress. Selma sped up the
passage of the Voting Rights Act (August 1965), in support of which Johnson
made a persuasive speech before Congress that was one of his best (see
page 149). King said the speech brought tears to his eyes. On the other hand,
although the NAACP had been very supportive in the law courts, the SNCC
publicly criticized the SCLC as perpetually leaving behind ‘a string of
embittered cities’ such as St Augustine (1964) and Selma, which were worse
off than when the SCLC had first got there. The SNCC said the SCLC just
used people in those cities to make a point. Disgruntled St Augustine
activists claimed King and SCLC had ‘screwed’ them. One said, ‘I don’t want
him back here now.’ Selma’s activists felt betrayed by SCLC’s withdrawal.
The SCLC had raised a great deal of money because Selma was in the
headlines, then left and spent the money in the North (see page 91). SNCC
gleefully quoted an arrogant SCLC representative who said, ‘They need us
more than we need them. We can bring the press in with us and they
can’t.’ The SNCC also accused the SCLC of ‘ leader worship’ of King. Black
divisions were clearly worsening.

The Voting Rights Act 1965

The Voting Rights Act ended literacy tests and poll taxes (see page 56). It had
a dramatic effect on the South. By late 1966, only four of the old Confederate
states had fewer than 50 per cent of their eligible blacks registered. By 1968,
even Mississippi was up to 59 per cent. In 1980, the proportion of registered
black voters was only seven per cent less than the proportion of whites. The
numbers of African Americans elected to office in the South increased
six-fold from 1965 to 1969, then doubled from 1969 to 1980. The enlarged
black vote went a little way towards countering the Democratic Party’s loss
of Southern white voters.

A legislative revolution 1964–5

Johnson engineered a legislative revolution with the Civil Rights Act, the
Voting Rights Act, an Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) that
provided federal funding to poorer states such as Mississippi and helped to
increase the percentage of black students with a high school diploma (40 per

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 cent in 1960 and 60 per cent in 1970), and a Higher Education Act (1965)
that gave significant aid to poor black colleges and contributed to a four-fold
increase in black college students within a decade. Although his healthcare
reform in 1965 was not specifically aimed at African Americans, it helped to
halve the black infant mortality rate.
How had Johnson managed it? It was a ‘unique set of circumstances’,
according to biographer Irving Bernstein (1996). Owing to his 24 years in
Congress, for many of which he was Democratic Party leader, Johnson had
unprecedented experience in getting legislation through the Democrat-
dominated Congress. Congressmen knew their constituents were unusually
receptive at this time to righting national wrongs, partly because they felt it
would somehow atone for Kennedy’s death. Most important of all, Johnson
was exceptionally persuasive and determined, and had a lifelong
commitment to helping the poor.
However, for Johnson as for King, the best times were over (see Chapter 3).

Events Achievements
NAACP and Publicized failure to comply with Brown;
Little Rock 1957 forced federal intervention
Eisenhower’s Civil Feeble, but set precedents
Rights Acts 1957, 1960

SCLC 1957–60 20,000 marched on Washington, but little else

Sit-ins 1960 Many places desegregated; SNCC established;

grassroots work

CORE’s Freedom Rides Desegregated interstate travel

1961

Albany Movement 1961–2 Bad publicity; some desegregation

Birmingham 1963 Good publicity, great contribution to 1964 Civil

Rights Act

March on Washington Inspirational publicity, contribution to 1964 Civil

1963 Rights Act
SNCC and Mississippi Empowerment of local communities; good publicity
1961–4

Civil Rights Act 1964 Ended de jure segregation in South

Selma 1965 Good publicity; vital to passage of 1965 Voting Right Act

Voting Rights Act 1965 Filled gaps in 1964 act; enabled blacks to vote

Summary diagram

The end of segregation in the South 1955–65

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

doctrine espoused by the Supreme Court in 1896,

Chapter summary but the court had no powers of enforcement and the
desegregation of schools was a slow process, fiercely
resisted by many whites. The murder of Emmett Till
African Americans and the Civil Rights and the arrest of Rosa Parks demonstrated continuing
Movement Southern black vulnerability. However, Parks’ arrest
When Europeans colonized North America, they triggered the first great demonstration of mass activism,
introduced slavery. It continued in the Southern states the Montgomery bus boycott, which brought Martin
until the Civil War (1861–5), after which freed slaves Luther King Jr to national attention and resulted in the
were given theoretical equality in the civil rights desegregation of Montgomery’s buses. Although not
amendments of 1865–70. However, the federal particularly sympathetic to African Americans, President
government soon lost interest in their welfare, and Eisenhower felt he had to send in troops to protect the
Southern white supremacy was restored with the nine children who tried to enter Central High School
introduction of de jure segregation. Many Southern in Little Rock, Arkansas, and to introduce civil rights bills
blacks migrated North, although even there de facto that became feeble but precedent-setting acts in 1957
segregation reaffirmed their inferiority. and 1960.
Black tactics for dealing with their position of The Montgomery bus boycott was followed by a
inferiority always varied and led to disagreement. In the series of black campaigns that eventually resulted in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some 1964 Civil Rights Act, which ended de jure segregation,
advocated concentration on economic improvement and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which gave African
(accommodationism) while others established NAACP Americans political influence. These campaigns
to fight segregation. included the 1960 sit-ins, which led to the birth of
Black activism dramatically increased as the SNCC, and CORE’s 1961 Freedom Rides, which led
twentieth century wore on, fuelled by unions, black to the desegregation of interstate transport. In 1963,
newspapers, the Harlem Renaissance, organizations SCLC’s Birmingham campaign and the March on
and slowly increasing sympathy from the federal Washington played an important part in the eventual
government. Two world wars in which the USA passage of the 1964 act and SCLC’s Selma campaign
claimed to be fighting for democracy increased black was vital in the passage of the 1965 act. The campaigns
consciousness, and President Truman (1945–53) put were not always immediately successful, as with the
civil rights on the national agenda with his call for Albany movement (1961–2), and were often plagued
legislation to end inequality. Truman began the process by unpunished violence, as with SNCC’s grassroots
whereby minorities would gain equal employment work in Mississippi. Nevertheless, persistent black
rights. The increasingly liberal Supreme Court activism brought about the demise of Jim Crow.
responded to NAACP suits with important rulings that Perhaps equally important was President Johnson’s
culminated in Brown (1954). Brown undermined all determination to create a more equal society.
justification for segregation and the ‘separate but equal’

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 Examination advice
How to answer ‘to what extent’ questions
The command term to what extent is a popular one in IB exams. You are
asked to evaluate one argument or idea over another. Stronger essays will
also address more than one interpretation. This is often a good question in
which to discuss how different historians have viewed the issue.

Example
To what extent were civil rights movements divided in the 1960s?
1 Beyond stating the degree to which you agree with the premise, you must
focus on the words civil rights movements and divided in the question.
Remember, you will need to make a judgement about the degree to which
the movements were divided.
2 First take at least five minutes to write a short outline. In order to gauge
the degree of division, you should point out the goals of each group, their
plans for actions, and how and when the groups co-operated with one
another. In some instances, the movements appealed to different sectors
and regional areas in the USA. An example of an outline is given below.

NAACP: [As elsewhere, you do not need to write out the complete
spelling of such an organization beyond the first mention of the
group.]
Goals/Actions: tried to obtain racial equality through use of the
courts. After Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954), NAACP
found it difficult to operate in the South. One of the oldest civil rights
movements. Some animosity between leader Roy Wilkins and Martin
Luther King Jr. Wilkins did participate in 1963 March on Washington.
CORE:
G oals/Actions: organized sit-ins to combat de facto segregation
in Chicago. Tried direct non-violent actions in the beginning but
failed to mobilize many and failed to garner publicity. Organized
successful Freedom Rides (1963). SNCC helped out when many
CORE members were ­i mprisoned. CORE insisted on being seen as
the prime mover behind the success of Freedom Rides in ending
segregation in interstate transport.
SCLC:
G oals/Actions: Stressed mass actions over litigation. Based mostly in
southern states, where the aim was to end de jure segregation and
▼

gain equality.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

1 963 March on Washington showed co-operation between SCLC and

NAACP. Selma to Montgomery March was evidence of SCLC and
SNCC co-operation. Martin Luther King, Jr leader.
SNCC:
G oals/Actions: More locally based than national. Worked to
­e mpower ordinary African Americans. 1961 Albany Movement
showed discord among SNCC, SCLC, and NAACP. Strong local action
in Mississippi (1960 Freedom Summer). More militant. Younger
members than other groups.

3 In the introduction, be sure to mention the main civil rights movements

such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for
the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). Briefly mention instances of division and unity. An
example of a good introductory paragraph for this question is given below.

In the 1960s, several civil rights groups were active in trying to

secure equal rights for African Americans, particularly those living
in the Southern states. These groups included the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of
Colored Peoples (NAACP), Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Because of differences in strategies, goals, leadership, and geographic
focus it was very difficult for the groups to work together effectively
in all situations. This was clearly demonstrated when the Albany
Movement failed in 1961. Nonetheless, there were instances when two
or more of the movements did co-ordinate efforts and did achieve
success such as during the March on Washington in 1963.

4 In the body of the essay, you need to discuss each of the points you raised
in the introduction. Devote at least a paragraph to each one. It would be a
good idea to order these in terms of which ones you think are most
important. Be sure to make the connection between the points you raise
and the major thrust of your argument. An example of how one of the
points could be addressed is given below.

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 The Albany Movement in 1961 was an effort to force authorities in
Albany, Georgia to desegregate public facilities. The SNCC took the
lead and led sit-ins at the local bus terminal. In ensuing
demonstrations hundreds of activists were arrested. SNCC had hoped
to promote local action but the arrival of Dr King and others from
the SCLC meant that attention was drawn away from the SNCC. King
led a march and then signed an agreement with white city officials.
After King departed, the officials reneged on the agreement.
Continued infighting among several of the civil rights groups led to a
series of smaller and smaller demonstrations and left a disheartened
and divided movement in Albany.

5 In the conclusion offer final remarks on the extent to which the civil rights
groups were not unified. Avoid adding any new information or themes in
your concluding thoughts. An example of a good concluding paragraph is
given below.

In conclusion, it is clear that the civil rights movements in the 1960s

were sometimes in opposition to one another. Some leaders felt that
the best tactic was to attack segregation through the courts while
others wished to force white intransigence and violence into the open.
This lack of unity meant that some marches and demonstrations
failed to achieve their goals. At the same time, there were instances
when groups did come together to great effect. While divisions
sometimes slowed the process of desegregation, the tide had clearly
turned in the USA and the sum total of actions in Washington and
throughout the South meant that the days of de jure racial
separation were numbered.

6 Now try writing a complete answer to the question following the advice
above.

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 Chapter 2: African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement

Examination practice
Below are three exam-style questions for you to practise on this topic.
1 Assess the impact of non-violent resistance to the success of the Civil
Rights Movement.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘assess’ questions, see pages 121–2.)
2 Evaluate the success of the NAACP at the Supreme Court.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘evaluate’ questions, see pages 171–3.)
3 Analyse the reasons for the rise of the Civil Rights Movement.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘analyse’ questions, see pages 51–2.)

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 Chapter 3

Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

This chapter focuses on the problems of the ghettos and the attempts made to deal
with them by Martin Luther King Jr’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and
the other civil rights organizations, and by the Black Power movement. The chapter
compares and evaluates the achievements of King, Malcolm X and the Black Power
movement. You need to consider the following questions throughout this chapter:
� What were King’s contributions to the success of the Civil Rights Movement?
� Who or what played the most important role in the Civil Rights Movement?
� How and why were the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X important?
� Why and with what results did Black Power emerge?
� How new and successful was the Black Power movement?

1 The role of Martin Luther

King Jr in the Civil Rights
Movement
Key question: What were King’s contributions to the success of the Civil
Rights Movement?

Although the great Civil Rights Movement of 1955–65 helped to change the
South, it did nothing for the problems of the Northern, Midwestern and
Western ghettos. As King would see in Los Angeles in 1965 and Chicago in
1966, ghetto life was soul destroying. Housing was poor, amenities were few.
Those born in the ghetto found it hard to break out of the cycle of poverty.
Only 32 per cent of ghetto pupils finished high school, compared to 56 per
cent of white children. Ghetto schools did not provide a solid educational
foundation for good jobs. In addition, automation decreased the number of
factory jobs for unskilled workers in the 1950s and 1960s, which led to a
disproportionate amount of black unemployment. In the early 1960s, African
Americans constituted just over 10 per cent of the US population but 46 per
cent of the unemployed. Some ghettos, including Chicago’s, had 50–70 per
cent black youth unemployment.

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

Going West: Watts 1965 What was the

significance of the
In August 1965, the nation’s attention focused on the ghettos when riots
Watts riots?
erupted in Los Angeles’ Watts ghetto. Black mobs set fire to several blocks of
stores. Local churchmen asked King for help.
Despite previous unsuccessful attempts to calm black rioters in New York,
where some residents of Harlem called him an Uncle Tom and the mayor
had proved unhelpful, King felt it was his duty to go to Watts. The scenes of KEY TERM
devastation shocked him. He told the press this had been ‘a class revolt of
underprivileged against privileged … the main issue is economic’. Previously Socialism Political
King had thought of ‘freedom’ in terms of ending segregation and exercising philosophy that society
should be as equitable as
the vote. Now King began to define ‘freedom’ in terms of economic equality
possible in terms of
rather than political equality. He was turning to socialism, calling for ‘a economic and social standing.
better distribution of the wealth’ of the USA.
Source A

Bayard Rustin, King’s ex-Communist friend, recalled the impact of the

To what extent would you
Watts riots on King in 1965. Quoted in Bearing the Cross by David Garrow,
trust Rustin’s assessment in
published by William Morrow, New York, USA, 1999, page 439.
Source A of the impact of the
[King was] absolutely undone, and he looked at me and said, ‘You know, Bayard, Watts riots on King?
I worked to get these people the right to eat hamburgers, and now I’ve got to do
something … to help them get the money to buy it’ … I think it was the first time
he really understood.

Source B

Two Watts residents speaking after the riots. 1. Quoted in Martin and
Read Source B. Using your
Malcolm and America by James Cone, published by Orbis Books, New
own knowledge, explain why
York, USA, 1991 page 222. 2. Quoted in The Modern Presidency and Civil
Watts residents would have
Rights by Garth Pauley, published by Texas A&M University Press, College laughed about non-violence
Station, Texas, USA, 2001, page 194. and been unimpressed by
1. King, and all his talk about non-violence, did not mean much. Watts had the Civil Rights Act.
respect for King, but the talk about non-violence made us laugh. Watts wasn’t
suffering from segregation, or the lack of civil rights. You didn’t have two
drinking fountains …
2. [When Johnson signed the civil rights bill in 1964] nobody even thought
about it in Watts … It had nothing to do with us.

Going North: Chicago 1966 What was the

significance of SCLC’s
After Southern blacks had sought and gained primarily political and social
Chicago campaign?
rights, King turned North, where the problem was more economic. The
struggle in the South had not helped black Northerners as he had hoped
and he wanted do something to stop the increasing tendency towards
violence and radicalism amongst some black groups. He sought a Northern

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 ghetto on which the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (see
pages 72–3) could concentrate and chose Chicago because:
l Chicago was the USA’s second largest city, with three million people,
700,000 of whom were black. Concentrated in the South Side and West
Side ghettos, black Chicagoans suffered severe employment, housing and
education problems. Chicago’s black schools were so overcrowded that
students attended in half-day shifts. SCLC said, ‘if Northern problems can
be solved there, they can be solved anywhere’.
l Other great Northern cities were effectively shut off to King. He was told
to keep out of New York City by Harlem congressman Adam Clayton
Powell and out of Philadelphia by the local NAACP leader. Although
Chicago activists warned SCLC not to just ‘come in and take over’, they
did so relatively amicably.
l Chicago had a tradition of sporadic protest. Inspired by the Southern
sit-ins, CORE (see pages 56 and 74) was revitalized in 1960. In 1961, there
were ‘wade-ins’ in protest against the customary segregation of South Side
beach. In October 1963, over half of Chicago’s half a million black
students boycotted their inferior segregated schools for a day in protest,
although no improvement had resulted.
l Chicago’s influential religious community supported the Civil Rights
Movement.
l Chicago’s Mayor Daley relied heavily on black voters and was not racist.
He had total political domination. If he could be won over, things could
get done. Chicago could become an inspirational symbol.
However, throughout the winter of 1965–6, King and his lieutenant, Andrew
Young, were unsure of what to do in Chicago. Young talked vaguely of
mobilizing Chicago blacks, and ‘pulling things together’. In late spring 1966,
SCLC finally focused on discrimination in housing sales, which stopped
blacks moving out of the ghettos’ slums.

King and life in Chicago

SCLC rented a West Side ghetto flat for King’s use during the campaign.
When the landlord found out who his new tenant was, an army of repairmen
moved in to make it habitable. Chicagoans joked that the easiest way for
King to improve ghetto housing would be for him to move from building to
building. King led reporters around rat-infested, unheated ghetto dwellings.
King and his aides dramatically seized a Chicago slum building and, dressed
in work clothes, began repairing it. King told the press that SCLC had
collected the tenants’ rents to finance this. When he said that moral
questions were more important than legal ones in this case, the press greatly
criticized his justification of illegality.
The campaign was not going well. Local Chicago activists and SCLC
members failed to get on and the lack of a clearly defined issue did not help.
The July 1966 Chicago rally turnout was 30,000, disappointingly below the
anticipated 100,000. The subsequent meeting between King and Daley was
unproductive. King said Daley did too little, Daley said he did his best.
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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

King’s family neared disintegration as they sampled Chicago ghetto life.

There were neither pools nor parks in which his children could escape the
suffocating heat of their small, airless flat. The surrounding streets were too
crowded and dangerous to play in. King’s children screamed and fought each
other, as never before. With the temperature near 100°F (38°C), the police
shut off the water spouting from a fire hydrant that black youths had been
using to cool themselves. After some youths were arrested, angry blacks ran
through the streets. King persuaded the police to release the youngsters and
encouraged ministers to join him in walking the ghetto streets to try to calm
people. Black crowds derided and walked away from him, but he persuaded
Mayor Daley to make fire hydrants and pools available.

De facto segregation in housing

Chicago whites feared black neighbours would hit property values, increase
crime and threaten cultural homogeneity, so when 500 black marchers
defiantly and provocatively entered a white Chicago neighbourhood to
publicize the fact that they could not as yet reside there, they were greeted
with rocks, bottles, and cries of ‘apes’, ‘cannibals’, ‘savages’ and ‘the only way
to stop [them] is to exterminate them’. Several such incidents occurred. The
police, shocked by cries of ‘nigger lovers’ from fellow whites, did little to
protect marchers. There was considerable violence. When a rock hit King, it
made the national press and the marches became more peaceful. On one
occasion, 800 policemen protected 700 marchers.
The riots caused $2 million worth of damage. Many influential whites
blamed King and invited him to leave. King blamed Daley. ‘A non-violent
movement cannot maintain its following unless it brings about change’, he
said, warning that discriminatory house-selling practices would lead to
‘Negro cities ringed with white suburbs’, which was dangerous: hatred and
fear developed when people were thus separated. The Chicago Tribune
denounced King as a ‘paid professional agitator’ and asked how he could
justify demonstrations that turned violent. He said demonstrations might
stop greater violence and that the problem was not the marches but the
conditions that caused people to march. He pointed out that:
We don’t have much money … [or] education, and we don’t have political power.
We have only our bodies and you are asking us to give up the one thing that we
have when you say, ‘Don’t march’ … We’re trying to keep the issue so alive that it
will be acted on. Our marching feet have brought us a long way, and if we hadn’t
marched I don’t think we’d be here today. [Quoted in Confronting the Color Line
by Alan Anderson and George Pickering, University of Georgia Press, 2007,
page 253.]

Assessment of SCLC in Chicago

King departed Chicago in autumn 1966, leaving dynamic young Jesse
Jackson in charge of ‘Operation Breadbasket’, which successfully used
economic boycotts to help increase black employment. Because of the threat
of black marches into racist white areas, Daley agreed to promote integrated

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 housing in Chicago, but the agreement was a mere ‘paper victory’ (Chicago
Daily News) and most African Americans remained stranded in the ghetto.
Although SCLC obtained a $4 million federal grant to improve Chicago
housing and left behind a significant legacy of community action, the local
black community felt SCLC had ‘sold out’ and lapsed into apathy. An SCLC
staffer in Chicago said the voter registration drive there was ‘a nightmare’,
‘largely because of division in the Negro leadership’ and partly because black
Chicagoans were uninterested: ‘I have never seen such hopelessness … A lot
KEY TERM of people won’t even talk to us.’
Black Power Many became disillusioned and turned to Black Power. Chicago’s race
A controversial term, with relations had always been poor. King could be considered to have worsened
different meanings, such as the situation. Black hopes were raised then dashed, and there was a white
black pride, black economic backlash. Whites increasingly thought of black people as troublemakers on
self-sufficiency, black violence,
welfare.
black separatism, black
nationalism, black political Reasons for failure in Chicago
power, black working-class
The New Republic said, ‘so far, King has been pretty much of a failure at
revolution, black domination.
organizing’ and one of King’s closest admirers described the Chicago venture
Vietnam War War as a ‘fiasco’ and ’disaster’. It failed because:
between non-Communist
South Vietnam (supported by l SCLC had been inadequately briefed and ill-prepared – they even lacked
the USA) and Communist warm clothing for the Chicago winter.
North Vietnam and its allies l The Meredith March (see page 96) distracted SCLC in mid-1966.
in the South (1954–75). l SCLC could not effect a social and economic revolution in Chicago within
months. Ella Baker (see page 73) always said SCLC’s failure to develop
grassroots participation often led to disaster. She felt King went into
Chicago hoping to effect a miraculous transformation without educating
and organizing the local population for a long-term haul after he and the
media had gone, although King was in fact realistic (see Source C).
l In contrast to Montgomery and Selma (see pages 62–6 and 82–3),
Chicago’s near million black population was too large to mobilize.
l NAACP was unhelpful, as were some of the local black churches, radical
Black Muslims (see pages 102–4), and black conservatives, who loathed
SCLC’s attempt to recruit and convert violent young gang members.
African American Congressman William Dawson, who had represented
Chicago since the Second World War, disliked mass action, which he
thought caused trouble. Most slum land was owned by blacks, who
resented King’s criticism of slum landlords.
l SCLC never called in outside help in Chicago, as it had in Selma.
l Mayor Daley outwitted the SCLC. His police protected the marchers. He
stopped the marches by threatening fines (which the SCLC could not
afford) rather than filling the jails.
l The federal government did not help the Chicago Freedom Movement,
because Mayor Daley was a political ally of President Johnson. Johnson
was alienated by King’s criticism of the Vietnam War (see box on
page 95).

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War

African Americans resented the disproportionate number of black casualties
in the Vietnam War and felt kinship with the poor, non-white Vietnamese.
When King saw a picture of Vietnamese children with burn wounds from US KEY TERM
napalm bombs in January 1967 he became publicly critical. He said that
President Johnson’s Great Society poverty programme had raised hopes for Great Society President
the inhabitants of the inner-city ghettos, but now the funds were being Johnson in 1965 declared a
diverted to the war. In a 1967 speech, he said young black males,‘crippled by ‘war on poverty’ and called
for a revolutionary
our society’, were being sent to:
programme of social welfare
legislation that involved
… guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest unprecedented federal
Georgia and East Harlem … We have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of expenditure on education,
watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a medical care for the elderly,
nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. I could never and an expanded Social
again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without Security Program.
having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today –
my own government.

King’s anti-Vietnam War stance was disliked by 48  per cent of African
Americans, because it alienated President Johnson.‘I know it can hurt SCLC,
but I feel better’, said King. ‘I was politically unwise, but morally wise.’ Sixty
per cent of African Americans believed his opposition hurt the Civil Rights
Movement.

l The anti-Vietnam War movement was taking funds and energies from the
Civil Rights Movement.
l National press coverage of King’s Chicago Freedom Movement was
limited. Black marchers attempting to register to vote in Selma gained
national sympathy, black marchers going into white neighbourhoods did
not. When CORE defied King and led a march into the working-class
white suburb of Cicero, marchers clashed violently with hecklers. Whites
were tired of black protests that led to violence, tired of black ghetto riots
(see pages 108–9) and resistant to radical change that affected their
property rights.
Source C

Martin Luther King Jr speaking in 1968 on the difference between his

Using Source C and your
campaign in the South and in the North, quoted in Twentieth Century
own knowledge, explain why
Shapes of Baptist Social Ethics by Larry McSwain and William Lloyd Allen,
it could be argued that it was
published by Mercer University Press, Georgia, USA, 2008, page 195.
‘easier’ for King to achieve
It’s much easier to integrate lunch counters than it is to eradicate slums. It’s successes in the South than in
much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee an annual the North.
minimum income and create jobs.

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 What was the The Meredith March 1966
significance of the
Famous as the University of Mississippi’s first black student (1962), James
Meredith March?
Meredith began a 220-mile (350-km) walk from Memphis to Mississippi’s
capital Jackson, to encourage black people to vote. When he was shot on the
second day and temporarily immobilized, black organizations declared that
they would continue his walk. King and 20 others set off and there were 400
marchers by the third day, including the new SNCC leader, Stokely
KEY TERM
Carmichael. Born in the West Indies, brought up in Harlem and educated at
Howard Prestigious African Howard, Carmichael was a founder member of SNCC. Charismatic,
American university in handsome and a good organizer, he was involved in SNCC’s voter
Washington, DC. registration campaigns in Mississippi (see page 80).

Divisions on the Meredith March

Black divisions damaged the march. NAACP wanted it to focus national
attention on a new civil rights bill and withdrew when Carmichael criticized
the bill. King welcomed white participants, SNCC rejected them. SNCC and
CORE had become increasingly militant following the lack of federal
protection for their voter registration projects in the ‘Mississippi Freedom
Summer’ of 1964 (see page 80). As white bystanders waved Confederate
flags, shouted obscenities and threw things at the marchers, SNCC people
sang:
Jingle bells, shotgun shells, Freedom all the way
Oh what fun it is to blast, A [white] trooper man away.
Carmichael was arrested and on release urged burning ‘every courthouse in
Mississippi’ and demanded ‘black power’ (see page 94). Crowds took up the
chant of ‘black power’, while King and SCLC tried to encourage chants of
‘freedom now’. King feared the words ‘black power’ would alienate white
sympathizers and encourage a white backlash. Although he had reluctantly
agreed to the black paramilitary group Deacons for Defense providing
security, King was tired of violence and urged blacks to avoid violent
retaliation against tear gas. As in Selma (see pages 82–3), Johnson refused
King’s pleas to send in federal troops.
Meanwhile, Meredith felt excluded and began a march of his own. Some
SCLC leaders joined him to disguise the split. The 15,000 main marchers
ended at Jackson with rival chants of ‘black power’ and ‘freedom now’.

Results and significance of the march

King despaired: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. The government has got
to give me some victories if I’m going to keep people non-violent.’ He felt he
could no longer co-operate with SNCC, and told the press, ‘Because Stokely
Carmichael chose the march as an arena for a debate over black power, we
did not get to emphasize the evils of Mississippi and the need for the 1966
Civil Rights Act.’ He admitted that blacks were ‘very, very close’ to a public
split. NAACP no longer wanted to co-operate with SCLC or SNCC. Now it

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

seemed that leadership might pass into the hands of extremists such as
Carmichael who rejected non-violence.

Where Do We Go From Here? Was King ‘Martin

Loser King’ after
After the Chicago debacle, King was depressed, unsure what to do next and
1967?
marginalized by black extremists such as Carmichael, who called for black
and white separation and said blacks should use ‘any means necessary’ to
obtain their rights. Black extremists, the white backlash and the distraction of
white liberals by the Vietnam War resulted in the collapse of the civil rights
coalition that had achieved so much.

Affirmative action
In his book Where Do We Go From Here? (1967), King highlighted the
problem: giving blacks the vote had not cost money, but improving the
KEY TERM
ghettos would be expensive. No one wanted higher taxation. King urged
demonstrations to seek affirmative action, on the grounds that ‘a society Affirmative action Positive
that has done something against the Negro for hundreds of years must now discrimination to help those
do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and who have had a
equal basis’. King also urged blacks to broaden their movement and bring disadvantageous start in life.
Hispanics, Native Americans and poor whites into the war on poverty.

The Poor People’s Campaign

King planned to bring all the poor together to camp out in Washington, DC
in a Poor People’s Campaign. His final strategy (to represent a wider
constituency) and his final tactics (yet another protest) were, in the climate of
the time, unwise and unrealistic. ‘It just isn’t working. People aren’t
responding’, he admitted. Even friends and colleagues opposed the idea.
Even sympathizers expected it to fail, end in violence and generate an even
greater white backlash. Adam Clayton Powell christened him ‘Martin
Loser King’.

Memphis
In March 1968, King was asked to visit Memphis, Tennessee, to support black
sanitation workers faced with discrimination from the city authorities. King
joined a protest march. When a radical black power minority got violent and
broke shop windows, King was exhausted, confused, frightened and in
despair:
Maybe we just have to admit that the day of violence is here, and maybe we have
to just give up and let violence take its course. The nation won’t listen to our voice.
Maybe it will heed the voice of violence.
Within hours, he was dead.

Assassination aftermath
King’s assassination triggered ghetto riots across the USA. Civil rights
leaders called for calm, although Stokely Carmichael (see page 96) sought a
more emphatic response. There were mixed feelings in white USA: some

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 grief, some guilt, some joy. President Johnson declared a day of national
mourning and Congress was inspired to pass the Fair Housing Act, which
tried but failed to end discrimination in the sale of housing. In death, King
became a somewhat sanitized hero, whose radicalism and faults (such as his
womanizing) were swept under the carpet.

How important was Martin Luther King Jr: conclusions

King?
With his protests, inspiration and organization, King played a vital role in the
demise of Jim Crow in the South. While he was just something of a
figurehead for the Montgomery bus boycott, it gained him national
prominence. Protesters recognized his value in terms of inspiration and
publicity, as with the sit-ins and freedom rides (see page 73), and it is to
King’s credit that he was willing to be led as well as to be leader. While
A. Philip Randolph masterminded the March on Washington (see page 78),
King’s unforgettable speech was its highlight. Although King’s
organizational skills often appeared limited, he successfully orchestrated
Birmingham (see page 76), which along with the March on Washington,
played a big part in encouraging the Kennedy administration to support
what became the 1964 Civil Rights Act. King also masterminded Selma (see
page 82), which was key in the passage of the Voting Rights Act. His
manipulation of white violence and belief in the effectiveness of mass protest
were essential in changing the focus of black activism from litigation.
NAACP’s litigation strategy had probably gone as far as it could go and it
took mass action to make a reality of the anti-segregation principles
enshrined in Brown.
King did not achieve the crucial legislation of 1964–5 all on his own. Black
protesters, organizations such as NAACP, CORE and SNCC, Churches, local
community organizations, and thousands of unsung field workers also
played a vital part in producing the legislation by which Southern
segregation had been shattered and a mass black electorate had gained a
voice in the political process. The federal government, especially the
Supreme Court, and President Lyndon Johnson, had played an important
role, as had white extremists (President Kennedy joked that Bull Connor was
a hero of the Civil Rights Movement).
King failed in Chicago, but the problems faced by the black population,
particularly in the ghettos, were great and long-standing. After his death and
after the rise of the Black Power movement, the federal government,
continuing in the direction signposted by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson,
supported affirmative action, and it could be argued that either King and the
Civil Rights Movement, or the Black Power movement, or both, were crucial
to the introduction of that policy.

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

King’s radicalism
Contemporaries who accused King of deferring to white authority figures
were usually young ‘black power’ militants who rejected non-violence (see
page 110). He in turn criticized them, telling the New York Times ‘black power’
was dangerous, provocative and cost the Civil Rights Movement support.
King knew violence stood little chance against the military strength of the
US government. Moderate in comparison, even King aroused hatred and
unrelenting opposition among many whites.
King was no Uncle Tom. He frequently criticized presidential policies. Some
of his demonstrations were deliberately provocative. They invited white
violence, making nonsense of his advocacy of non-violence. Within the
Southern context, King was a political radical who sought the vote for the
disenfranchised and a social radical who sought racial equality. The Northern
ghettos confirmed his economic radicalism: ‘something is wrong with the
economic system of our nation … with capitalism’. King’s tactics could be
considered revolutionary, particularly with his Poor People’s Campaign (see
page 97), which he wanted to cause ‘massive dislocation’, so as to force
Congress to act. By the winter of 1967–8 the Johnson administration
considered King a revolutionary who advocated ‘criminal [not civil]
disobedience’. Like President Kennedy before him, Johnson was happy to
have the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) monitor King (they bugged
his hotel rooms and informed his wife about his sexual liaisons). In 1995
King’s family had a bitter argument with the federal National Park Service,
which played down the radicalism of King’s later career in information
handed out at Atlanta’s King National Historic site.

Successes
• Inspirational figure in Montgomery bus boycott
• Willing to be led, e.g. sit-ins, freedom rides
• March on Washington 1963 – inspirational speech
• Birmingham 1963 – helped get 1964 Civil Rights Act
• Selma 1965 – helped get 1965 Voting Rights Act
✓ Failures
• Considered an Uncle Tom
• Albany Movement 1961
• St Augustine 1964
• Chicago 1966
• Meredith March, 1966
✗
• Changed tactics from litigation to mass protest • Poor People’s Campaign

Summary diagram

The role of Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights Movement

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 2 Key debate
Key question: Who or what played the most important role in the Civil
Rights Movement?

A major debate on the Civil Rights Movement is over the relative importance
of ‘top-down’ forces (leaders such as King, presidents, Supreme Court and
Congress) compared to each other and to activists who operated at a
grassroots level.

Did Martin make the movement?

The relative importance of King’s contribution has always been controversial:
Ella Baker insisted ‘the movement made Martin rather than Martin making
the movement’ and historian Professor Clayborne Carson (1987) contended
that:
If King had never lived, the black struggle would have followed a course of
development similar to the one it did. The Montgomery bus boycott would have
occurred, because King did not initiate it. Black students … had sources of tactical
and ideological inspiration besides King.
Journalist Fred Powledge (1991) covered the movement, and lamented:
In the minds of untold numbers of Americans, for example, the Rev Dr Martin
Luther King Jr, was the Civil Rights Movement. Thought it up, led it, produced its
victories, became its sole martyr. Schoolchildren – including Black schoolchildren
– are taught this.
However, many historians agree that ‘no person was more important’ than
King in the ‘revolution in Southern race relations’ brought about by the Civil
Rights Movement (Professor Anthony Badger in a 1998 lecture).

How important were factors other than King?

In the debate as to whether local communities or national organizations
played the more important part in the Civil Rights Movement, Steven
Lawson (1998) contended that the fate of the Civil Rights Movement
depended on the national organizations, especially NAACP and SCLC: ‘They
could do what Black residents of local communities could not do alone: turn
the civil rights struggle into a national cause for concern and prod the federal
government’ into action against Jim Crow.
In the debate as to whether black activism or the federal government played
the more important role, historian Mark Newman (2004) emphasized the
need to look at factors external to the black community: for example,
NAACP litigated increasingly successfully, but that owed much to Franklin
Roosevelt’s liberal appointments to the Supreme Court. Steven Lawson
(1998) argued that ‘the federal government played an indispensable role …

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

Without their crucial support, the struggle against white supremacy in the
South still would have taken place but would have lacked the power and
authority to defeat [segregationist] state governments’ (for example, the
Montgomery bus boycott had to continue until NAACP obtained the
Supreme Court ruling against segregated buses). Historian Mary Dudziak
(2000) wrote of the ‘Cold War imperative’: in the struggle against
Communism, the USA did not want to be seen to be racist and
undemocratic, although other historians, such as James Patterson (1996)
emphasize how Cold War pressure for conformity and opposition to left-
wing ideas hindered black activists. KEY TERM

Historians such as Aldon Morris (1984) stressed black agency, especially the Agency In this context,
role of the black Churches, although historian Clayborne Carson (1981) where black actions were
pointed out that the Church was frequently conservative and often held back influential, as opposed to
activists. black history being
determined by white actions.
Perhaps Lawson (1998) summed it up best when he said, ‘The federal
government made racial reform possible, but Blacks in the South made it
necessary.’
While the above debates have raged for many years, the last two decades
have seen (usually female) historians place a new emphasis on the
importance of black women activists, beginning with Vicki Crawford and
others (1993).

Did the Civil Rights Movement in the South disintegrate

after Selma? Is history made by
Some historians claim that the Civil Rights Movement in the South individuals or by
disintegrated soon after Selma. Adam Fairclough held that view in 1987, but historical forces? Come
up with examples for
by 1995 his study of Louisiana, confirmed by Stephen Tuck’s study of Georgia
both arguments. (Logic,
(2001), suggested that there was ‘continuity of protest’ at the local level, for Social Sciences,
example, in challenging electoral abuses. NAACP membership and activism Reason.)
grew again, and SCLC was very active in early 1970s’ Georgia.

3 The Nation of Islam and

Malcolm X
Key question: How and why were the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X
important?

KEY TERM
The Black Power movement of the 1960s did not develop out of nothing. The
Black nationalist Favouring
black separatist tradition emerged in the nineteenth century, when some
a separate black nation either
black people advocated ‘back to Africa’. Marcus Garvey’s separatist black within the USA or in Africa.
nationalist movement flourished briefly in the 1910s and 1920s (see

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 page 55). When Garvey’s UNIA went into decline, the nationalist and
separatist banner was taken up by the Black Muslim movement or Nation
of Islam.

What did the Nation Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam
of Islam achieve?
The Nation of Islam (a name suggesting a nation within the US nation) was
founded by Wallace Fard in Detroit in 1930. When Fard mysteriously
disappeared in 1934, leadership of the new religious group passed to Elijah
Poole, born in Georgia in 1897. Under his adopted name of Elijah
Muhammad, Poole led the Black Muslims of the Nation of Islam (NOI) from
1934 to 1975.

NOI beliefs and growth

Although Elijah Muhammad said he was the prophet of Allah, the
‘Messenger of Islam’, his teachings frequently differed from those of
orthodox Islam. He rejected ideas of spiritual life after death. He claimed that
Allah originally created people black, and that other races were created by an
evil scientist, Yakub, whose last evil creation was the white race. Whites
would rule the world for several thousand years, but then Allah would return
and end their supremacy. The NOI aimed to provide blacks with an
alternative to the white man’s Christian religion, to persuade members to
live a religious life, to increase black self-esteem, to keep blacks and whites
separate and to encourage blacks to improve their economic situation.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, the NOI set up temples in northern black
ghettos such as Detroit, New York and Chicago. In the 1950s, the NOI’s most
brilliant preacher, Malcolm X, attracted the attention and devotion of
frustrated ghetto-dwellers with his rejection of integration and his bitter
attacks on white Americans. A television documentary called The Hate that
Hate Produced (1959) brought the Nation of Islam national prominence and
white hostility. Addressing 10,000 people in Washington, DC in 1959, Elijah
Muhammad attacked the ‘turn the other cheek’ philosophy of Christianity as
perpetuating enslavement. He advocated separatism and armed self-defence
against white aggression.

NOI and Black Power

The NOI’s relations with the black power movement were ambivalent. Both
groups favoured separatism, cultural revival and self-help, but Elijah
Muhammad’s dismissive attitude towards non-Muslim African culture
alienated some Black Power activists, especially when he said in 1972, ‘I am
already civilized and I am ready to civilize Africa’. Elijah Muhammad hated
what he called ‘jungle styles’, such as Afro haircuts or colourful African-style
garments. Nevertheless, most Black Power advocates revered Elijah
Muhammad and the NOI as forerunners of the new black nationalism.

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

Achievements of the NOI

Negative
Some of the Nation’s solutions to black problems (a return to Africa or a
separate black state in the Deep South) were unrealistic and NOI teachings
exacerbated divisions between blacks and whites and between blacks. While
the NOI derided Martin Luther King Jr as an Uncle Tom, a ‘fool’ who
humiliatingly begged for access to a white-dominated world and urged
non-violence on his defenceless followers, King described the NOI as a
‘hate group’.

Positive
Estimates of NOI membership vary but it was possibly as high as 100,000 in
1960, and perhaps a quarter of a million by 1969. The Nation of Islam
newspaper Muhammad Speaks, with its comforting message of separatism in
self-defence, had a weekly circulation of 600,000 by the mid-1970s. The NOI
attracted and inspired ghetto-dwellers because of its self-confidence and
emphasis on racial pride and economic self-help. Elijah Muhammad and his
son Wallace created many businesses, such as restaurants, bakeries and
grocery stores. These symbolized black success and gave rare employment
opportunities in the ghettos. The NOI expected converts to live a religious
life, emphasizing marital chastity and the rejection of alcohol, tobacco and
flamboyant clothing.
When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his obituaries in the white press were
surprisingly favourable. Newsweek described him as ‘a kind of prophetic voice
in the flowering of black identity and pride’ while the Washington Post said he
inculcated ‘pride in thousands of black derelicts, bums, and drug addicts,
turning outlaws into useful, productive men and women’.

NOI: a postscript
After Elijah Muhammad’s death, the NOI split into Wallace Muhammad’s
group, which followed more orthodox Islamic teachings, and Louis
Farrakhan’s group, which retained Elijah Muhammad’s teachings.

Malcolm X 1925–65 What did Malcolm X

achieve?
After a difficult youth (see page 106), Malcolm became a criminal and was
sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in 1946.

Malcolm and the NOI

In prison, Malcolm converted to the NOI, which taught him ‘The white man
is the devil’ – ‘a perfect echo’ of his ‘lifelong experience’, he said. Released in
1952, he adopted the name Malcolm X (the X replaced the African name that
had been taken from his slave ancestors). He quickly became a leading figure
within the NOI, recruiting thousands of new members in Detroit, Boston,

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 Philadelphia and New York, where in 1954 he became Minister of Temple
Number 7 in Harlem.
After The Hate that Hate Produced was televised in 1959 (see page 102),
Malcolm attracted national and international attention, especially when he
said blacks should defend themselves ‘by any means necessary’. Always
critical of Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘non-violence’, he christened the 1963
March on Washington the ‘Farce on Washington’, scoffing at the dream of
integration: ‘Imagine, you have the chance to go to the toilets with white
folks!’ He mocked Christianity, a religion ‘designed to fill [black] hearts with
the desire to be white … A white Jesus. A white virgin. White angels. White
everything. But a black Devil of course.’

Malcolm’s split from the NOI

In late 1963, Malcolm was suspended by Elijah Muhammad for making
unpopular remarks about the assassination of President Kennedy. In March
1964, he announced his split with the NOI, disappointed by Elijah
Muhammad’s expensive lifestyle, romantic affairs and refusal to allow him to
join those risking their lives in Birmingham in 1963. ‘We spout our militant
revolutionary rhetoric’, said Malcolm, but ‘when our own brothers are …
killed, we do nothing’.
On an April 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm X established good relations
with non-US Muslims of all colours and rejected the racial theology (see
page 102) of the NOI. Opinions vary as to whether Malcolm’s development
was genuine or whether his ‘sudden realization’ of the ‘true’ Islam was a ploy
to re-create his public image. In the next month he established the
Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), which aimed to unite all
people of African descent and to promote political, social and economic
independence for blacks. Like King, Malcolm moved towards socialism,
propelled by economic inequality in the USA.
In February 1965, Malcolm was assassinated by NOI gunmen. He was
important as the harbinger of Black Power of the 1960s and as a role model,
inspiration and icon for discontented ghetto blacks. He also played a big part
in the alienation of white USA.

The aims, methods and achievements of Malcolm X

Malcolm X aimed to improve the lives of black Americans. His main
methods were to advertise and encourage critical thinking on race problems,
and, some would say, to encourage racial hatred and violence. Towards the
end of his life, Malcolm claimed, ‘I’m here to remind the white man of the
alternative to Dr King.’

Achievements: negative
Malcolm X’s achievements are controversial. Thurgood Marshall (see
page 56) was particularly critical of the NOI (‘run by a bunch of thugs’) and

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

of Malcolm (‘what did he achieve?’). Black baseball player Jackie Robinson

pointed out that while King and others put their lives on the line in places
like Birmingham, Malcolm stayed in safer places such as Harlem. Many
considered him to be irresponsible and negative. While he criticized civil
rights activists such as King, he never established organizations as effective
or long lasting as the NAACP or SCLC. His suggestions that blacks were
frequently left with no alternative other than violence seemed negative,
irresponsible and unhelpful. Time magazine described him as ‘an unashamed
demagogue whose gospel was hatred and who in life and in death was a
disaster to the Civil Rights Movement’.

Achievements: positive
Malcolm rightly drew early attention to the dreadful conditions in the USA’s
ghettos, and he brought US blacks more closely in contact with oppressed
black people throughout the world. He became an iconic role model for
black youths, particularly through his exploration of his feelings of rejection
and his search for his identity in his The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965).
‘Primarily’, said historian Claude Andrew Clegg (1997), ‘he made black
nationalism in its various forms appealing to the angry generation of black
youths who came of age just as American segregation and European colonial
empires were collapsing’. Perhaps most important of all, Malcolm inspired
the new generation of black leaders such as SNCC’s Stokely Carmichael and
CORE’s Floyd McKissick and the Black Power movement in general. He was
the first really prominent advocate of separatism and what subsequently
became known as Black Power during the great civil rights era.
Source D

An extract from the Saturday Evening Post, September 1964 on Is Source D favourable or
Malcolm X’s autobiography. The Saturday Evening Post is a US magazine. unfavourable to Malcolm and
If Malcolm were not a Negro, his autobiography would be little more than a African Americans?
journal of abnormal psychology, the story of a burglar, dope pusher, addict and
jailbird – with a family history of insanity – who acquires messianic delusions
and sets forth to preach an upside-down religion of ‘brotherly hatred’.

Martin and Malcolm: similarities and How and why were

differences Martin Luther King Jr
and Malcolm X
Although generally considered very different, the two most famous African different?
American activists of the civil rights era, Martin Luther King Jr and
Malcolm X, had much in common.

Family backgrounds
In many ways, Martin Luther King Jr (1929–68) and Malcolm X (1925–65)
could not have been more different. King was a Southerner, born in Atlanta,
Georgia, while Malcolm Little was born in the Midwest, in Omaha,
Nebraska. King was born into the slowly growing black middle class, to a

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 stable family headed by ‘Daddy King’, who, as a Church minister, was
shielded from the worst traumas of the Great Depression years. In contrast,
Malcolm’s widowed mother could not cope with the poverty of those years
and was committed to an insane asylum when Malcolm was 14 years old.

Youth and education

While King was able to go to college, albeit segregated, in Atlanta, Malcolm
left school full of resentment at a teacher who told him that his ambition to
become a lawyer was an unrealistic one for a black student.
King’s childhood and student days were not totally idyllic. If as a child he
wanted to see a film in central Atlanta, he could not buy a soda or a hot dog
at a store’s lunch counter. If a white shop served him, they would hand him
his ice cream through a side window and in paper cups so no white would
have to use anything that he had used. He had to drink from the ‘colored’

Source E

Martin Luther King Jr (left) and Malcolm X met only once and
Giving consideration to the
accidentally. The meeting took place in the US Congress in March 1964
caption to this photograph,
and using your own and they posed for this photograph.
knowledge of the relationship
between Martin Luther King
Jr and Malcolm X, is this
photograph important to the
historian of African
American history?

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

water fountain, and use the ‘colored’ toilet. He had to sit in the ‘colored’
section at the back of the balcony in the movie theatre. King said it made
him ‘determined to hate every white person’.
Having received a poor quality education in Atlanta’s segregated schools,
King experienced further racial prejudice when he went North to college.
When he demanded service in a Philadelphia restaurant, his plate arrived
filled with sand. A New Jersey restaurant owner drew a gun on King when
he refused to leave. King had problems getting student accommodation in
Boston in 1951. Rooms were ‘for rent until they found out I was a Negro and
suddenly they had just been rented’.
Without much education, Malcolm’s teenage years were far less happy than
King’s. Malcolm moved to Boston’s black ghetto in 1941, where he took jobs
traditionally open to African Americans, shoeshine boy and railway waiter.
While King graduated from an inferior Southern college but a good
Northern university, Malcolm graduated from the school of drug dealing,
pimping, burgling and jail.

Different philosophies
Naturally their backgrounds greatly affected their philosophies. ‘Daddy King’
supported the NAACP (see page 55) and he and Martin believed in the
American dream and sought integration into it. In contrast, Malcolm’s father
had supported UNIA (see page 55), and according to Malcolm, ‘What is
looked upon as an American dream for white people has long been an
KEY TERM
American nightmare for black people.’ Because of this, Malcolm sought
separatism. While King’s first preoccupation was the segregated South, Separatism Desire for
Malcolm’s was always the ghettos. African Americans to live
separate but equal lives from
Similarities whites, in all-black
Although very different in many ways, Malcolm and Martin had much in communities or even in a
common. Both aimed to improve the black situation and had many black state or Africa.
followers. Both were Church ministers, King in the Christian Church,
Malcolm in the NOI. Both had great oratorical gifts and belief in the power
of organizations, preaching and print, but whereas Malcolm justified black
violence in the form of self-defence, King preferred to contrast peaceful black
protest with violent white responses. Both were involved with influential
organizations. Both had philosophies that changed, developed and made
them more similar in their last years, when King became increasingly
socialist (‘You show me a capitalist and I’ll show you a bloodsucker’, said
Malcolm) and Malcolm became less antagonistic towards whites. Both were
controversial. Both were assassinated.
Most people would probably agree that King achieved far more, although
the 1965 Voting Rights Act (see page 83) proved to be his last great triumph.
Neither King nor Malcolm could solve the terrible problems of the ghetto.

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 Source F

Paying attention to the An extract from Martin Luther King Jr’s interview with Alex Haley in
provenance, does Source F Playboy magazine, January 1965. King talks about Malcolm X.
give a fair assessment of Maybe he does have some of the answers. I don’t know how he feels now, but I
Malcolm? know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because
violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the
despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I fear
that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery,
demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and to
prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.

Nineteenth century ‘Back to Africa’

• Racially divisive • Inspired self-confidence
• Separatism unrealistic • Economic self-help
• Hate group? • Lived religious life
• Image problem Garvey’s UNIA: 1910–1920s
• Dismissed African culture

Nation of Islam: 1930+

• Reminded whites of
• Racially divisive alternative to King
Malcolm X in NOI: 1950s • Inspirational
• Seemed to encourage
violence • Kept ghetto problems in
public eye

Summary diagram

The Nation of Islam and Malcolm X

4 The rise of Black Power in the

1960s
Key question: Why and with what results did Black Power emerge?

The origins of Black Power are controversial, but the influence of Malcolm X
(see above), ghetto problems and the experiences of SNCC and CORE
(many of whose members were Northerners) in Mississippi (see page 80)
were all contributory factors.

Why did Black Power Black Power and the ghettos

appeal in the ghettos?
During the five so-called ‘long hot summers’ of 1964–8, US ghettos erupted.
The first major race riot was in Watts (Los Angeles) in 1965. With 34 deaths,
1000 injuries, 3500 rioters and looters arrested, and over $40 million damage

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

done to largely white-owned businesses, the Watts riots gained national

attention. There were 238 other race riots in over 200 US cities from 1964 to
1968. Virtually every large US city outside the South had a race riot, for
example, Newark, New Jersey (1967), and Detroit, Michigan (1967). Some
had several, for example, Oakland, California (1965 and 1966), Cleveland,
Ohio (1966 and 1968), and Chicago, Illinois (1966 and 1968). There was
certainly a ‘copycat’ element: 16 cities experienced serious riots in 1964, 64 in
1968. From 1964 to 1972, ghetto riots led to over 250 deaths (the fatalities
mostly resulted from the police shooting rioters), 10,000 serious injuries,
60,000 arrests and a great deal of damage to ghetto businesses.
Out of the many city, state and federal government investigations into the
violence, the most famous was the National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders (commonly known as the Kerner Commission) set up by President
Johnson. Like the other reports, the Kerner Report, released in February
1968, emphasized the social and economic deprivation in the ghettos, which
had poor schools and housing and high unemployment (see page 90). The
reports also noted that the violence was frequently triggered by black
reaction to what were perceived as oppressive police policies and indifferent
white political machines.

Suggested solutions for the problems in the ghettos

Leaders of the black community used different tactics to improve ghetto life.
NAACP worked for integrated education, hoping it would provide better
quality education for blacks and enable them to escape from the ghettos (see
pages 57 and 60). A. Philip Randolph encouraged unionization and pressure
on the federal government as the way towards equal pay and employment
opportunities (see page 56). Martin Luther King Jr drew attention to ghetto
problems in the Chicago Freedom Movement (see page 91). Reports such as
the Kerner Report recommended increased expenditure on the ghettos, but
most whites were unwilling to finance improvements.

Why whites were unwilling to help

US Cold War anti-Communism ensured that sympathy for the poor was
often equated with sympathy for Communist doctrines of economic equality.
White American unwillingness to help was also motivated by self-interest.
Black entry into a white neighbourhood would cause property prices to Federal government
plummet and black schoolchildren from deprived backgrounds might expenditure
damage the educational and employment prospects of white children. White Great Society, 1963–9:
voters did not want to pay extra taxes to end ghetto poverty, particularly after    $15.5 billion
the Vietnam War led to tax rises. Neither the federal government nor state Vietnam War, 1965–73:
nor city authorities wanted to bear the expensive burden of improving the    $120 billion
ghettos.

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 While whites increasingly perceived blacks as seeking ‘handouts’, blacks
increasingly perceived whites as uninterested and unsympathetic. Not
surprisingly then, the Black Power movement emerged out of the
impoverished ghettos, for which by the late 1960s a new generation of black
radicals were demanding improvements.

Ghetto rejection of the civil rights organizations

The civil rights organizations tried to respond to ghetto frustration. King and
SCLC went to Chicago in 1966 (see page 91) and initiated the Poor People’s
Campaign in 1967 (see page 97). From 1964, CORE established ‘Freedom
Houses’ in the ghettos to provide information and advice on education,
employment, health and housing. The National Urban League (NUL)
launched a programme to develop economic self-help strategies in the
ghettos in 1968 and received $28 million from the Nixon administration in
1971. However, none of this was enough. Many ghetto inhabitants felt that
organizations such as NAACP and SCLC knew little about ghetto life and
were not much help in improving matters. Many younger black activists
rejected ‘de great lawd’ Martin Luther King Jr’s emphasis on the South, the
‘white man’s’ Christian religion, and non-violence, none of which seemed to
be contributing to progress in the ghettos. However, they recognized that
civil rights activism had led to improvements, and were inspired to be active
themselves, looking to new leaders such as Malcolm X and Stokely
Carmichael, whose condoning of violence seemed a more appropriate
response to white oppression than King’s ‘love thine enemy’.

The radicalization of SNCC and CORE

The radicalization of SNCC and CORE and their alienation from the older
organizations were demonstrated in the Meredith March in 1966 (see
page 96).

SNCC
In 1966, impatient with the slow progress toward equality, and disillusioned
by the lack of federal protection in the Mississippi Freedom Summer (see
page 80) and by the refusal of the Democratic Party to seat the MFDP
delegates at Atlantic City (see page 80), SNCC turned to a more militant
leader. John Lewis (see below) was replaced by Stokely Carmichael and in
1966, SNCC voted to expel whites. In 1967, Carmichael was replaced by the
even more militant Henry ‘Rap’ Brown (‘violence is as American as cherry
pie’), who advocated armed self-defence and urged a black audience in
Cambridge, Maryland, to take over white-owned stores in the ghettos, using
violence if necessary. There was a race riot in Cambridge soon afterwards. At
a rally in Oakland, California, in February 1968, SNCC merged with the
Black Panthers (see page 112), the most radical of all black organizations.

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

John Lewis 1940–

When studying in Nashville for the ministry, Alabama-born John Lewis
participated in sit-ins in 1960. His parents were‘shocked and ashamed’when
he was jailed: ‘My mother made no distinction between being jailed for
drunkenness and being jailed for demonstrating for civil rights.’ It was years
before she forgave him. In 1961, he participated in the Freedom Rides. He
was elected chairman of SNCC in 1963. A staunch advocate of non-violence,
he was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, where other
black leaders dissuaded him from criticizing the Civil Rights Bill (‘What is in
the bill that will protect the homeless and starving?’). He co-ordinated the
Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 and led marches in Selma in 1965,
where ‘Sheriff Clark’s temper played right into our hands.’ The only former
civil rights leader to be elected to the US Congress, he has represented
Georgia’s fifth Congressional district since 1988. When Barack Obama was
elected president in 2008, Lewis said:

If someone had told me this would be happening now, I would have told them
they were crazy, out of their mind, they did not know what they were talking
about … I just wish the others were around to see this day … To the people
who were beaten, put in jail, were asked questions they could never answer to
register to vote, it’s amazing.
He was on the stage during President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the
only surviving speaker of the March on Washington. The president signed a
photograph for Lewis with: ‘Because of you, John. Barack Obama.’

CORE
When James Farmer resigned leadership of CORE in December 1965, the
radical Floyd McKissick was elected in his place. In 1966, the annual CORE
convention, endorsed ‘black power’, and declared non-violence
inappropriate if black people needed to defend themselves. The 1967
convention excised the word ‘multiracial’ from CORE’s constitution. By 1968,
whites were excluded from CORE’s membership.

Definitions of Black Power What was Black

Power?
The phrase ‘black power’ first came to prominence during the Meredith
March (see pages 96–7), when SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael cried
‘black power’ in Greenwood, Mississippi. It meant different things to
different people.
For some black people, Black Power meant black supremacy. In 1968, Elijah
Muhammad said, ‘Black power means the black people will rule the white
people on earth as the white people have ruled the black people for the past
six thousand years.’

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 During 1968–9, black car workers at the Chrysler, Ford and General Motors
plants in Detroit, Michigan, thought Black Power meant a black working-
class revolution. They united in a Black Power union, the League of
Revolutionary Workers, which had a core of 80 activists and contributed to
the militancy of black car workers and to the employment of more black
foremen, before it imploded in 1971.
The older generation of civil rights leaders were hostile. NAACP leader Roy
Wilkins felt Black Power supporters were racist and no better than the Ku
Klux Klan. Martin Luther King Jr said, ‘When you put black and power
together, it sounds like you are trying to say black domination’. He called
Black Power ‘a slogan without a program’. When people persisted in using
the phrase, King tried to give it more positive connotations: ‘The Negro is in
dire need of a sense of dignity and a sense of pride, and I think black power
is an attempt to develop pride. And there is no doubt about the need for
power – he can’t get into the mainstream of society without it … Black
power means instilling within the Negro a sense of belonging and
appreciation of heritage, a racial pride … We must never be ashamed of
being black.’ SNCC’s Floyd McKissick also attempted a positive definition:
‘Black Power is not hatred’ and ‘did not mean black supremacy, did not mean
exclusion of whites from the Negro revolution, and did not mean advocacy
of violence and riots’, but ‘political power, economic power, and a new
self-image for Negroes’.
Republican Nathan Wright believed Black Power meant economic power. He
proposed a Black Power capitalist movement. He organized conferences in
Newark (1967) and Philadelphia (1968), and won the support of SCLC and
NUL. In 1968, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon said Black
Power meant, ‘more black ownership, for from this can flow the rest – black
pride, black jobs, black opportunity and yes, black power’.
Clearly Black Power was amorphous and ever changing. The New York Times
probably got it right: ‘Nobody knows what the phrase “black power” really
means’. SNCC’s Cleveland Sellers said, ‘There was a deliberate attempt to
make it [black power] ambiguous … [so that] it meant everything to
everybody.’ One of the few areas of unanimity was the emphasis on black
pride and black culture. Blacks frequently adopted Afro hairstyles and
African garb. Black college students successfully agitated for the introduction
of black studies programmes.

What did the Black The establishment, aims and achievements of

Panthers achieve?
the Black Panthers
In 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence was established in
Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Newton explained
that he chose the Panther as a symbol because the panther ‘never attacks.
But if anyone attacks him or backs him into a corner the panther comes up
to wipe the aggressor or that attacker out.’

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

Source G

The iconic photograph of Huey Newton in 1967.

Looking at Huey Newton’s
pose in Source G, what point
was he trying to make?

The aims of the Black Panthers KEY TERM

Greatly influenced by Malcolm X and by Communist revolutionaries such as
Che Guevara and Mao Zedong, Newton and Seale’s Black Panthers aimed Che Guevara An Argentine
to become involved in the global non-white working-class struggle. From Communist who promoted
1969 to 1970 they forged links with liberation movements in Africa, Asia and revolution in Latin America
South America, and aligned themselves with other radical groups in the and Africa.
USA, especially the Mexican ‘Brown Berets’ and Puerto Rican and Chinese- Mao Zedong Leader of
American radicals. The Black Panthers adopted a predominantly black Communist China 1949–75.
paramilitary uniform, with berets and leather jackets. Their manifesto was
radical and nationalistic, with demands and aims very similar to those of
Garvey and Elijah Muhammad, including:

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 l payment of compensation for slavery to black Americans by the federal
government
l freedom for incarcerated blacks, who should be jailed only if tried by a
black jury
l exemption of blacks from military service
l a United Nations supervised referendum of black Americans ‘for the
purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national
destiny’
l less police brutality
l improvements in ghetto living conditions.

The achievements of the Black Panthers

Newton’s biographer Hugh Pearson (1995) claimed the Black Panthers were
‘little more than a temporary media phenomenon’. They never boasted more
than 5000 members. However, with their 30 chapters, mostly in ghettos in
the West and North (including Oakland, New York, Boston and Chicago),
they won a great deal of respect, especially for their emphasis on self-help.
They set up ghetto clinics to advise on health, welfare and legal rights. In
1970, the Southern California chapter of the Free Breakfast programme
served up over 1700 meals weekly to the ghetto poor.
Black Panthers aimed to expose police brutality and harassment. Citing the
Second Amendment to the US Constitution (which said that citizens had the
right to carry arms), armed Black Panthers followed police cars in the
ghettos, in order to expose police brutality. This led to some violent shoot-
outs. In May 1967, Black Panthers surrounded and entered the California
State Capitol Building in Sacramento, accusing the legislature of considering
repressive legislation. Some plotted to blow up major department stores in
New York City, according to one FBI infiltrator.

Case study: Fred Hampton – successful or unsuccessful?

Opinions of the Black Panthers and their achievements vary, as demonstrated
by reactions to Fred Hampton (1948–68). Born in a Chicago suburb, he was
an NAACP activist who joined the Black Panthers and organized a
multiracial alliance that included Hispanic groups such as the Brown Berets
and the Students for a Democratic Society (see page 177). The FBI monitored
him closely from 1967 and he was shot in 1968 during a 4.45a.m. police raid
on his flat. NAACP leader Roy Wilkins declared the killing illegal. Hampton’s
family brought a case against the city, state and federal governments, and
years later were awarded $1.85 million in damages. In 1991 and 2004,
Chicago City Council approved the celebration of a ‘Fred Hampton Day’. In
2006, Chicago police officers voiced objections to a proposal that a Chicago
street be named after him. Hampton’s life is celebrated in rap music and
hip-hop. Many see him as a hero who among other things calmed Chicago’s
warring gangs. Some see him as a troublemaker.

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

The decline of Black Power Why did the Black

Power movement end
Black Power ‘peaked’ in 1970, but this was followed by a swift decline. Why?
in the 1970s?
Divisions, disorganization and definitions
The Black Power movement was always relatively ill-defined and
consequently poorly organized. Supporters had differing ideas as to what
they meant by and wanted with Black Power, so as the years passed, the
divisions became pronounced and open. For example, from 1967, SNCC was
increasingly divided between black separatists and social revolutionaries
who favoured multiracial co-operation in the struggle against poverty and
inequality. While black power was an attractive slogan to discontented
blacks, the movement never really produced a persuasive and effective
blueprint for change. The Black Panthers’ talk of violence brought down the
effective wrath of the federal government on their heads. Similarly, Black
Panther talk of socialism was ill-suited to the USA with its capitalist culture.
Talk of a separate black nation within the USA was equally unrealistic.

Sexism
Feminism became very popular in the late 1960s, and appealed to many
black women. Male Black Power advocates were often sexist. When female
supporters found their Black Power activities limited because of their gender,
they frequently concentrated on feminism instead.

Financial problems
White liberals had financed the major civil rights organizations. When SNCC
and CORE became more militant and expelled whites, their funding
suffered. By 1970, SNCC was reduced to only three active chapters (New
York City, Atlanta and Cincinnati) and no full-time employees. The New York
City chapter could not even afford a telephone. In December 1973, SNCC
ceased to exist.

The Nixon administration

The worst problem for the Black Power movement was probably the Nixon
administration’s sustained and effective pursuit of Black Power leaders. Many
Black Panthers had prison records from their pre-Panther days. Eldridge
Cleaver, ranked ‘No. 3’ in the Black Panther hierarchy, had been released
from prison in 1966, having served a sentence as a serial rapist. He justified
his crimes as a righteous rebellion against ‘white man’s law’, in the form of
‘defiling his women’. The Black Panthers routinely engaged in petty crime,
sought confrontation with, and advocated the killing of, the police. Not
surprisingly, they suffered from police attention, some would say
persecution. They were targeted and destroyed by the police and FBI from
1967 to 1969. By 1970, most of the Black Panther leadership was killed,
imprisoned or in enforced exile.

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 Even civil rights activists were targeted. In 1972, for example, the
‘Wilmington Ten’ (all civil rights activists) were arrested and charged with
arson in North Carolina. The jury contained three known Ku Klux Klan
members and the FBI bribed witnesses hostile to the 10, who were given
extensive jail sentences. Their convictions were overturned in 1980 by a
federal appeals court.

Was Black Power a Achievements of the Black Power movement

failure?
The achievements of the Black Power movement are as controversial as the
movement itself.

Success?
The movement raised the morale of many black Americans. A 1970 poll
revealed that 64 per cent of African Americans took pride in the Black
Panthers. Perhaps the main legacy with regard to black pride was the
establishment of courses on black history and culture in US educational
institutions. Groups such as the Black Panthers gave useful practical help to
ghetto dwellers and it could be said that Black Power activists, like civil rights
activists, kept the ghetto problems on the political agenda. Ghetto riots were
surely one manifestation of the Black Power movement. King asked a group
of Watts residents, ‘How can you say you won, when 34 Negroes are dead,
your community is destroyed, and whites are using the riots as an excuse for
inaction?’ They replied, ‘We won because we made them pay attention to us.’

Failure?
It could be argued that Black Power contributed to the demise of what had
been an effective Civil Rights Movement. The older generation of civil rights
leaders lost support and momentum and their replacements failed to match
their achievements. Under the leadership of its founder, James Farmer,
CORE had played a vital role in non-violent protests such as sit-ins and
freedom rides, which contributed to desegregation in the South. After the
radical Floyd McKissick replaced Farmer in 1965, CORE achieved little.
SNCC followed a similar line of development. However, it could also be
argued that the Civil Rights Movement would have lost momentum and
effectiveness without the development and rivalry of Black Power, because
the Northern ghetto problem proved insoluble.
Like the older generation of civil rights leaders, Black Power adherents failed
to find an answer to the ghetto problem and ghetto rioters and armed Black
Panthers helped to decrease the white sympathy that had been a key to
progress for the non-violent civil rights activists.

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

Disillusionment
with lack of
Impatience with federal protection
slow progress
Ghetto problems Malcolm X

Black supremacy? Black pride

Black Power
Black economic Black political
power? power?

Black culture
Black working-class revolution

Black separatism

Negative Positive
• Encouraged riots? • Black Panthers helpful in ghettos
• Helped end Civil Rights Movement? • Black studies
• SNCC + CORE imploded • Kept ghetto problems on
• Confusing terminology public agenda
• Alienated whites • Self-esteem
• Black Panther violence
• Sexist
• Did not solve ghetto problem

Summary diagram

The rise of Black Power in the 1960s

5 Key debate
Key question: How new and successful was the Black Power
movement?

From the start of their enslavement in the colonial USA, some black
Americans have sought self-determination and sovereignty. Historians John
Bracey, August Meier and Elliot Rudwick (1994) pointed out that nationalism
dominated the black community in several periods, one of which was the
mid-1960s to the early 1970s. However, this last separatist and nationalist
movement has not captured historians’ interest and imagination in the

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 manner of the Civil Rights Movement. Historian Peniel Joseph (2001) tried
to explain why scholars pay little attention to black power:
l American politics became increasingly conservative after the early 1970s.
l Scholars disliked the ‘evil twin’ that helped to wreck the Civil Rights
Movement.
l There is little archive material.
l Mainstream scholars do not take the topic seriously.

UNIA: successful?
KEY TERM Historians’ interpretations of the success or failure of Marcus Garvey and
UNIA (see page 55) depend on how the historian views black nationalism.
Integrationist Desirous to Liberal, integrationist black historian John Hope Franklin (1988)
participate in the ‘American acknowledged UNIA’s mass appeal, but nevertheless declared it an
dream’ without separation of unrealistic movement, doomed to fail. However, historians such as Theodore
the races.
Vincent (1972) stressed UNIA’s influence on the Civil Rights Movement and
Black Power.

Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X: successful?

Biographies of controversial figures such as Elijah Muhammad and
Malcolm X are frequently themselves controversial. In a balanced biography
of Elijah Muhammad, Claude Andrew Clegg (1997) recognized his positive
and negative achievements and characteristics. In sharp contrast, Bruce
Perry’s (1991) biography of Malcolm X, which attributed Malcolm’s struggles
to an unhappy home life and psychological damage, infuriated nationalist
scholars who saw Malcolm as being within the long tradition of black
nationalism in the USA. Historians’ backgrounds similarly affect their
interpretations of Malcolm’s philosophical changes in his final year. The
genuine nature and extent of his embrace of orthodox Islam are much
debated.
In what many consider to be the definitive study of Malcolm X, Manning
Marable (2011) considered Malcolm’s conversion to orthodox Islam to be
genuine. Marable regarded Malcolm’s autobiography as skewed by his
integrationist co-author, Alex Haley, who disliked and therefore censored
Malcolm’s radicalism. Marable contended that this censorship helps to
explain why Malcolm’s autobiography is so popular in schools and colleges.
One thing scholars agree on is that Malcolm had a great and lasting
impact.

Did the Black Power movement damage the Civil Rights

Movement?
Many historians of the Black Power movement have been negative. For
example, African American Clayborne Carson (1996) claimed that its
militancy failed to produce greater power for black people and actually led to
a decline in the ability of African Americans to affect the course of US

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

politics. The Black Power movement promised more than the Civil Rights
Movement but delivered less. Amid much negativity, most historians, such as
William Van Deburg (1992), agreed that Black Power’s greatest (some
thought sole) contribution to the black community was intellectual and
cultural, in university courses and in increased black self-esteem and identity.
The inspirational impact of the movement on other groups, such as Native
Americans, has long been recognized, as by Jeffrey Ogbar (2009). It even
transcended national boundaries (see page 129).

A Civil Rights Movement followed by a Black Power

movement?
Recent historians such as Peniel Joseph (2006, 2009) have advised care over
the traditional chronological periodization of a civil rights era (1955–65)
followed by a Black Power era (c.1966–72). Joseph (2006) emphasized a Black
Power ‘movement that parallels, and at times overlapped, the heroic civil
rights era’. Several historians complain that this traditional view that the
Civil Rights Movement was followed by a more assertive black movement
led to a distorted view. According to the historian Sharon Harley (2009), the
traditional but erroneous periodization meant historians ignored Gloria
Richardson’s leadership in Cambridge, Maryland, in the early 1960s, which
emphasized self-defence. Timothy Tyson (2001) studied an even earlier
advocate of self-defence in Robert Williams in Monroe, North Carolina, in What arguments can be
made for the use of
the 1950s. Williams’ uniquely militant NAACP chapter infuriated Roy
violence in the service
Wilkins, although subsequently, as emphasized by historian Yohuru Williams of securing civil rights?
(2009), Wilkins defended the Black Panthers, believing they were being (Ethics, Reason.)
destroyed by unconstitutional and illegal methods.
Source H

An extract from Black Power’s Powerful Legacy by Peniel Joseph, 2006, With reference to Source H,
quoted at www.penielejoseph.com/legacy.html do you suppose that a reader
[The Black Power movement] transformed America’s racial, social and political can sometimes guess the
landscape … Ultimately, Black Power accelerated America’s reckoning with its colour of a writer on
own uncomfortable, often ugly, racial past, and in the process spurred a debate movements such as Black
over racial progress, citizenship, and democracy that would scandalize as much Power? How much does our
as it would change the nation. colour and philosophy affect
what we write and believe
about movements?

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 Long critical of King’s campaigns, Malcolm seemed
Chapter summary to mellow after he left the NOI in the year before his
assassination (1964). Although often accused of
fomenting racial hatred and violence, he helped to
Martin, Malcolm and Black Power keep ghetto conditions on the national agenda. He
After Martin Luther King Jr’s successful focus on played an important part in making some African
segregation in the South, he turned to the problem of Americans more extreme, as did ghetto problems, the
the Northern and Western ghettos. His Chicago lack of federal protection for activists, and the slow
campaign (1966) did little to alleviate the appalling pace of progress.
situation in Chicago’s ghetto areas. Knowing white Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X had many
voters did not want their economic well-being differences. King was from a Southern, stable, strongly
threatened by the taxation necessary to improve the religious, middle-class family that supported NAACP.
ghettos or by African Americans moving into their Malcolm came from an impoverished Midwestern
neighbourhoods, Mayor Daley did little to help. family. His father joined UNIA. Both suffered from
During the Meredith March (1966), African great discrimination, but while King graduated from
American divisions became public. Militants such as good universities, Malcolm basically educated himself
SNCC’s Stokely Carmichael called for black power. while in jail. Given their backgrounds, it is not surprising
King was depressed by black violence and the lack of that King sought integration, while Malcolm sought
enthusiasm for his Poor People’s Campaign. He was separatism. While King advocated non-violent protest,
assassinated in 1968. Malcolm justified black violence, but they shared the
The relative importance of King in the Civil Rights same ultimate aim, to improve black lives. Some of
Movement successes has always been controversial. their tactics were the same. Both preached, wrote,
Other individuals, organizations and the federal and joined and founded organizations.
government played an important part, but King was a Black Power was hard to define. It meant different
uniquely inspirational leader who despite his things to different people – violent demonstrations,
weaknesses as an organizer orchestrated highly black pride, black economic self-sufficiency, black
effective campaigns in Birmingham and Selma that political power, black supremacy or black workers’
contributed greatly the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rights. The most famous Black Power group was the
1965 Voting Rights Act. His preference for the tactic of separatist Black Panthers who worked to help the
mass protests as opposed to litigation aroused ghetto poor. One of their tactics was to expose police
considerable jealousy and unease in NAACP, and his brutality towards African Americans, which, coupled
moderation and religiosity irritated many believers in with participation in crime, contributed greatly to the
Black Power. Like the Black Power movement he had opposition of the white authorities to the group.
little success with the insoluble problems of the ghetto. By 1970 the Black Power movement was in decline
Militants thought him an Uncle Tom, but like the because of its vague aims, internal divisions, and the
founder of his religion, he was a revolutionary. effective opposition of the Nixon administration. The
Black Power emerged out of a long tradition of black movement had raised black morale and helped create
nationalism and separatism, demonstrated in Marcus a legacy of black studies in educational institutions.
Garvey’s UNIA and the Nation of Islam (NOI). The Some believe it caused irreparable damage to the Civil
most famous NOI minister was Malcolm X, whose Rights Movement, others that the Civil Rights
bitter attacks on US whites gained him a great following Movement had done all it could do when it brought
among ghetto residents and hatred from whites. With about the end of Jim Crow. Further progress would
its emphasis on black pride and economic self-sufficiency, have cost white USA too much. Recently, historians
the NOI inspired and aided many ghetto residents and have reminded us that the Civil Rights Movement and
contributed to the rise of Black Power, as did Malcolm. the Black Power movement ran parallel.

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 Chapter 3: Martin, Malcolm and Black Power

Examination advice
How to answer ‘assess’ questions
Questions that ask you to assess want you to make judgements that you can
support with evidence, reasons and explanations. It is important for you to
demonstrate why your own assessment is better than alternative ones.

Example
Assess the aims and success of the Black Panthers in the 1960s and early
1970s.
1 For this question, you need to consider what the Black Panthers hoped to
achieve and how successful they were in reaching those goals. Be sure to
focus on the Black Panthers specifically. Some students confuse
Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. They are not the same. In order to
tackle this question, think about what is being asked. There are essentially
four points to consider:
• Identify the goals and successes of the Black Panthers.
• Only write in depth about the Black Panthers.
• You might want to contrast the goals of the Panthers with other
movements but this should not be your overriding concern.
• Finally, discuss the aims and success of the Panthers in the specific time
period stated. Your answer will not be helped by long references to
what took place before and after the 1960s and early 1970s.
2 For questions that ask for both aims and successes, you might want to
make a chart listing the two. Spend five minutes doing this before you
begin to write your essay. Here is an example of what you might include:

Goals Success

Become involved with worldwide struggle Links made with other revolutionary groups in Africa, Asia,
Latin America

Receive compensation for slavery None

Freedom for jailed blacks Did not happen

Exempt blacks from military service Did not happen

Expose and decrease police brutality Supporters say exposed the brutality but the authorities soon
destroyed them

Improve ghetto living conditions Medical, educational, legal, social centres set up

Provide means to defend black community Panthers armed themselves

Replace old leadership Young Panthers attracted urban supporters

UN referendum on self-determination Did not happen

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 3 Your introduction should state your thesis which might be something like:
‘The Black Panther Movement set itself ambitious goals most of which
were not met.’ An example of a good introductory paragraph for this
question is given below.

Many young African Americans, particularly those living in the

depressing ghettoes of major US cities, became impatient at the pace
of change. They felt that the more established civil rights movements
were out of touch with the realities faced by urban blacks. The Black
Panther Party was established in 1966 and their ambitious
programme included improving living conditions in ghettos, working
with other revolutionary groups outside the USA, and defending the
black community against perceived police brutality. Many of the
goals of the movement were not met as the US government and police
forces turned their power on the Black Panther Party and jailed and
killed many of its members. However, the Panthers did create social,
legal and health services in poor urban areas and were respected for
these actions. Furthermore, the Panthers did raise awareness of the
social and economic problems in ghettos even if remedies were not
immediately forthcoming.

4 In the body of your essay, discuss one goal in each paragraph, assessing to
what extent each was successful. One strategy would be to begin with the
aims you think were the most important and end with those that were the
least significant. It is also very important that you explain why or why not
a specific goal was met. Remember that your essay will be judged on the
quality and quantity of supporting evidence. Be sure to defend and explain
your examples.
5 Now try writing a complete answer to the question following the advice
above.

Examination practice
Below are three exam-style questions for you to practise on this topic.
1 Compare and contrast Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s and Malcolm X’s strategies to create a more
equal society.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘compare and contrast’ questions, see pages 235–8.)
2 Assess the importance of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s contributions to the Civil Rights
Movement.
3 ‘The Civil Rights Movement ran out of steam by the early 1970s.’ To what extent do you agree
with this assessment?
(For guidance on how to answer ‘To what extent’ questions, see pages 86–9).

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans
Chapter 4

Afro-Latin Americans
This chapter looks at the history of the descendants of African slaves brought to Latin
America in the colonial period and the nineteenth century. It focuses on Brazil, where
their descendants are most numerous. It looks at the origins of the new black
movements after the 1960s, how they were influenced by movements elsewhere and
the impact they had. This chapter compares and contrasts the Afro-Latin American
and African American experiences. You need to consider the following questions
throughout this chapter:
� What was the legacy of slavery?
� Why did the situation of Afro-Latin Americans improve in the early twentieth century?
� How successful was the late twentieth-century black Civil Rights Movement?
� Have Afro-Latin Americans attained equality through agency and racial democracy?

1 Afro-Latin Americans in the

nineteenth century
Key question: What was the legacy of slavery?

While 560,000 African slaves were imported into what became the USA,
5.7 million came to Latin America. As in the USA, slavery ended during the
nineteenth century but the freed slaves and their descendants still suffered
from racist laws and poverty.
Racism was justified by ‘science’, which claimed that the white race was
superior. It was popularly believed that in order to become civilized and
modernized, a country needed to be white, so some countries worked hard
to ‘whiten’ their population by encouraging immigration from Europe.
Through this ‘whitening’, the racial composition of Argentina, Brazil,
Uruguay and Cuba was changed. Fictions furthered the process: in 1899, a
Cuban patriotic commission exhumed the body of Afro-Cuban Antonio
Maceo, hero of the Cuban war of independence against Spain. Scientists
studied his skull and ‘proved’ that he was more white than black. In contrast
to the ‘whitened’ nations, West Indian immigration ‘blackened’ countries such
as Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

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 Source A

The Redemption of Ham, an 1895 painting by Modesto Brocos

Study the three generations
(1852–1936) in Brazil’s Museu Nacional de Belas Artes.
of a Brazilian family in The
Redemption of Cain in
Source A and think carefully
about the title the artist used.
Do you see any evidence of
racism on the part of the
artist?

2 Afro-Latin Americans in the

twentieth century
Key question: Why did the situation of Afro-Latin Americans improve in
the early twentieth century?
KEY TERM

Afro-Latin Americans As in the USA, the black population of Latin America suffered from, and
Residents of Latin America sought an end to, racism and inequality during the twentieth century. As the
with black ancestry, including
century wore on, Afro-Latin Americans became more confident and
those of mixed race.
empowered.

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

Afro-Latin Americans 1900–60s Why did Afro-Latin

Americans gain
Afro-Latin American progress and improvement in the first half of the
confidence in the
twentieth century were due to sympathetic regimes, organizations such as early twentieth
labour unions, improved educational and job opportunities, and ideological century?
and cultural developments.

Sympathetic regimes KEY TERM

In the 1930s and 1940s, a series of populist regimes gained power in
countries such as Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Costa Rica. The Populist regimes
populist regimes promised racial equality and greater minority participation Governments that courted
in national life. According to historian George Reid Andrews (2004), ‘None support from large groups
of the populist regimes was able to fully realize these promises, but most such as labour unions and the
poor.
carried through to at least some degree.’
Mulatto Of European–
Brazil and Costa Rica African descent.
After a military coup in 1930, the new Brazilian leader Getúlio Vargas
(president 1930–7, dictator 1937–45 and elected president 1950–4) sought
labour support. He did not mention Afro-Brazilians specifically, but
cultivated his ‘Father of the Poor’ image and as most Afro-Brazilians were
poor, they supported his Brazilian Labour Party (PTB). He employed
many black civil servants at a time when employers openly excluded those
not white.

Cuba and Venezuela

In a development not paralleled in the USA, some Afro-Latin Americans
gained political power, as in Cuba and Venezuela. Under pressure from the
Great Depression, the Machado dictatorship in Cuba was overthrown by the
predominantly lower class Afro-Cuban Sergeants’ Revolt. Their leader,
Fulgencio Batista, dominated Cuban politics as elected president from 1940
to 1944, and dictator from 1952 to 1958. His two main sources of support
were organized labour and the armed forces, both of which were
predominantly Afro-Cuban. In contrast, Fidel Castro and the revolutionaries
who overthrew Batista in 1959 were mostly middle-class whites.
Nevertheless, Castro appealed to the poorer classes, and declared his
commitment to racial equality. A US study of 1962 found Afro-Cuban
workers more pro-Castro than white workers. Significantly, only 13 per cent
of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the 1960s were black or mulatto.
Afro-Venezuelans such as Rómulo Betancourt were prominent in the Acción
Democrática (AD) Party, which combined with a group of junior officers to
overthrow the military regime in 1945. Betancourt was president of the
civilian–military junta from 1945 to 1948, during which period an unusual
number of black and mulatto civil servants were appointed, prompting the
next president, Rómulo Gallegos to comment, ‘Now the blacks are ruling.’
Betancourt was then elected president from 1959 to 1964.

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 Jorge Gaitán, a dark-skinned mulatto, whom Conservatives referred to as ‘ el
negro Gaitán’ (a racial epithet that he adopted with pride), was one of the
most popular of Colombian politicians. Had Gaitán not been assassinated in
1948, he would probably have become Colombian president.

Labour unions and other organizations

As in the USA (see page 55), labour unions played an important part in Afro-
Latin American empowerment. Populist politicians such as Vargas in Brazil,
Batista in Cuba and Juan Perón in Argentina usually sought the support of
the labour unions, in which black workers participated throughout Latin
America. The unions adopted and promoted the idea of racial democracy
(see page 127). There were also purely black organizations, such as the
Brazilian Black Front (FNB), established in 1931, which organized large-scale
protests against racial discrimination. However, unlike the NAACP (see
page 55), the FNB never established itself as an effective political force
because black ancestry was traditionally not something of which Brazilians
were proud. Also, when Vargas ruled as a dictator after 1937 he banned all
political parties and all discussions of race. He sought to portray Brazil as a
white country in order to attract foreign investors.

Improved educational opportunities

During the twentieth century, the number of universities greatly increased.
In 1950, only 51,000 out of 20 million Brazilian blacks and mulattos
graduated from high school, and only 4000 from college. By 1999, out of a
population of 70 million Afro-Brazilians, 3.3 million were high school
graduates and 600,000 were college graduates. In 1950, only five black
students had ever graduated from Uruguay’s biggest university, but by 1966,
two per cent of Afro-Uruguayans were college graduates. In socialist Cuba,
racial disparities in education virtually disappeared. The number of Afro-
Cubans with university degrees was in similar proportions to the number of
white Cubans. By the 1970s, there were sufficient numbers of Costa Ricans
of West Indian ancestry at the National University in San José to organize a
national conference on the black situation. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was
an influx of Afro-Venezuelans into the universities, and in 1993, the largest
university, Universidad Central de Venezuela, was majority Afro-Venezuelan.

KEY TERM
Improved employment opportunities
Once educated, Afro-Latin Americans became white-collar workers and
White-collar worker populist leaders often gave them jobs. For example, Costa Rican José
Person who performs Figueres’ Partido de Liberación Nacional (PLN) won electoral victories in
professional or office work 1952 and 1970 that owed much to voters of West Indian descent and
rather than manual labour. employed many of them in the civil service. By 1987, 11.2 per cent of Afro-
Brazilians were white-collar workers and constituted 23.5 per cent of the
total white-collar labour force.

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

Ideological and cultural developments

The collapse of oligarchic governments during the Great Depression led to a
rejection of ‘whitening’ and it became fashionable to embrace African and
Indian culture as essential components of national heritage. The new
ideology of ‘racial democracy’, closely associated with the rise of labour-
based populism, claimed that Latin America was happily multiracial and
multicultural. The ideology became popular, thanks in particular to the
writings of white Brazilian Gilberto Freyre. Born in 1900, 12 years after the KEY TERM
abolition of slavery in Brazil, Freyre spent much of his youth on sugar
Miscegenation The mixing
plantations owned by his mother’s relations. In his 1933 book Casa Grande e of races through marriage
Senzala (The Big House and the Slave Quarters) he argued that because of and interbreeding.
greater racial intermixing during the era of slavery, race relations were better
Merengue Music and dance
in Brazil than in other slave-owning societies. He declared that from the time
created by Afro-Dominicans.
of slavery, a racial democracy was being constructed in Brazil. He created the
idea (some say myth) that Brazil is one of the few truly mixed, non-racist Carnaval Annual festival
nations. His ideas are widely taught in schools, including in the USA. He has before the deprivations of
Lent.
been credited with having improved Brazilian race relations.
Source B

An extract from the writings of Gilberto Freyre, quoted in Black in Latin

Which part of this passage
America by African American historian Henry Louis Gates Jr, published by
from Freyre in Source B do
New York University Press, New York, USA, 2011, page 42.
you suppose Gates said
The truth is that in Brazil, contrary to what is to be observed in other American troubled him?
countries and in those parts of Africa that have been recently colonized by
Europeans, the primitive culture – the Amerindian as well as the African – has
not been isolated into hard, dry, indigestible lumps incapable of being assimilated
by the European social system … Neither did the social relations between the
two races, the conquering and the indigenous one, ever reach that point of sharp
antipathy or hatred, the grating sound of which reaches our ears from all the
countries that have been colonized by Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The friction here
was smoothed by the lubricating oil of a deep-going miscegenation.

In some ways, it seemed believable that racial democracy had been achieved Rafael Trujillo and
in the new mestizo-dominated societies in Mexico and Cuba and in majority whitening
mulatto Brazil, where what historians such as George Reid Andrews (2004) Rafael Trujillo had
called ‘brownness’ was exalted and African-based cultural forms became black ancestry. His
fashionable. The Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930–61) personal effects,
declared merengue the country’s ‘national music’. Countries such as Brazil which can be seen at
and Cuba encouraged the previously restricted African elements of the Santo Domingo
Carnaval. Even African-based religions became acceptable, especially when National Museum of
governments sought support from practitioners. For example, during the History and
Second Republic (1946–64) and in the era of military rule (1965–85), Geography, include
Brazilian governments wooed leaders of religions such as Candomblé in white face powder.
order to gain the support of their 20 million followers.

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 Why and with what New black movements after the 1960s
results was there an
In much of Afro-Latin America there was a dramatic rise in racial
Afro-Latin American
Civil Rights mobilization in the late twentieth century, a little later than in the USA.
Movement after the
A late 1980s’ directory listed 343 Afro-Brazilian organizations, mostly in the
1960s?
states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Bahia. Many were
cultural organizations such as samba schools that became politicized and
focused on civil rights. Because it had the largest black population and the
KEY TERM
greatest tradition of black activism, Brazil had the most notable black
Mobilization Being mobilization. Next came Colombia, where many organizations were
inspired/roused into activism. established in the 1970s, such as Cimarrón in Bogotá. While the mobilization
of the 1970s was primarily urban and focused on discrimination and
inequality, the mobilization of the 1980s included the rural black population.
Peasants and forest-dwellers were concerned about the fate of their
communal land, and their lobbying contributed to the relevant provisions in
the 1991 Colombian Constitution. Even countries with small black
populations, such as Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay, saw an upsurge in black
activism in the 1970s and 1980s.
Owing to its close ties with the USA, Panama’s black mobilization was
earlier. In the mid-1960s black activist Walter Smith created Movimiento
Afro-Panameño, which he based on the US Civil Rights Movement. His and
other organizations were supported and encouraged by President Omar
Torrijos, and Afro-Panamanians in turn supported him. These organizations
had run out of steam by 1980, but new ones emerged during General
Noriega’s dictatorship in the 1980s. Their focus was cultural, but when
electoral democracy was restored in the 1990s, the focus was on racial
discrimination once more.
The new movements emerged because of the failure of governments to
deliver on promised equality, political conditions, foreign influence and
international events.

The failure to deliver equality

Governments had failed to deliver equality owing to a combination of
insufficient economic growth and racism. The Afro-Latin American middle
class had grown greatly since the Second World War thanks to the economic
development and socialist provision under populist governments, but
economic inequality and racism were not eradicated. During the 1940s and
1950s, there were many highly publicized incidents of racism. In 1950, a São
Paulo hotel refused to accommodate famous African American
choreographer Katherine Dunham, but gave a room to her white secretary.
Such incidents generated national discussions that led to anti-discrimination
legislation in Venezuela (1945), Brazil (1951), Panama (1956) and Costa Rica
(1960), but none of these laws was rigorously enforced.

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

In Brazil in 1987, black and brown poverty rates were twice those of whites,
partly because half of Afro-Brazilian workers were employed in agriculture
and service industries where no great education was needed and where KEY TERM
employers retained great control over their workers. Many Afro-Brazilians
lived in favelas. During Brazil’s 1988–90 ‘war on children’, 82 per cent of Favelas Shantytowns in
the 4600 murdered street children were Afro-Brazilian. The murders were Brazil.
often perpetrated by public and private security forces, usually commissioned War on children Brazilian
by shopkeepers whose businesses suffered from the attention and presence street children were seen as
of the impoverished children. a threat to the property and
life of the more prosperous
Educated Afro-Latin American workers faced barriers. In 1974, Afro-Costa classes, who employed
Rican civil servant Garnet Britton said, ‘There are now quite a few of us black security forces to be rid of
professionals who by virtue of our ability and hard work are beginning to them, sometimes resulting
compete for the best jobs, and we are beginning to feel the opposition.’ in murder.
Mobilization was an inevitable response to this failure to deliver equality.

Political conditions
In Brazil, increasing opposition to the military dictatorship and the gradual
return of civilian rule in the late 1970s and early 1980s created openings for
opponents, including black civil rights activists. A similar situation occurred
in Uruguay, when the military dictatorship ended in 1985. In Panama, Omar
Torrijos took power in 1969. He sought support from West Indian
Panamanians and in return supported black organizations. In Colombia, the
peace talks with the many guerrilla groups in the 1980s and the new
constitution in 1991, which recognized Colombia as a multi-ethnic society,
gave Afro-Colombians opportunities to participate in national discussions.

Foreign influence
The Civil Rights Movement in the USA had a great influence on Afro-Latin
Americans throughout the twentieth century, especially among English-
speaking Costa Ricans and Afro-Panamanians who had studied or worked in
the USA in the 1960s and 1970s or heard about Martin Luther King Jr and
Malcolm X from African American soldiers in Panama. In 1967, Stokely
Carmichael visited Cuba and told Time magazine, ‘Castro is the greatest
black man I know.’ However, Castro found Carmichael and the Black Panther
Eldridge Cleaver, who visited in 1968, ‘difficult and argumentative’, according
to the historian Richard Gott (2004). US Communist Angela Davis’s 1972
visit was far more successful (see Source C, page 130). Along with the US
Civil Rights Movement, black liberation struggles in Portuguese Africa in the
1970s and in South Africa in the 1990s were an inspiration to Afro-Latin
Americans.

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 Source C

West Indian-born Carlos Moore’s description of the impact of Angela

Judging from Source C, what
Davis’s visit to Cuba in 1968, quoted in Cuba: A New History by Richard
problems did Afro-Cubans
face in 1968? Gott, published by Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, USA,
2004, page 230.
Starved as they had been for over a decade for positive symbols of self-identity,
black Cubans had reacted to Angela Davis’s beautiful, un-straightened ‘Afro’
hair. Here was someone everyone could identify with, without fearing being
tagged as ‘counter-revolutionary’, or as a ‘black racist’. Angela Davis was a
Communist, heroine, a ‘runaway’ Negress, approved of by Cuba. She wore a
lovely, ‘loud’-colored, tight-fitting dress, and did not straighten her hair. She was
black. She was defiant. She was revolutionary. She was beautiful, in a sense that
Afro-Cubans understood in their secret code of blackness.

Jesse Jackson vs Vicente Fox

Memín Pinguín is a comic book character who first appeared in Mexico in
the 1940s. In 2005, the Mexican government issued five commemorative
stamps with his image. African American activist Jesse Jackson flew to Mexico
to urge President Fox to recall the stamps and apologize for their content and
issue. Fox said that Mexicans loved Memín Pinguín, never apologized, and
that Jackson was viewing Mexican culture through US eyes and lacked
understanding. In 2011, African American scholar Henry Louis Gates  Jr
interviewed West Indian-born Glyn Jemmott, who worked among Afro-
Mexicans, who said that Mexicans recognize that one should not judge a
character created in the 1940s by contemporary standards.

Source D

The Memín Pinguín stamps.

Look at Source D. Who was
right, Jesse Jackson or Vicente
Fox?

International events
Afro-Latin American activists gained inspiration from transnational meetings,
beginning with Colombia in 1977, then Panama (1980), Brazil (1982 and
1995), Ecuador (1984) and Uruguay (1994). These meetings focused on
inequality and how to combat it. Participants gained awareness on the

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

availability of grants and loans from US and European foundations and the
Inter-American Development Bank. Influenced by liberation theology (see
page 13) and anxious to maintain the loyalty of black and mulatto members,
the Catholic Church created Pastorales Negroes (black missions) that worked
closely with local black organizations. They offered organizational experience
and promoted self-belief. As in the USA, the Church, whether Christian or
African-based, played a big role in black empowerment.

The United Nations

Afro-Latin American activists were also inspired by the United Nations
(UN). The 1996 report by the UN Commission on Human Rights on racial
discrimination and inequality in Brazil helped persuade President Fernando
Henrique Cardoso to include proposals for affirmative action in his national
human rights programme. Similar UN findings in Uruguay in 1999 led the
José Battle administration to publicly acknowledge discrimination and to
propose affirmative action. The 2001 UN Conference against Racism in
South Africa energized Afro-Latin American organizations, and put pressure
on national governments, prompting the establishment of the Brazilian
National Council to Combat Discrimination (2010) and affirmative action
programmes in several Brazilian government departments. The 2001
conference also encouraged Panama to pass anti-discrimination legislation
in 2005.

Numbers of Afro-Latin Americans Why is it difficult to

find accurate statistics
Obtaining exact statistics on the numbers of Afro-Latin Americans can prove on Afro-Latin
difficult. For example, an apparent fall in the Afro-Brazilian population in the Americans?
2000 census could have been due to the ‘Don’t Let Your Color Pass as White’
campaign for the previous census by black activists, who tried to persuade
Afro-Brazilians to report themselves as brown (racially mixed ‘browns’
outnumber black people throughout Latin America) or black for the census.
There was no such campaign in 2000. With the exception of Brazil (where
70 per cent of Afro-Latin Americans live), Cuba and Puerto Rico, other Latin
American countries with large black/mulatto populations, such as Colombia,
the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, ignore race as a category in
censuses. Furthermore, many Afro-Latin Americans are reluctant to admit
black ancestry, as noted by the historian George Reid Andrews (see Source E).
Source E

An extract from Afro-Latin America: 1800–2000 by George Reid Andrews, According to Source E, why
published by Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 2004, page 55. are many Afro-Latin
As the citizens of present-day Afro-Latin America struggle to escape the Americans reluctant to admit
economic heritage of poverty and dependency left by plantation agriculture, they black ancestry? Could the
content of Source E be said
do so under the shadow of the social heritage of racial and class inequality left
to describe the situation in
by slavery. This requires them to define their relationship to ‘blackness’, the most
the USA?
visible and obvious indicator of low social status.

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 Source F

Afro-Latin American populations in 2000.

DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC
PUERTO RICO
CUBA

JAMAICA
HAITI

Atlantic
Ocean
N
VENEZUELA SURINAME
NICARAGUA
PANAMA
COLOMBIA

ECUADOR

BRAZIL

Pacific
Ocean

Afro-Latin American populations

>80%
>40%
>30%
>20%
URUGUAY 0 500 1000 mls
>10%
< 9%
0 1000 km

Look at Source F. Rank the

Latin American nations
according to the highest
percentage of Afro-Latin
Americans in their
population.

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

By 2000, there were around 110 million Afro-Latin Americans. They

constituted roughly 22 per cent of the Latin American population, nearly one
half of the national population in Brazil, and a significant proportion in other
countries (see Source F, page 132). There are Afro-Latin Americans in every
Latin American country.

Ideological
Organizations
developments

Sympathetic Improved
regimes education

Pre Why did Afro-Latin 1960

Americans gain
Post confidence in the 1960
20th century?
Continuing
UN
inequality

International
events Changing political
conditions
Foreign Summary diagram
influence
Afro-Latin Americans in the
twentieth century

3 The impact of the Afro-Latin

American Civil Rights
Movement
Key question: How successful was the late twentieth-century black Civil
Rights Movement?

The racial democracy writers of the 1930s and 1940s were confident that
there was no racism in Latin America, and many people believed their
claims. However, Afro-Latin Americans knew better and wanted Latin
American racism acknowledged. In a development similar to, but later than
that in the USA, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama were forced to
recognize racism by late twentieth-century black activism. Such countries
then tried to improve the situation.

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 Have Brazilian Brazil and the recognition of racism
governments
During the 1988 commemorations of the centennial of the abolition of
successfully combated
racism? slavery in Brazil, the government, press and Catholic Church acknowledged
racial inequality with unprecedented honesty and called for reform. As a
result, greatly strengthened anti-discrimination legislation was incorporated
into the Brazilian constitution and into local laws in states such as Rio de
Janeiro. A new national agency, the Palmares Foundation, was established to
direct federal funds towards the black population.
In 1995, black organizations marched on Brasilía to demand help for the
poor, the enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation and affirmative
action in education and employment. In 1996, President Cardoso responded
with proposals for ‘compensatory policies to promote the social and
economic advancement of the black community’, including ‘positive
discrimination’ and ‘affirmative action’ to increase black access to education
and employment. Although his proposals were ignored by Congress,
government agencies, universities and private firms practised affirmative
action by 2001.

Brazilian success against racism

Historian George Reid Andrews (2004) considered Brazil ‘the most
impressive case of attempted redress of racial grievances’, with Colombia a
close second. In contrast, countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru
lacked similar laws and programmes.
However, even Brazil illustrated the limitations of the attempt to combat
racism. The anti-discrimination law of 1988 resulted in a great many court
cases, but virtually no convictions prior to 1995. The budgets and staff for the
Palmares Foundation and other agencies were inadequate. The black Civil
Rights Movement had reignited and revolutionized the debate about racial
equality yet for the most part failed to achieve it, although there were
encouraging signs.

Afro-Brazilian politicians
Afro-Brazilians became more politically prominent. In 1990, three out of the
27 elected state governors were black. In 1994 there were two black women
senators. In the city of Salvador, 80 per cent black and mulatto and the
‘capital’ of Afro-Brazil, only around 10 per cent of city councillors were black
in the 1970s and 1980s but by 1992 the proportion had reached nearly 50 per
cent. In 1987, there were only five Afro-Brazilian legislators. By 1999,
three per cent of Brazilian legislators were black or mulatto, although that
was still a testament to inequality in a country roughly half Afro-Brazilian.
These statistics were far less encouraging than those in the USA, the
difference being that Brazilians were usually reluctant to admit the

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

connection between racism and the fact that the poorest people were those
with the darkest skin.

Afro-Latin American politicians in the Dominican Republic and

Venezuela
Afro-Latin American politicians also attained prominence in other countries.
In the Dominican Republic, José Francisco Peña Gómez was a serious
contender for the presidency in 1994. In Venezuela in the early 1990s, one
black candidate defeated another to be mayor of Caracas, and in 1994 ‘el
KEY TERM
negro Claudio’ Fermín was the country’s first black presidential candidate.
Pardo Hugo Chávez became president in 1998, although he suffered barely Pardo Mixed-race.
veiled racist attacks from the opposition.

Comparing Brazil and the USA

A major difference between Afro-Brazilians and African Americans was that
Afro-Brazilians were in the majority. Historian Teresa Meade (2010) noted
two further differences. First, race was less of a political issue in Brazil (see
Source G). Second, Brazil does not have the same history of violence against
blacks in order to maintain white supremacy. Historian Lisa Brock
commented that being black in Brazil was being on the bottom looking up,
whereas being black in the USA was being on the outside looking in. That
Afro-Brazilian sense or conviction of integration perhaps explains the
differences noted by Meade. The greatest similarities were the legacies of
poverty and racism left by enslavement, and the fact that the twentieth-
century struggle for improvement had some but not total success, especially
in economic terms.
Source G

An extract from A Brief History of Brazil by Teresa Meade, published by

Using your own knowledge,
Checkmark Books, New York, USA, 2010, pages 140–1.
can you explain the
Brazil has never had a Civil Rights Movement comparable to the one in the differences noted in
United States that challenged discriminatory laws. Brazil also differs in that Source G?
many schoolchildren in North America learn about black leaders such as Martin
Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or Rosa Parks along with their study of recent history.
In Brazil, children learn of great artists and writers, such as Machado de Assis,
who happens to be a mulatto, but whose race generally passes unmentioned.

Continuing inequality Why did the black

Civil Rights
The black Civil Rights Movement failed because the movement could not
Movement fail?
mobilize the whole Afro-Latin American population and because of racism.

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 The failure to mobilize all Afro-Latin Americans
Divisions of gender, colour and class damaged black mobilization:
l Women felt that issues such as women’s health and the problems of single
mothers were never seriously considered and many created separate
organizations, such as Criola in Brazil.
l Most Afro-Latin Americans considered themselves brown rather than
black.
l Some Afro-Latin Americans did not want to admit that they were black
and victimized. Some felt that the Civil Rights Movement itself was racist
in its emphasis on blackness.
l Most of the activists were middle class, who felt prejudice more keenly
than those at the bottom of society who simply thought about food and
survival.
l The poorest Afro-Latin Americans generally thought that the best
prospect of aid came not from the protest organizations but from local
élites, political parties, the Church and labour unions. They feared that
activism could actually alienate such groups, which had been helpful in
the past.
l Some felt that the growth of an Afro-Latin American middle class
suggested that individual effort paid off.

Persistent racism
Afro-Latin Americans remained poor and still suffered racial and class
inequality.

Brazil
Late twentieth-century Afro-Brazilian workers were disproportionately at
the lowest wage and skill levels, with disproportionately low rates of
promotion and high rates of firing and disciplining. On paper, workers in the
rubber and cement industry were equally educated, but white salaries were
50 per cent higher than black salaries. Despite the anti-discrimination
legislation of 1953, discrimination persisted in the Brazilian workforce and
increased during the 1970s and 1980s. Middle-class Afro-Brazilians were
frequently confined to jobs in the state sector. Governments failed to root
out discrimination in the private sector (see Source H). Even in 2002,
Brazilian newspapers carried job advertisements for private companies that
sought ‘good appearance’. This was coded language that meant Afro-
Brazilians should not apply (whiter skin was considered more attractive). In
2003, the Brazilian Congress responded to the Brazilian Black Movement’s
pressure and discussed a law to reserve 20 per cent of university and civil
service places for Afro-Brazilians, a discussion that demonstrated the
inequality prevalent in those sectors.

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

Cuba
Socialist Cuba demonstrated how racism was deeply rooted. In the first
30 years of the Castro regime (1959–89), apparently successful efforts were
made to eliminate racial inequalities. However, when Soviet aid ended in the
1990s, the Cuban economy struggled. Castro allowed the liberalization of
state control. That led to increased competition for employment, and to a
resurgence of racism. Afro-Cubans were not properly represented in the
professions and politics. In a situation similar to that in the USA, Afro-
Cuban youths made up more than one half of the jóvenes desvinculados, or
alienated youths, who rejected work or study. Castro himself acknowledged
that racism had not been eradicated, and in 2011, Professor Esteban Morales
told a USA Today reporter that Cuba still struggled with racism, for which he
blamed individual Cubans rather than the government.
A similar resurgence of racism occurred in the 1990s in Brazil, Colombia,
Uruguay and Costa Rica, where middle- and upper-class racist skinhead
groups attacked Afro-Latin Americans. Neoliberalism (see page 21) assisted
the restoration of democracy but also increased competitiveness and racism.
Comparisons with the USA suggest that the legacy of slavery and racism is,
sadly, impossible to overcome, even when those of African descent are in the
majority, as in Brazil.
Source H

An extract from Afro-Latin America: 1800–2000 by George Reid Andrews,

What can you infer about
published by Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 2004, page 181.
opportunities for Afro-Latin
This theme emerges repeatedly in interviews with educated Afro-Latin Americans from the
Americans: either how they nearly gave up in the face of the obstacles that faced interviewees quoted in
them, or in fact did so. An Afro-Brazilian journalist recalls how ‘my brothers and Source H?
sisters, tired and resigned to the situation, never understood why I worked in the
mornings at the market and then went to study’. ‘Study for what? It won’t get
you anywhere’, they said. An Afro-Uruguayan woman interviewed in the
mid-1950s recalls how ‘I developed an inferiority complex among my colleagues
at work. They knew that I was studying and they would say: “That negra
actually thinks she’s going to amount to something”.’ Another Afro-Uruguayan
informant recalls a friend whose classmates constantly discouraged her from
continuing in school: ‘‘‘Look, it doesn’t make sense for you to go on. If you
graduate, you’ll only have problems. How are you going to pursue a profession,
being black?” So often did they say this to her that ultimately she became
discouraged and abandoned her studies.’

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 Afro-Latin Activism forced
American some countries
activism to try to help

Success

More Afro-Latin Anti-discrimination

American politicians legislation

Why inequality
Racism persists in Gender divisions
Brazil

Summary diagram

The impact of the Afro-Latin Colour Class divisions

American Civil Rights
Movement

4 Key debate
Key question: Have Afro-Latin Americans attained equality through
agency and racial democracy?

Have Afro-Latin Americans been masters of their own fate?

In the 1960s and 1970s, historians such as Leslie Rout (1976) tended to stress
the social, economic and political constraints on black action, but from the
late twentieth century, there was a greater focus on slave and free black
‘agency’, as in Henry Louis Gates Jr (2011). Among slaves, agency was
demonstrated by the slaves who fled, rebelled, stole, assaulted, negotiated
with their masters for better conditions, worked slowly, appealed to the
courts, and used African cultural practices. However, their efforts were
frequently futile.

Racial democracy: a myth?

The first significant statement of racial democracy thought was Mexico’s José
Vasconcelos’ The Cosmic Race (1925). Even more famous was the Brazilian
Gilberto Freyre’s Masters and Slaves (1933). Similar works were produced by
the Cuban Fernando Ortiz (1940) and the Venezuelan Carlos Sisto (1935).
These believers in racial democracy rejected whitening, and claimed that

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

they lived in happily multiracial and multicultural societies. They argued this
state of affairs had its roots in the more benevolent nature of Latin American
slavery compared to that of the USA. They claimed that there had been a
great ‘levelling’ during wars for independence, when blacks and whites
fought together to help bring down the colonial order.
Afro-Brazilian intellectual and politician Abdias do Nascimento (1977) wrote
that the idea of racial democracy was a myth. He said that because of that
myth, Brazil never had a Civil Rights Movement that could fight against de
jure segregation (as in the USA), because Brazilian racism was informal.
African American historian Henry Louis Gates Jr (2011) interviewed Afro-
Brazilians such as Abdias do Nascimento (he said that racial democracy was
‘a joke’ that Brazil ‘likes to spread around the world’) and rapper MV Bill,
who also described racial democracy as ‘a myth’ and pointed Gates to the What would the
slums and prisons, populated mostly by impoverished Afro-Brazilians. Gates’ characteristics of a
own observations confirmed their view. Mexican anthropologist Sagrario ‘racial democracy’ be?
Are there examples of
Cruz-Carretero (2011) used the words ‘pigmentocracy’ and ‘negrometer’ to
racial democracy in the
sum up the way skin colour locates people in society throughout the real world? Why might
Americas. this be a difficult ideal to
attain? (Perception,
By the late twentieth century, it remained clear that Brazilian racism had not
Language, Reason,
been eradicated as noted by historians such as George Reid Andrews (2004), Social Sciences.)
Boris Fausto (2006) and Teresa Meade (2010).

and better education led to better jobs. Afro-Latin

Chapter summary American culture became fashionable in the first half of
the twentieth century, as did the belief (some say the
myth) that Latin America was a racial democracy.
Afro-Latin Americans However, Afro-Latin Americans invariably remained
Ten times as many slaves were imported into South among the poorest members of society, which,
America as into North America. Each Latin American coupled with the influence of the US Civil Rights
country has Afro-Latin Americans, who constitute over Movement, transnational conferences and the UN,
20 per cent of the Latin American population. They are contributed to the development of an Afro-Latin
a numerical majority in Brazil. American Civil Rights Movement after the 1960s.
In the early twentieth century, the descendants of The situation of Afro-Latin Americans improved
slaves suffered from poverty and the humiliation of greatly during the twentieth century but they remained
‘whitening’ population movements, but they gained socially and economically inferior. This was partly due
confidence during the first half of the twentieth century. to frequent unwillingness to admit to ‘blackness’, which
Populist politicians sought the support of labour unions, was different from the contemporary US experience. It
which contained Afro-Latin American members. Some was also due to the difficulties associated with the
Afro-Latin Americans gained political power, for legacy of slavery and racism, which was similar to the
example, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. The expansion of US experience, and to class and gender divisions and a
universal education benefited Afro-Latin Americans, preoccupation with basic survival.

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 Examination advice
How to answer ‘Why’ questions
Questions that ask why are prompting you to consider a variety of
explanations. Each of these will need to be explained fully. It is also possible
to disagree with the basic premise of the question. If you choose this path,
you must be prepared to offer substantial counter-arguments.

Example
Why were there social and economic improvements in the lives of Afro-Latin
Americans in one country of the region in the second half of the twentieth
century?
1 To answer this question successfully, you should first explain what social
and economic improvements were made for Afro-Latin Americans after
1945. For each be sure to explain the reasons for the specific improvement.
Some reasons might be because the government in question hoped to
appeal to the poorer (and darker) sectors in society, outside influences
such as the seeming success of civil rights movements in the USA, and the
growth of labour unions and other mass organizations. Because the
question does not identify which country you will use, it is up to you to
choose the one for which you think you have the most supporting
evidence. Brazil might be a good choice.
2 Before writing the answer you should write out an outline – allow around
five minutes to do this. For this question, you could include supporting
evidence such as:

Sympathetic and populist regimes such as that of Getúlio Vargas.

Growth of cultural associations.
As a reaction to continued poverty and racism, especially in the
private sector.
Afro-Brazilians made up more than half the population.
Influence of 1960s’ civil rights movements in the USA.
Transnational meetings with those of African descent from other
Latin American countries.
Exposure of myth of Brazil as a racial democracy in the 1970s.
A fter centenary of abolition of slavery (1988), growing focus on slow
pace of change.
U N reports such as the 1996 one on racial discrimination and
­racial inequality in Brazil led to affirmative action.

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 Chapter 4: Afro-Latin Americans

3 In your introduction, you should cite the major social and economic
advances made after 1950 and then mention the reasons why there had
been changes.
4 In the body of your essay, write at least one paragraph on each of the
major themes you raised in your introduction. A good example is given
below.

In 1995, Afro-Brazilians marched on Brasília, the nation’s capital, to
push for assistance in combating poverty and discrimination. The
progressive president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, responded by
proposing affirmative action measures to turn back the centuries of
lack of access to education and employment faced by blacks in Brazil.
The Congress did not endorse these proposals but publicizing the
conditions did translate into some positive changes. Universities and
government institutions began to set aside spaces for aspiring Afro-
Brazilians, ignoring the traditional colour barrier.

5 Now try writing a complete answer to the question following the advice
above.

Examination practice
Below are two exam-style questions for you to practise on this topic.
1 To what extent is the idea of ‘racial democracy’ in Latin America a myth?
(For guidance on how to answer ‘to what extent’ questions, see
pages 86–7.)
2 Compare and contrast how two countries in the region addressed racial
inequality.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘compare and contrast’ questions, see
pages 235–8.)

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 Chapter 5

Role of governments in
Civil Rights Movements in the
Americas
This chapter uses two case studies to illustrate the role of government in the
acquisition of civil rights by non-white populations. In the USA, the federal system
played an important role in dictating the pace, which was fastest when all branches of
the federal government were in agreement. In Bolivia, oppressed people were in the
majority but that did not guarantee their civil rights. As in the USA, oppressed people
pressured the government, and once enfranchised, their majority status resulted in
more sympathetic governments. You need to consider the following questions
throughout this chapter:
� What role has the US government played in relation to the civil rights of non-white
minorities?
� What role has the Bolivian government played in relation to the civil rights of the
indigenous majority?
� Were Latin American constitutional guarantees of indigenous rights due to activism?

During the twentieth century, the civil rights situation throughout the
Americas usually improved. The role of governments in that process of
change varied. Some national governments were simply repressive, as in
Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s (see pages 21–5). Others were unhelpful
for reasons of national unity, as with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the
1980s (see page 18) and the Trudeau government in Canada in the 1960s and
1970s (see pages 41–3). Sometimes regional governments were resistant to
the national government’s policies on minorities, as in Canada (see page 46).
Some governments responded positively to activism, as in Bolivia in 1952
(see below), while others did not, as in Mexico (see page 21). All
governments had the capacity to help or hinder Civil Rights Movements, but
there were other factors that played a role in change, particularly activism.
The USA shows how government at all levels, whether federal, state or
municipal, played a crucial role in helping and hindering civil rights for
minorities, while Bolivia shows how a majority can struggle to obtain civil
rights.

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

1 The US government and civil

rights
Key question: What role has the US government played in relation to
the civil rights of non-white minorities?
KEY TERM

In order to avoid colonial-style tyranny, the Founding Fathers ensured that Founding Fathers The
their new government would be characterized by a system of checks and men who drew up the US
balances among the three branches of the federal government (the executive, Constitution in 1787.
legislature and judiciary; see page 34) and between federal and state
governments. This governmental system dramatically affected the pace of
change.

Government and change in nineteenth- To what extent did

century USA the US government
respect the civil rights
Most members of minority groups lacked basic civil rights for much of the of minorities before
nineteenth century (see pages 27 and 54). Until the Civil War (1861–5), 1900?
slavery was supported primarily by Southern state governments, with the
acquiescence of the federal government. When national unity was at risk, the
federal government ended slavery, more as a by-product of war than as
inherently desirable. When Northerners grew tired of the South and its race
problem, white-dominated Southern state governments reintroduced race
control, in the form of Jim Crow. The Supreme Court’s ‘separate but equal’
ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) showed that state governments and the
federal government were in agreement.
During the nineteenth century, government was the motor behind the
changing situation of African Americans who, in the face of racism and the
lack of educational and economic opportunities, were rarely masters of their
own fate. The government was similarly behind the changing situation of
Native Americans, who were a problem to be removed through battle and
segregation on reservations. Their civil rights were not on the US
government agenda.

Government and change in the USA 1900–61 To what extent and

why did minorities
NAACP and the Supreme Court and Congress gain greater equality
In the first half of the twentieth century, the NAACP worked through the law 1900–61?
courts (see pages 55–6 and 59) to erode Jim Crow and ‘separate but equal’.
The great problem with Supreme Court rulings was that the court lacked
enforcement powers: although it might declare an action unconstitutional, it
would depend on Congress, the president or state governments to make a
reality of the decision. In the first half of the twentieth century, Congress was
disinclined to protect black civil rights. Southern Democrats dominated

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 Senate committees and helped to ensure the defeat of anti-lynching and
anti-poll tax bills during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.

President Franklin Roosevelt 1933–45

Franklin Roosevelt was the most sympathetic president US minorities had
yet seen, but even he was reluctant to make any effort to help obtain civil
rights for them. His New Deal (see page 55) helped many impoverished
African Americans, without being specifically designed for them. Under
pressure from black labour leader A. Philip Randolph, who threatened to
bring wartime Washington to a standstill, Roosevelt refused to desegregate
the armed forces but established FEPC to promote equality of employment
in defence industries (see page 56). Change was clearly in the air. Roosevelt
had several black advisers, the so-called Black Cabinet. However, it took
Roosevelt’s successor to put the White House squarely behind full
citizenship for African Americans.
Like African Americans, Hispanics suffered segregation in the South. Future
President Lyndon Johnson told how in the 1920s he taught Mexican
Americans ‘mired in the slums’, ‘lashed by prejudice’ and ‘buried half alive in
illiteracy’, in a segregated school in ‘one of the crummiest little towns in
Texas’. The Roosevelt administration was unhelpful to Hispanic Americans,
but improved conditions on Native American reservations were far less
controversial, and the administration began the restoration of tribal self-
government and of respect for Native American culture (see pages 27–8).

The Truman years 1945–53

As president, Truman brought the position of African Americans into the
national debate when he asked Congress to implement his civil rights
commission’s recommendations (1947) (see page 58). He used his executive
powers to obtain greater equality in employment (see page 58).

Why Truman put civil rights on the agenda

Truman was a decent human being, aware of the need to live up to the US
claim to be the beacon of freedom in the Cold War, and motivated partly by
political considerations. Northern Democrats wanted the black vote and
urged him on. Truman’s adviser Clark Clifford told him that many politicians
believed ‘the Northern Negro vote today holds the balance of power in
presidential elections’ because the black population ‘vote in a bloc’ and was
geographically concentrated in ‘pivotal, large and closely contested electoral
states such as New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.’
Truman carried an unprecedented two-thirds of the black vote in the 1948
presidential election, which played a big part in his victories in electorally
KEY TERM
vital states such as California and Illinois. However, Truman’s civil rights
Dixiecrat Breakaway stance cost him many Southern Democrat votes when the Dixiecrats left the
Southern Democrat party Democratic party in 1948 and fielded their own presidential candidate,
founded in 1948. Strom Thurmond, who thought it un-American ‘to force us to admit the

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

Negro into our homes, our eating places, our swimming pools and our
theaters’ and never publicly acknowledged his mixed-race daughter.
There is much debate (see pages 100–1) as to whether the president and the
Supreme Court would have done anything without pressure from black
organizations. Basically, there was mutual interdependence. It was NAACP
litigation that obtained Supreme Court rulings that eroded the justification
for Jim Crow, but the organization needed sympathetic justices, who in turn
could only respond to litigation.

What progress was made in the Truman years?

Progress was made on civil rights in the Truman years, although more in the
realm of principle than in practice. In 1947, Truman established a civil rights
committee that issued a report called ‘To Secure These Rights’. The report
called for an end to segregation and pointed out the hypocrisy of a nation
that viewed itself as a beacon of liberty. This and Supreme Court rulings
against segregated transport and education in 1950 (see page 59) meant that
two branches of the federal government had come out strongly against the
constitutionality of segregation. However, Supreme Court decisions lacked
powers of enforcement and the success of Truman’s efforts varied:
l some came to nothing, as when Congress, dominated by Republicans and
Southern Democrats, rejected the proposed legislation in ‘To Secure These
Rights’ and hampered a fairer distribution of federal funds to black schools
l some were minimally effective, as with CGCC (see page 58), which could
only recommend rather than enforce
KEY TERM
l some took time to come to fruition, as with the desegregation of the army,
which was only sped up under the pressure of the Korean War (1950–3). Korean War The USA,
South Korea and the United
Jim Crow still reigned supreme in the South, suggesting that for the moment Nations fought against
the forces ranged against change remained in the ascendant. This was Communist North Korea and
because white Southern politicians sought to maintain white supremacy in China in 1950–3.
the South and because public opinion slowed down progress on civil rights.
Things could not and would not be changed overnight. Polls in 1949–50
showed that while many voters favoured abolition of the poll tax, only 33 per
cent favoured the fair employment bill. Southern state governments
remained determinedly white and segregationist.
In the Truman years, the federal government was clearly the key to progress,
with the executive and judicial branches pressured by NAACP and pushing
for change, and the third branch (and Southern state governments)
successfully resisting it.

The Eisenhower years 1953–61

The importance of a presidential lead in civil rights issues was demonstrated
under Eisenhower who, in sharp contrast to Truman, usually resisted change.
Despite calling for an end to racial discrimination in his first State of the
Union address (February 1953), he disapproved of Brown and was only

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 forced into upholding the ruling by white mob action in Little Rock in 1957
(see pages 68–71). In 1954, he said, ‘It is all very well to talk about school
integration, but you may also be talking about social disintegration. We
cannot demand perfection in these moral questions. All we can do is keep
working towards a goal.’
Eisenhower refused to condemn either white Southern politicians (all but
three of whom signed the pro-segregation Southern Manifesto), or the
murder of Emmett Till (see page 61), or the University of Alabama’s defiance
of a federal court order that said it should admit its first African American
student, Autherine Lucy. Eisenhower said, ‘if we attempt merely by passing a
lot of laws to force someone to like someone else, we are just going to get
into trouble’.
In comparison to the Truman years, change during the Eisenhower years was
more clearly prompted by black activism (see pages 59–66). The Montgomery
bus boycott and the NAACP obtained the 1956 Supreme Court ruling
(Browder v. Gayle) that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. The
activism did not always achieve immediate success. The actions of the brave
young ‘Little Rock nine’ demonstrated how Supreme Court rulings such as
Brown met tremendous grassroots resistance in practice (see pages 68–9).
The contrasting fate of Native Americans in the Eisenhower years, when
Congress ‘terminated’ some reservations and increased state government
jurisdiction over others (see pages 28–9), suggest that it was black activism
that finally caused the Eisenhower administration to draw up civil rights
legislation in 1956. Although Eisenhower’s bills were greatly diluted (see
pages 71–2) they were significant in that a reluctant Congress was finally
forced to acknowledge that there were dreadful problems in the South.

Was President Presidents Kennedy 1961–3 and

Kennedy more
pro-civil rights than
Johnson 1963–9
President Johnson? President Kennedy
Kennedy’s presidency was notable for a dramatic rise in black activism and
the introduction of an important civil rights bill that was securely stuck in
Congress at the president’s death. This raises the question of the relationship
between the activism and the introduction of the bill.
The most famous examples of black activism during the Kennedy presidency
were:
l the Freedom Rides (see page 74)
l SNCC’s voter registration campaign in Mississippi (see page 80)
l James Meredith’s successful but violently resisted attempt to be the
University of Mississippi’s first black student (1962)
l Birmingham (see page 76)
l the March on Washington (see page 78).

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

In response to much of this activism, groups of Southern whites

demonstrated a widely publicized disregard for law and order that prompted
federal intervention. Attorney General Robert Kennedy reacted after the
Freedom Riders were dragged off buses and beaten up, as in Anniston,
Alabama. When the administration had Meredith escorted into university by
500 marshals, and a third were injured by a racist mob, the president sent in
the National Guard and the army.
The Kennedy administration’s responses were often unenthusiastic. Robert
Kennedy condemned white attacks on would-be black voters during SNCC’s
campaign in Mississippi, but subsequently defended federal government
inactivity, when he said the federal government could not interfere with local
law enforcement unless there was a total breakdown of law and order. The
president said SNCC ‘sons of bitches’ were unnecessarily provocative: ‘ SNCC
has got an investment in violence’. Similarly, for much of the summer of
1963 the administration opposed the proposed March on Washington. Some
historians claim Kennedy aides were ready to ‘pull the plug’ on the public
address system if anyone criticized the administration’s tardiness in
introducing the civil rights bill.

Why was President Kennedy unhelpful?

Kennedy was slow to help African Americans because of congressional and
white opposition.
Congress
In his presidential election campaign Kennedy had promised that
discrimination in housing could be ended at a ‘stroke of the presidential
pen’, but once elected he did nothing. Disappointed African Americans
inundated the White House with pens in order to jog his memory, but
Kennedy thought that Congress would reject other more important
legislation if he were to push the issue. Also, with the congressional elections
of 1962 looming, Northern Democratic congressmen did not want their
white voters upset by the thought of living next door to black people. After
those elections, Kennedy issued a half-hearted executive order that applied
only to future federal housing facilities. It was always difficult for Kennedy to
obtain congressional co-operation: the 1962 administration literacy bill
(enabling African Americans with a sixth-grade education to vote) failed due
to Southern opposition.
White opinion
The political dangers of presidential activism on civil rights were
demonstrated by polls in September 1963: 89 per cent of African Americans
approved of Kennedy’s presidency, but 70 per cent of Southern whites and
50 per cent of all Americans felt he was moving too fast on integration.
Kennedy’s approval rating in the South dropped from 60 per cent in March
1963 to 44 per cent in September 1963 because of his support for the civil
rights bill.

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 Kennedy’s presidency demonstrated that while the Supreme Court could
rule repeatedly on the demise of Jim Crow, white resistance, Southern state
governments and Congress kept segregation alive. Arguably, black
persistence was killing it slowly. Kennedy admitted that segregationist
behaviour in Birmingham in 1963, which disturbed many white moderates,
was crucial in his support for the bill, which was struggling in Congress at
his death.

President Johnson
The Johnson presidency was a great turning point in African American
history. First, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act finally
ended de jure segregation and ensured that African Americans could vote in
the South. Second, the Northern ghetto riots reminded Americans that there
were other problems, such as de facto segregation, poverty and
unemployment. Johnson’s legislative reforms of 1964–5 (see pages 83–4)
were a remarkable achievement that illustrated what could be done when a
congressional majority finally agreed with the president and the Supreme
Court that the black situation in the South was unacceptable (Southern
Democrats voted against the bill).
Source A

Extracts from Robert Parker’s recollections of working for Lyndon

Using Sources A–C and your
Johnson as a part-time servant at private dinner parties in Washington in
own knowledge, account for
Johnson’s different tone and the 1940s, quoted in Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and his Times,
content in each. Volume I by Robert Dallek, published by Oxford University Press, New
York, USA, 1991, page 276.
[It was a] painful experience. [I feared] the pain and humiliation he could inflict
at a moment’s notice … In front of his guests Johnson would often ‘nigger’ at me.
He especially liked to put on a show for [Mississippi] Senator Bilbo, who used to
lecture: ‘the only way to treat a nigger is to kick him’ … I used to dread being
around Johnson when Bilbo was present, because I knew it meant that Johnson
would play racist. That was the LBJ I hated. Privately, he was a different man as
long as I didn’t do anything to make him angry. He’d call me ‘boy’ almost
affectionately. Sometimes I felt that he was treating me almost as an equal …
Although I never heard him speak publicly about black men without saying
‘nigger’, I never heard him say ‘nigger woman’. In fact, he always used to call his
black cook, Zephyr Wright, a college graduate who couldn’t find any other work,
‘Miss Wright’ or ‘sweetheart.’

Source B

An extract from President Johnson’s 1964 words to Walker Stone,

prominent conservative editor of the Scripps Howard newspapers,
quoted in whitehousetapes.net/clips/1964_0106_stone/trans2.swf
I’m gonna try to teach these nigras that don’t know anything how to work for
themselves instead of just breedin’; I’m gonna try to teach these Mexicans who

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

can’t talk English to learn it so they can work for themselves … and get off of our
taxpayers’ back.

Source C

An extract from President Johnson’s speech to Congress to encourage Quoting phrases from
them to pass the 1965 voting rights bill, quoted in uspolitics.about.com/ Source C, suggest to whom
od/speeches/a/lbj_1965_15_mar.htm you think it would appeal.
Rarely are we met with a challenge … to the values and the purposes and the
meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is
such an issue … The command of the Constitution is plain … It is wrong –
deadly wrong – to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this
country … A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro
was freed. And he is not fully free tonight … A century has passed, more than a
hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal …
The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his
courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of
this Nation … He has called upon us to make good the promise of America. And
who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not
for his persistent bravery, and his faith in American democracy?

Why Johnson could not do more for African Americans

Johnson had done more for African Americans than any other president, but
after 1965, Congress, local officials, black violence and the cost of the
Vietnam War made further progress difficult.
Congress and white opinion
In 1966, Congress rejected an administration civil rights bill, one aim of
which was to prohibit housing discrimination. Polls showed 70 per cent of
white voters opposed large numbers of blacks living in their neighbourhood,
especially after the Watts riots and Stokely Carmichael’s call for ‘black power’
(see page 96). Johnson’s proposed bill resulted in some of the worst hate
mail of his presidency. When housing discrimination was finally prohibited
in the 1968 Fair Housing Act, passed by Congress in the aftermath of Martin
Luther King Jr’s assassination, the law proved difficult to enforce owing to
white resistance. Johnson found it hard to sustain national and congressional
support for his war on poverty. He was angry with congressmen who
jokingly called his rat extermination bill a ‘civil rats bill’ and suggested he
send in a federal cat army. Johnson pointed out that slum children suffered
terribly from rat bites.
Local officials
Johnson had to rely on local and state authorities, officials and employees to
carry out his programmes. They were sometimes reluctant to co-operate, as
in Chicago. The 1964 Civil Rights Act said federal funding should not be
given to de jure and de facto segregated schools, but Mayor Daley was a

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 valuable political ally, so he got his funds and kept his segregated schools.
This pattern was repeated in other Northern cities.
Ghetto riots, Black Power and the white backlash
The ghetto riots of 1964–8 (see pages 108–9) caused a white backlash. As
television showed black youths shouting ‘ burn, burn, burn’, whites feared
that black militants were driving the USA into a race war. Throughout
California, gun sales to suburban whites soared. Tired of being blamed for
the black predicament, whites were turning against blacks and against
Johnson’s reform programme. A 1965 poll showed 88 per cent of whites
advocated black self-improvement, more education and harder work, rather
than government help. A 1966 poll showed 90 per cent opposed new civil
rights legislation. In a 1967 poll, 52 per cent said Johnson was going ‘too fast’
on integration, and only 10 per cent said ‘ not fast enough’.
The Vietnam War and rising taxes
The expense and distraction of the Vietnam War contributed to Johnson’s
inability to do more in his War on Poverty (see page 95). In 1965, the federal
government deficit was $1.6 billion; by 1968 it was $25.3 billion. Tax rises
were mostly due to the war, but white taxpayers put a great deal of blame on
federal expenditure on the poor, which had increased by nearly 50 per cent.
In 1967, the Democratic governor of Missouri told Johnson that ‘public
disenchantment with the civil rights programs’ was a major reason why he
and the Democrats were so unpopular. White Americans were tired of
paying out for Johnson’s War on Poverty. The programmes were expensive
and it appeared that political radicals were hijacking them.
Attempting the impossible
Johnson recognized that he could not work miracles. In June 1966, he told a
task force set up to report on black problems that ‘The dilemma that you deal
with is too deeply rooted in pride and prejudice, too profound and too
complex, and too critical to our future for any one man or any one
administration to ever resolve.’
He knew there was a limit to the amount of legislation that any
administration could pass, particularly if most of the population were
beginning to resist it. ‘It’s a little like whiskey’, said Johnson. ‘It is good. But if
you drink too much it comes up on you.’ ‘We have come too far too fast
during your administration’, a leading Democrat told him.

Johnson: conclusions
The Johnson presidency seemed to prove yet again that the federal
government was the crucial factor in generating change, but that while it
could be prodded by black activism of the Civil Rights Movement style, Black
Power was probably counter-productive. Johnson’s presidency also
suggested that the cost of change had to be taken into account. Northerners

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

were happy enough to see the end of Jim Crow in the South – giving African
Americans the vote and letting them sit alongside Southern whites in a
restaurant or on a bus cost nothing. However, allowing them to move in next
door or financing ghetto improvement were different matters. Even an
exceptionally helpful president such as Johnson found that impossible.
Nevertheless, Johnson had one final success in his promotion of civil rights
when he put affirmative action firmly on the national political agenda.
In a commencement address to Howard University students in 1965,
Johnson said that positive discrimination (also known as affirmative action)
was needed to help the black population:
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate
him, bring him up to the starting line of race and then say, ‘you are free to compete
with all the others’, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus
it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the
ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of
the battle for civil rights.

Affirmative action Did the federal

government remain
During the 1970s, two branches of the federal government were particularly
the key to progress
crucial in the promotion of affirmative action. The Supreme Court ruled in for minorities?
favour of affirmative action in, for example, Griggs v. Duke Power Company
(1971). President Richard Nixon (1969–74) embraced affirmative action and
his 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act gave the Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission set up by Kennedy greater powers of
enforcement. Despite opposition from Congress and the labour unions,
Nixon helped to ensure that over 250,000 companies with federal contracts
employed a fair proportion of minority workers. Nixon’s support for
affirmative action encouraged universities to give priority to minority
applicants.

Bakke and the white backlash

Marine veteran Alan Bakke challenged the University of California at Davis
for rejecting his application to medical school, while minority candidates
with lower scores gained places. The California Supreme Court ruled in his
favour, but the US Supreme Court (Bakke v. Regents of the University of
California, 1978) upheld the university’s affirmative action.
Bakke’s challenge to affirmative action was indicative of the white
conservative reaction that had set in against affirmative action by the late
1970s. Many voters were opposed to the policy, as was the administration of
Republican President Ronald Reagan (1981–9). In 1983, Reagan’s Secretary
of the Interior, James G. Watt, had to resign because of comments about
affirmative action (see Source D, page 152).

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 Source D

Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt’s description of the commission

What can you infer about
with which he dealt in 1983, quoted in www.nytimes.com/1983/09/23/
affirmative action in the
watt-asks-that-reagan-forgive-offensive-remark-about-panel.html
Reagan years from Source D?
We have every kind of mix we can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and
a cripple. And we have talent.

African Americans considered Reagan to be totally unsympathetic to their

civil rights. Reagan appointed 368 federal judges, out of whom only seven
were African American, 15 Hispanic and two Asian American. Reagan had
one black cabinet member but failed to recognize him at a meeting six
months after he appointed him.

The conservative Supreme Court

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush (1989–93) appointed African American
What point is Source E trying Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court as a replacement for Thurgood
to make about the impact of Marshall (see page 56). Although Thomas had benefited greatly from
affirmative action on affirmative action, through which he had gained a place at Yale Law School,
universities? he made it quite clear that he rejected affirmative action as a means to attain
racial equality.

Source E

A cartoon published in a US newspaper in 1997.

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

A Supreme Court dominated by liberal justices had been vital in rulings

helpful to minorities, but in the late 1970s the court became more
conservative and less sympathetic. Aware of the court’s increasing
conservatism, President Bill Clinton (1993–2001) voiced qualified support for
affirmative action (‘Mend it don’t end it’). During his presidency, affirmative
action remained the norm in major companies and universities. For example,
12 per cent of college students were African American, which reflected their
percentage of the overall US population. However, in the early twenty-first
century, the court expressed doubt as to whether affirmative action should
be continued.
Ethnic minorities and white liberals believe affirmative action has not yet
erased inequality. In the early twenty-first century, African American and
Native American poverty and unemployment rates remained twice as high
as those of whites. As always, the key to change is the federal government.

President Congress Supreme State/local

Court government
Pre-Civil War    
Civil War and Reconstruction   – –
Jim Crow    
1933–45 –   
Truman years    
Eisenhower years    
Kennedy years –   
Johnson years  –  –
Nixon years – –  –
Reagan/Bush years  –  –
Clinton years  –  –
Early 21st century    

Summary diagram

The US government and civil rights

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 2 The Bolivian government and
civil rights
Key question: What role has the Bolivian government played in relation
to the civil rights of the indigenous majority?

Bolivia remains what historian Herbert Klein (2003) described as ‘the most
Indian of the American republics’, where Spanish speakers are a minority
KEY TERM and indigenous languages dominate (see the map on page 155). This makes
it a particularly interesting case study. The two largest indigenous groups are
Cholos Bolivian mestizos or the Aymara, who constitute between 20 and 25 per cent of the population,
indigenous Bolivians who are
and are concentrated in the Province of La Paz, and the Quechua, who
city dwellers or more
prosperous farmers, speaking constitute between 35 and 40 per cent, and are mostly found in Cochabamba
both Spanish and an and Sucre. Cholos now constitute between 30 and 40 per cent of Bolivia’s
indigenous language. population, and their numbers are growing as Bolivia develops slowly into a
mestizo nation. ‘Whites’ number between five and 15 per cent: many look
Chaco War War between
Bolivia and Paraguay 1932–5. like their indigenous ancestors but are counted as white because they are
upper-class, Spanish-speaking, westernized and eat non-indigenous food.

To what extent did The indigenous population before 1945

Bolivian governments
With rebellions unparalleled in the colonial Americas, the indigenous
respect minority
rights before 1945? population of what became Bolivia did not passively accept the Spanish
conquest. In 1780, over 100,000 rebelled in vain for the restoration of the
Inca monarchy and of indigenous rights and powers.

The new republic

Life did not improve for the indigenous population under the newly
independent republic. The dominant white élite manoeuvred to deny
non-whites any power. In order to enforce mid-nineteenth-century
legislation that deprived the indigenous population of communal lands, the
army killed thousands. The indigenous tribes’ resentment was demonstrated
in their 1899 revolt against heavy taxation, forced labour and land loss, when
they massacred, ritually sacrificed and ate some government soldiers. The
government response was brutal. The civil rights of the indigenous
population were simply not on the political agenda.

The early twentieth century

While late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century governments
incorporated the middle class and urban workers into political society, the
indigenous population remained resentful, impoverished and exploited. In
1921 and 1927 there were violent indigenous uprisings in the Andean
highlands. Tens of thousands of highland conscripts died in the Chaco War
(1932–5), when the fighting was left to the indigenous populations. The
government was as careless with their education as with their lives, but,

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Indigenous tribes and

0 100 mls languages
Pacahuara
0 250 km Yaminahua, Machineri
Ese Ejja
Chacobo
BRAZIL Moré
Araona
N
PERU Cavineno
Cayubaba, Reyesano
Tonalla
Joaquiniano, Canichana
Baure
Tacana
Yungas
El Alto Movima
Ayopaya Chapare Quechua
La Paz
Chimani, Mosetén
Cochabamba Sirionó, Moxeño
Ucureña
Leco
Aymara
Sucre Yuracaré
Yuqui
Guarayo
Paiconeca
Chiquitano
PARAGUAY Afroboliviano
CHILE
Uru
Ayoreo
Guaraní, Tapiete,
ARGENTINA Weenhayek

Map of Bolivia showing different indigenous tribes and languages and places of particular significance in the struggle
for civil rights

because there was no public education available prior to the 1930s,

indigenous culture survived in the countryside. There were also promising
signs of change.

Warisata and indigemismo

Teachers trained at the teacher training school established at Warisata in
1928 encouraged the indigenous population of the highlands to organize to
fight for land reform and their rights. The school was a centre of indigenismo
(see page 11).

The military reformist governments of 1936–9

In 1937, Colonel Germán Busch’s reformist military government called a
constitutional convention. Some of the more radical delegates proposed laws
to protect indigenous communities and their communal lands, and to

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 abolish forced labour on the haciendas. They gained little support. However,
KEY TERM
the convention approved an education reform law that provided many rural
Haciendas Great landed educational centres for the indigenous highland population and Busch’s
estates. Office of Indigenous Education promoted indigenista teachers, although
some advised him that the indigenous population needed land more than
education.

Revolutionary parties
After the disastrous Chaco War (1932–5) discredited the traditional political
parties, several new ones were established. Víctor Paz Estenssoro’s
Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR), established in 1941, was
nationalistic and socialist, but initially silent on the indigenous question. The
Party of the Revolutionary Left (PIR), established by Communists in the
1940s, was divided between internationalist, pro-Soviet members and
nationalist pro-indigent members. The Revolutionary Workers’ Party (POR),
established in 1934, was the first to use what would be a popular slogan in
the National Revolution of 1952, ‘Land to the Indian, mines to the state’.
Parties such as the PIR and POR put indigenous problems and rights firmly
on the political agenda.

Why and with what Changing times 1945–52

results did indigenous
Indigenous activism increased because:
civil rights become an
issue 1945–52? l Busch’s educational reforms made education more widely available to the
indigenous population.
l Teachers trained at schools such as Warisata raised indigenous
consciousness.
l New radical political parties such as PIR were sympathetic to the
indigenous tribes.
l Indigenous peasants began to organize themselves, as in the successful
peasant co-operative movement in Cochabamba.
l In 1943, Quechua-speaking Major Gualberto Villarroel led a group of
reformist military officers in a coup. In collaboration with the MNR, his
government assembled over 100 indigenous leaders in Bolivia’s first
National Indigenous Congress (1945), which discussed land reform and
indigenous servitude and greatly increased indigenous consciousness.

The first National Indigenous Congress 1945

The government’s attitude towards the 1945 National Indigenous Congress
was ambivalent. Bolivian anthropologist Jorge Dandler (1987) showed that
the government justified its call for the 1945 National Indigenous Congress
as a way to channel agitation over indigenous rights, removed indigenous
leaders such as Antonio Alvarez Mamani with claims that they were not truly
indigenous, and replaced them with a government-appointed non-
indigenous chairman of the Congress.

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Nevertheless, the summoning of an indigenous conference was

‘a provocative, indeed revolutionary, political move’, according to historian
Waltraud Morales (2010). Its very existence represented a questioning of the
old order. President Villarroel’s sympathetic speech to Congress promised
better educational facilities, the abolition of the hated labour service
obligations, and better housing, clothing, food and healthcare. The Congress
demonstrated a rare indigenous unity when the participants demanded the
end of discriminatory laws, the end of compulsory labour service, and
indigenous access to segregated public places. MNR activist Hernán Siles
Zuazo told the delegates that the land problem was Bolivia’s greatest
challenge and that a major MNR platform was that ‘the land should belong
to those who work it’. He recognized that land redistribution would take
many years to achieve but, ‘I believe that this Congress is the first step.’
Probably the greatest achievement of the Congress was the sense of unity
that it engendered among the many different indigenous groups. In the face
of attempted sabotage by the great landowners, indigenous communities
throughout Bolivia had organized mass meetings and regional congresses in
order to prepare for the National Congress.
President Villarroel’s reforming decrees constituted ‘a truly revolutionary act’,
according to historian Herbert Klein, 2003, but were never put into force.
After the Congress raised indigenous consciousness, large-scale indigenous
marches occurred in the centre of cities such as La Paz. This mobilization
terrified conservatives, particularly great landowners, who feared the abolition
of forced labour obligations. Villarroel was overthrown in 1946 and the army
reintroduced forced indigenous labour. Raised indigenous expectations then
contributed to the great uprising of Ayopaya (1947), in which several
thousand people attacked haciendas until the armed forces crushed them.
Nevertheless, despite widespread persecution between 1946 and 1952, the
long-term foundations for indigenous self-help were being laid.

The National Revolution 1952 What were the causes

and results of the
Historically, most agricultural land in Bolivia belonged to a few great
National Revolution
landowners. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, independent of 1952?
indigenous communities struggled to keep communal lands and by 1950,
six per cent of landowners owned 92 per cent of cultivable land.
Between 1946 and 1951, the conservative, repressive oligarchy reversed the
major reforms that the military socialists and the MNR had introduced, used
military repression against its opponents and fraudulently deprived the MNR
of a presidential election victory in 1951. With politics particularly fractious,
the economy hit by the collapse of tin prices, and many politicized by
Bolivia’s defeat in the Chaco War and the National Indigenous Congress, the
MNR, supported by the workers and middle class, led a successful National
Revolution in 1952. Victor Paz Estenssoro became Bolivia’s first revolutionary
president.

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 Results and significance of the National Revolution
The new government introduced political, social and economic reforms that
greatly decreased the exploitation of the indigenous population, who were
finally given political power and land. The MNR had long called for universal
suffrage, nationalization of the mines and, most radical of all, land reform.

Universal suffrage
Before 1950 the indigenous majority had not been allowed to vote. A new
electoral law abolished literacy tests and discriminatory property restrictions
and raised the electorate from 200,000 to 1,000,000. Most new voters were
illiterate indigenous peasants, miners and factory workers.

Peasant initiative and land reform

Despite open rebellion and litigation, the peasants had not made a reality of
the reforms their hero President Villarroel had decreed in 1945. The great
landowners had ignored the laws and repressed the peasantry, punishing
those who had attended the National Indigenous Congress by doubling
their workload or by firing them. In spring 1952, an independent and
spontaneous indigenous land reform movement broke out near
Cochabamba, where peasants began to seize land. Rural unions in
Cochabamba had been organized by returning indigenous war veterans after
the Chaco War in 1936. These peasant unions were concentrated in the town
of Ucureña, which became exceptionally militant and well organized, thanks
to the Party of the Revolutionary Left (PIR), which dominated the unions.
The unionized peasants of Ucureña, led by José Rojas, joined the MNR but
sought more radical agrarian reform in return.
Although always ambivalent about agrarian reform and uneasy about
growing indigenous autonomy, the MNR had to speed up and radicalize its
land reform policy when peasant land seizures spread. Contemporaries
concluded that if the peasants had not taken the initiative through land
seizures, the Agrarian Reform Law of 1953 might not have been signed.

The Agrarian Reform Law 1953

The Agrarian Reform Law legalized the peasant land seizures. The law
confiscated and redistributed the largest estates, and abolished compulsory
labour and the unpaid transport of hacienda produce to urban markets by
the peasants’ animals. It restored the communal lands seized in the previous
century, redistributing 24 million acres to 237,000 people by 1955, and
29 million to 289,000 others by 1970.
The agricultural reform had its disadvantages. Only larger estates were
redistributed, and they were divided into small inefficient holdings where,
without capital input, productivity declined. The transfer of titles got bogged
down in the bureaucracy. However, the positives outweighed the negatives.
After 1952, the indigenous peoples were voters and property owners.

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Educational reform
The 1953 educational reform decree re-established the right to universal
education, and the government pledged to extend this to the indigenous
population, whom the landowners had previously prevented from accessing
education.

The Ministry of Peasant Affairs and MNR peasant unions

The MNR created the Ministry of Peasant Affairs, which sent out organizing
teams to rural areas, and created and financed the first national rural union,
the Bolivian National Confederation (Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores
Campesinos de Bolivia or CNTCB). Within months of the revolution there
were over 1000 peasant unions with 20,000 members in the Department of
Cochabamba alone. By 1961 there were 7500 peasant unions in Bolivia, all
affiliated to the MNR.
The indigenous groups were traditionally suspicious of political parties, but
after the land reform they became passive, content with their lands. The
MNR worked through the unions to keep their loyalty. The party also made
symbolic gestures, as when it abolished the word ‘Indian’ from official
language because of its colonial connotations.
By the time the national government collapsed in 1964, the indigenous
population’s situation had greatly improved. The government had played a
big part in this, but so had activists, and it seems likely that the government
would not have been as helpful without prompting from the
underprivileged.

Military governments 1964–82 How and why did

military governments
By 1964, the National Revolution and the MNR were on the verge of help the indigenous
disintegration. An excessively broad coalition of conflicting interest groups, population?
MNR’s local leaders had become increasingly corrupt. From 1964 to 1982
Bolivia was dominated by counter-revolutionary military governments.
Under the MNR government, the Bolivian army had been made to aid
national development. Its tasks had included the incorporation of the
indigenous population into national life, and educated individuals were
encouraged to join the army. So, the military governments between 1964 and
1982 were sometimes sympathetic to the ‘original peoples’.

General René Barrientos Ortuño

In 1964, a military junta headed by General René Barrientos Ortuño (1919–
69) came to power. Barrientos, a Quechua-speaker nicknamed the ‘peasant
president’, promised to aid the peasants. His helicopter took him to many
remote villages where he won over the local leaders. In 1966 he signed the
Military–Peasant Pact and redistributed land to the peasants, who in turn
pledged to defend the military against leftists. Satisfied by agrarian reform
and land titles, the peasants had become conservative and malleable.

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 Barrientos continued the policy of co-opting, controlling and mobilizing the
KEY TERM
peasants, and introduced the policy of personal ties with the caciques, who
Maximum leader recognized him as sole ‘maximum leader’ of the peasantry. Peasant loyalty
Recognition of one leader as to the regime, based on the fear that they might lose their land rights, was
superior to all other tribal such that in 1967 the Guaraní tribe betrayed the sympathetic Argentine
leaders.
Communist revolutionary Che Guevara to the authorities.
Katarismo Bolivian
movement to re-create Hugo Banzer Suárez
Aymara ethnic solidarity. In 1971, Hugo Banzer Suárez became president and then dictator. On the
Central Obrero Boliviano one hand, his government (1971–8) repressed the indigenous population,
(COB) National labour killing over 100 peasants in the Massacre of Tolata after 100 peasant
union set up in the early days syndicates blocked Cochabamba’s main road in protest against food prices in
of the revolutionary MNR 1974. This was the first major clash between the peasantry and the military
government to represent the since 1952. On the other hand, Banzer worked to renew the Military–Peasant
general voice of Bolivian Pact. He removed independent minded leaders of the peasant syndicates and
workers. replaced them with pro-government caciques, but redistributed over
15 million hectares (37 million acres) of land to peasant families.
Significantly then, even military dictators had to take the interests of the
majority indigenous population into account. Their sheer numbers played an
important role in the maintenance of some rights. Inevitably, some were
members of the army, which helped to ensure that the military had some
sympathy for the indigenous population.

The kataristas and the CSUTCB

Founded in the early 1970s by students of Aymara descent in La Paz and by
young Aymara peasants in the highlands, the katarismo movement worked
for Aymara ethnic solidarity. In 1973 several groups affiliated to the katarismo
movement met in La Paz and published the Tiwanaku Manifesto in which
the indigenous population described themselves as ‘foreigners in their own
fatherland’. The manifesto rejected the integrationist politics of the
government as denying the ethnic integrity of two-thirds of Bolivia’s
population. Kataristas published a biography of Tupac Katari, who had
rebelled against the Spanish colonial government in 1781. They used leaflets
and radio programmes to create and confirm his iconic status. An
organization for peasant women was named after his wife, Bartolina Sísa. It
organized congresses and mobilized women to demand better working
conditions, unionization, and better treatment for indigenous women by
politicians and male family members.
Although the katarista movement was intensely divided over ideology and
poorly organized, by the late 1970s it had taken over most of the official
government peasant unions and organized the Confederation of Peasants
Unions of Bolivia (Confederacíon Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de
Bolivia or CSUTCB). By 1981, the kataristas controlled the Aymara peasant
unions and gained representation on the national labour union, the Bolivian
Labour Central (Central Obrero Boliviano, COB). In 1981, the indigenous

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Tupac Katari Revolutionary Movement (MRTKL) leader, Genaro Flores,

became the first indigenous peasant leader of the COB.

The return of civilian government How sympathetic was

the civilian élite to
After 1982, Bolivia returned to democracy but was plagued by successive
indigenous rights?
economic crises that led many unemployed miners and peasants into coca
cultivation and some into the drug trade.

Coca and cocaine

Particularly easy to grow, cultivate and sell, coca has great religious and
medicinal significance for the Aymara and Quechua. Miners traditionally
chewed the leaves between shifts in order to calm their stomachs and ease
their pain. It was found that when they stopped chewing them, the loss of
the vitamins contained in the leaf caused their teeth to fall out. Extensively
processed coca leaves become cocaine, so from 1961 the United Nations
(UN) called for the outlawing of coca tea and traditional coca leaf chewing,
which infuriated the Bolivian population.
From 1964 onwards, with the connivance of the military regime, drug cartels
paid poor indigenous peasants to grow coca. When the international cocaine
trade became exceptionally lucrative in the early 1980s, the production of
coca leaves tripled, but Paz Estenssoro’s coalition (1985–9) criminalized coca
leaf cultivation and, assisted by US military advisers and 150 special US
troops, used military force against growers. The cocaine problem and policies
of the USA helped to politicize the indigenous population of Bolivia. In the
1980s and 1990s, indigenous peasant associations opposed the government’s
coca eradication programme and use of military force against growers.
Peasant tactics included strategic roadblocks, hunger strikes, mass rallies
with ‘chew-ins’ of coca leaves, marches and occupations, which combined to
force the government to compromise. Federations of coca-leaf growers
insisted that national sovereignty and Andean culture were at issue in the
struggle against the government’s eradication and criminalization policies.
From 1988 Evo Morales headed the biggest coca growers’ federation. The
Peasant Coca Growers Union became very influential in the CSUTCB, which
dominated the COB. The peasant and labour movements were very close to
the leftist parties, and gained representation in the National Congress in
1989. Morales became leader of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS). In
2002 the Chamber of Deputies expelled him because his repeated attacks on
the government’s anti-drug policy were deemed seriously unethical. His
expulsion triggered widespread peasant protests and anti-US feeling. The US
ambassador’s public criticism of Morales in 2002 probably helped him to
gain more votes in the presidential election. The coca-leaf war greatly
affected the political mobilization and empowerment of the indigenous
peasantry, the largest group of voters in Bolivia.

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 A multi-ethnic and pluricultural society
In the 1989 elections it became clear that indigenous rights groups were
becoming increasingly popular. When the government of Gonzalo Sánchez
de Lozada of the MNR came to power in 1993, it allied with several other
parties, including the indigenous Tupac Katari Party (see page 160). Well
aware of the electoral importance of indigenous groups, Sánchez de Lozada
chose as his vice president the Aymara leader of Tupac Katari, Víctor Hugo
Cárdenas, whose wife wore indigenous dress for political and social events.
Sánchez de Lozada introduced several laws that affected the indigenous
population. In the Constitutional Amendments Law of 1994, Bolivia was
defined as a multi-ethnic and pluricultural society, and an independent
human rights ombudsman was set up to monitor abuses. Sánchez de Lozada
also introduced bilingual and multicultural educational reforms, along with
several new agencies to monitor ethnic and gender issues. His 1994 Law of
Popular Participation devolved power to the localities, and established over
300 municipalities, among which were indigenous villages that now had
their traditional governing units recognized by the government. According to
historian Waltraud Morales (2010), this ‘transformed the political landscape’
in that 85 per cent of municipalities had rural and often indigenous
majorities and now received significant federal funding (critics claimed that
these local governing bodies did not do well, thanks to insufficient funding,
inertia, mismanagement and corruption). Along with the recognition of
traditional local laws, the new constitution guaranteed traditional land rights.
However, the majority indigenous population still felt politically alienated.

Indigenous political alienation

In the 1997 election, only one of the presidential candidates of the main
parties had an indigenous background. Three of the vice presidential
candidates represented the indigenous groups, but overall the indigenous
populations considered themselves poorly represented in the presidential
race. Their sense of alienation from the political process increased with
President Banzer’s ‘zero coca’ policy, which led to violent clashes that pitted
the military against the coca growers and the powerful Cochabamba-
Chapare unions, and with the Water Wars.

Water Wars 1999–2002

Over 40 per cent of Bolivians lacked proper sanitation, and 15–30 per cent
did not have access to drinkable water. The primarily mestizo and indigenous
population of Cochabamba viewed access to water as a basic human right,
which led to the Cochabamba Water Wars. When the water utility was
privatized and put in the hands of a large multinational corporation, 30,000
people took to the streets in 2001 to protest and brought the centre of the
city of Cochabamba to a standstill for five days. President Banzer
(1997–2001) sent in troops, which aroused international condemnation of
human rights violations. The poverty-stricken population was right to be

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fearful as the price of the privatized water rocketed. The next president, Jorge
Quiroga Ramírez (2001–2), was forced to suspend both the water
privatization contract and the ‘zero coca’ policy.
The Water Wars demonstrated that being the numerical majority in a
democracy did not necessarily give the indigenous population what they
wanted, but that sheer weight of numbers deployed in popular protest and
supported by the international community could improve a situation.

Evo Morales What is the

significance of Bolivia’s
In what historian Waltraud Morales (2010) called a ‘historic and
first indigenous
revolutionary’ election in December 2005, socialist Evo Morales, charismatic president?
spokesman of Bolivia’s majority indigenous population and other
traditionally marginalized groups, became Bolivia’s first indigenous
president.
The ‘indigenous populist’ Morales first gained fame in the 1990s as the
KEY TERM
spokesperson of the peasant-based coca growers’ association. He stood for
the presidency in 2002. Opponents described him as a Marxist and a drug Marxist Someone who
trafficker, but he was only narrowly defeated. Morales’ MAS party and the believes in Marx and Engels’
other pro-coca party, Felipe Quispe Huanca’s Pachakuti Indigenous political, economic and social
Movement, led the opposition to the MNR-dominated government. principles.

Reasons for Morales’ electoral victory in 2005

Morales was victorious in the 2005 presidential election because of the
constitutional reforms of 1994–5, the continued alienation of the indigenous
population, more water wars, and his personal charisma and policies.

The reforms of 1994–5

The constitutional reforms of 1994–5 devolved power to new governmental
units that empowered the indigenous population by giving them greater
experience, responsibility and political awareness. This contributed to
renewed militancy and grassroots activism that proved important when the
population felt alienated.

The alienation of the indigenous population

In spite of the radical reconstruction of 1952, economic and political power
had gradually become dominated by a ‘new oligarchy’ that dominated
politics after the restoration of democracy. Their neoliberal (see page 21)
economic policies increased the poverty of the mestizo and indigenous
populations: their privatization of major state-owned enterprises in the
1990s led to large-scale unemployment and displacement, especially in the
highlands. Despite the redistribution of land after the National Revolution,
ownership had become more narrowly distributed again, as impoverished
campesinos left the countryside and migrated to the cities, where they
suffered unemployment, overcrowding, exploitation and poverty.

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 Economic and political discontent led to renewed militancy and grassroots
activism: hundreds of autonomous organizations and movements at all
levels of society were determined to make Bolivia more inclusive and more
democratic. Furthermore, all Bolivian political parties had to respond to
indigenous peasants who still constituted the majority of the population and
electorate. Despite their poverty and a high proportion of illiteracy, they
could produce a high voter turnout when mobilized. The peasant unions
played an important part in that mobilization, which benefited Morales.

Evo Morales: leadership and policies

Morales was an inspirational opposition leader and his promised policies
(see Source F) were popular. He called for:
l the nationalization of Bolivia’s oil and gas reserves
l an assembly to rewrite the constitution and give more rights and power to
the ‘original peoples’
l a national referendum on regional autonomy
l land redistribution.

He won the votes of the indigenous population, trade union activists,

women’s organizations and student groups.
Source F

Extracts from interviews with Evo Morales, 2005 and 2007. Quoted in
According to Source F, what
1. www.inthesetimes.com/article/2438/ and 2. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/
problems faced Bolivia in
americas/7035944.stm
2005 and what were the
solutions? 1. The majority of people in this country – people from more than 30 indigenous
groups – did not participate in the foundation of Bolivia in 1825. We have to
refound Bolivia in order to end the colonial state, to live united in diversity, to
put all our resources under state control, and to make people participate and
give them the right to make decisions … Our Constitution says that Bolivia is
a multi-ethnic democratic country, but that is only in theory. If we can win we
have to change the country, not only in theory but in reality …
2. We believe in a democratic revolution, an indigenous revolution, to claim back
our land and all of our natural resources …

Water and gas wars

Large-scale protests over the privatization of water (2004–5) and natural gas
(2003, 2005) severely damaged three presidencies. In 2004–5, the indigenous
city of El Alto (near La Paz) initiated the second great Water War. The feisty
Aymara population brought the city to a standstill in protest against
connection rates of $400, at a time when many families earned less than that
in the year. The El Alto Water War was led by the Aymara President of the
Federation of Neighbourhood Councils of El Alto, Abel Mamani. In 2006, the
transnational water company ended its operations in La Paz. Internationally
there was great sympathy for people demonstrating for water rights in the
face of police using tear gas and guns. Similarly, a gas dispute in May 2005

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brought La Paz to a standstill, as 80,000 protesters fought against the police.

Most of the 80,000 were Aymara, encouraged by Morales and Quispe. This
prompted the government to call the December 2005 election.

The significance of Morales’ election

Historian Waltraud Morales (2010), believing ‘endemic racism’ was Bolivia’s
‘largely unacknowledged’ but ‘oldest social and cultural problem’, considered
Evo Morales’ victory in 2005 exceptionally significant because it promised,
‘for the first time in decades … a real voice to the country’s humble and
largely indigenous citizens, many underserved by state and society and living
in impoverished rural and urban communities. It represented the triumphant
culmination of the more than 500 year struggle against white European
aggression and domination’. His victory was greeted with joy among the
majority indigenous population. At last one of their own had gained the
presidency and it raised their hopes for greater social and economic equality
and respect for their identity and culture. Morales’ election signalled a
peaceful democratic transition of power from the non-indigenous ruling
élites to the Andean indigenous majority.
In the 2001 census, 62 per cent of Bolivians described themselves as
indigenous. Before the National Revolution of 1952 they suffered social
exclusion and were considered totally inferior. Although the reforms of the
National Revolution improved their situation, racism and discrimination
continued, even after the 1994 claims of a multi-ethnic and pluricultural
society.
The election of Morales, with his embrace of indigenous identity, made being
‘Indian’ a source of pride. As the nation’s first democratically elected
indigenous president, most Bolivians and foreigners described him as the
first ‘Indian’ president, although some queried the ‘Indian’ tag because while
he spoke Aymara as a child, he was not fluent in the language and had
adopted Cholo culture. Aymara leaders Felipe Quispe Huanca of the
Pachakuti Indigenous Movement and former Vice President Victor Hugo
Cárdenas criticized him as insufficiently ‘Indian’, although white opponents
called him ‘that Indian’.
Morales’ unofficial indigenous inauguration in January 2006 was a
spectacular Andean ceremony at the top of the Kalasaya temple with a
crowd of tens of thousands of mostly indigenous supporters. Morales wore a
wreath of coca leaves, dressed in the style of pre-conquest Andean priests
and nobles, and thanked the Andean Mother Earth deity. He held a staff
with a condor head, which symbolizes indigenous rule. Even at his official
inauguration in La Paz the next day, he wore a handwoven Andean jacket.

Problems in early twenty-first century Bolivia

With a unique 85 per cent turnout, Morales won 54 per cent of the popular
vote, the first time any Bolivian president was elected by an outright majority.
These statistics gave him a powerful mandate, but he still faced a great deal
of opposition.

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 Source G

Bolivian President Evo Morales (left) on a state visit, meeting South

What point is President
African President Thabo Mbeki (right) on 11 January 2006.
Morales of Bolivia making by
his choice of clothing on this
state visit to South Africa in
Source G?

Racism
Morales’ election did not solve Bolivian racial problems. According to
historian Teresa Meade (2010), the attempt of the prosperous whites and
mestizos of the eastern provinces of Bolivia to separate from the Bolivia of
Morales ‘has everything to do with racial prejudice’.

Economic and social inequality

In the UN Human Development Index (HDI), which is based on life
expectancy, adult literacy and living standards, only Haiti and Guatemala
ranked lower than Bolivia in Latin America. The extent of economic
inequality within Bolivia was the greatest in Latin America, and the seventh
highest in the world. Morales inherited an economic and political system
dominated by an élite group of wealthy ‘whites’ unwilling to see wealth and
power redistributed and anxious to maintain traditional social inequality.

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The 2006 Constituent Assembly was dominated by Morales’ supporters. It

contained a record number of indigenous delegates and in 2007 passed a
new constitution (see Source H) that:
l was among the world’s first to enshrine the principles of the UN
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
l reiterated that Bolivia was a plurinational state
l increased indigenous rights in relation to land and cultivation
l gave the indigenous population more seats in the legislature
l gave a judicial system based on customary law equal status to the
established legal system
l established self-governing homelands for 36 indigenous nations
l introduced affirmative action in order to provide more jobs for the
indigenous population.
Although the constitution was approved by 61 per cent of voters in 2009,
others bitterly opposed it. The decentralization reforms of 1994–5 that had
helped to mobilize indigenous political power had strengthened municipal
and local government. In the more prosperous areas of Bolivia, especially the
Media Luna (Half Moon), this new governmental structure encouraged
opposition to reform and threats of secession.
Source H

Extracts from the Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia … 2009,

translated by Luis Francisco Valle at www.bolivianconstitution.com What can you infer from the
extracts from the Bolivian
Article 1: Bolivia is constituted in a Social, unitary State of Plurinational constitution in Source H
Communitarian Law, free, independent, sovereign, democratic, intercultural, about civil rights issues in
decentralised and with autonomies. Bolivia is founded in plurality and in pre-2009 Bolivia? Suggest
political, economic, legal, cultural and linguistic pluralism, with the integrating reasons why some Bolivians
process of the country. would criticize these articles.
Article 2: Given the pre-colonial existence of the indigenous originary [sic]
farmer nations and people and their ancestral domain over their territories, their
free determination is guaranteed within the framework of the unity of the State,
which consists in their right to autonomy, to self-government, to their culture, to
the recognition of their institutions and to the consolidation of their territorial
entities, in accordance to this Constitution and to the law.
Article 3: The Bolivian nation is formed by the totality of the Bolivian males and
females, the indigenous originary farmer nations and people, and the
intercultural and Afro-Bolivian communities which all together make up the
Bolivian people …
Article 5. I. The official languages of the State are the Spanish language and all
of the languages of the indigenous originary farmer nations and people, that
include the languages aymara, araona, naure [there follows a list totalling 36
indigenous languages].

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 Coca
A final domestic problem facing twenty-first century Bolivia was summed up
by Evo Morales: ‘Let me chew my coca leaves’ (see Source I). The eradication
policies of Bolivian governments between 1988 and 2005 led to the
impoverishment and incarceration of many coca growers who were not
involved in the drug trade (few peasants did the actual processing of the coca
leaves into cocaine). International opposition to coca growing was great.
Source I

Extracts from Bolivian President Evo Morales’ interviews about coca

How far would you agree
that Source I gives a good cultivation. Quoted in 1. A Brief History of Bolivia by Waltraud Morales,
justification for the cultivation published by Facts on File, New York, USA, 2010, pages 260–1 and
of coca in Bolivia? 2. Profile: Evo Morales, BBC News Online, 14 December 2008.
1. No to zero coca leaf, yes to zero cocaine … coca is not cocaine [but a] healthful
Andean tradition … [Coca is] an important symbol in the history and
identity of the indigenous cultures of the Andes …
2. I am not a drug trafficker. I am a coca grower. I cultivate the coca leaf, which
is a natural product. I do not refine [it into] cocaine, and neither cocaine or
drugs have ever been part of the Andean culture.

‘Whites’ Indigenous population

Colonial period Conquerors Conquered; rebellions failed

New Republics Dominant politically and economically Heavily taxed, forced labour,
land loss, rebellions failed

Early 20th century Still dominant Indigenismo, rise of more

sympathetic parties

First National Government more sympathetic, Greater consciousness, confidence,

Indigenous Congress élite angry education, organization

1946–51 Repression Conservative oligarchy Marking time

1952 National MNR government grants vote, land reform Great organizational experience.
Revolution Life improved. Land restored (some)

1964–82 Military Military sympathetic Military–peasant pact.

governments More organizations

Democracy Governments struggled with economy. Great poverty coca growing.

Devolved power to localities ‘Indian’ rights parties increasingly
popular. Still felt alienated.
Water wars

Evo Morales Old white élite resistant, threatened ‘One of their own’ as president
secession

Summary diagram

The Bolivian government and civil rights

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

USA Bolivia
Fought against colonial powers but oppressed non-whites
More respectful of indigenous culture from 1930s
Delayed non-white voting as long as possible
Greater civil rights consciousness after Second World War
Similar

Unions important in forcing government to change

Wars eventually improved non-white lives
Often repressed non-white militancy
Constitution talks of equality
Government vital in civil rights
Even government cannot obliterate centuries of racism/deprivation
Non-whites remain among the poorest
Elected non-white president after 2000; conservative racist opposition

USA Bolivia
Different

Long very wealthy Long very poor

Federal government system long significant Federal government system only recently significant
Non-whites in minority Non-whites in majority
Non-whites did not form own political party Non-whites developed own political party
Obama does not emphasize race Morales emphasizes race

Diagrammatic comparison of civil rights in the USA and Bolivia

3 Key debate
Key question: Were Latin American constitutional guarantees of
indigenous rights due to activism?

Focusing on the constitutional reforms of the late twentieth century that

recognized the plurinational and pluricultural nature of many Latin
American states, historian Donna Lee Van Cott (2000) argued that ‘in no case
in Latin America was the demand for special rights and recognition the most
important reason for the decision to reform the political constitution.’
In contrast, Jaime Arocha (1998) argued that the rights given to the
indigenous and black population of Colombia in 1991 were a concession that
their activism forced out of a reluctant and indifferent Constituent Assembly.
Peter Wade (2008) played down black agency and said rights for black groups
in Colombia and Nicaragua ‘in a sense rode on the coattails of rights for
indigenous groups’, but concluded that ethnic mobilization was ‘clearly
important’, if not the ‘most important’ factor in the wave of constitutional
reform that recognized indigenous and Afro-Latin American rights. He
found it hard to believe that the writers of the new constitutions would have
included such rights without non-white activism, but he also emphasized
that the governments were very much motivated by other factors such as the
international climate and the desire to co-opt and control ethnic movements.

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 With regard to indigenous participation in government, C.R. Hale (2004)
When governments
‘do the right thing,’ gave a cautionary reminder: ‘it would be a mistake to equate the increasing
does it matter what indigenous presence in the corridors of power with indigenous
their motives are? empowerment’ in ‘the era of the “indio permitido” or “permissible Indian”,
(Ethics, Reason) who can go so far but no further.’
Overall, in Latin America as in the USA, it would seem that indigenous and
black agency forced governments that otherwise would have done little or
nothing, to guarantee the civil rights of those groups. After all, it is a rare
élite that voluntarily gives away power.

violence and the expensive Vietnam War, did not want

Chapter summary to pay to improve black ghettos. Johnson urged
affirmative action, which was introduced under
President Nixon (1969–74). However, from the late
Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements 1970s a conservative white backlash gathered
in the Americas momentum. In 2000, black poverty and
Civil rights became more respected in the twentieth- unemployment rates remained twice as high as those
century Americas. The USA illustrates a federal system of whites.
of government’s crucial role over minority civil rights. Unlike the black population of the USA, Bolivia’s
Bolivia shows a majority can struggle to gain equality indigenous people were in the majority. Their lands,
even when enfranchised. rights and culture were despised in colonial times and
The nineteenth-century US federal government under the new republic in the nineteenth and early
initially accepted slavery in the Southern states, then twentieth centuries.
forced greater racial equality upon the South, then Indigenous rights became an issue in the 1930s.
allowed the reassertion of white supremacy. In the The combination of new political parties sympathetic to
early twentieth century, African Americans made some the impoverished indigenous population, the first
progress towards equality thanks to NAACP litigation National Indigenous Congress (1945) and the greater
and to sympathetic presidents, especially Truman availability of education helped to mobilize the
(1945–53). Segregation nevertheless continued, thanks indigenous population, whose organizations
to white political domination in the South and Southern mushroomed.
Democrats’ importance in the US Senate. Even when During Bolivia’s National Revolution (1952),
the Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional indigenous peasants seized land. The seizures were
in Brown (1954), Southern white resistance forced a recognized by the reformist government. Bolivian
reluctant President Eisenhower (1953–61) to intervene military governments (1964–82) were often
in Little Rock. Eisenhower and Kennedy (1961–3) sympathetic to the indigenous population, whose sheer
responded to African American activism with Civil weight of numbers ensured that even dictators felt it
Rights Acts (1957, 1960) and a civil rights bill that finally unwise to ignore them.
became an act (1963) under the sympathetic Johnson Exasperated by threats to their water and their
(1963–9). Black activism also encouraged the 1965 cultivation of coca, the indigenous population were
Voting Rights Act. crucial in the election of Aymara Evo Morales to the
After 1965, Johnson was unable to help African presidency in 2005. Significantly, the wealthy white
Americans, because of opposition from Congress, local minority of the lowland regions threatened secession.
officials and the white population who, faced with black

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

Examination advice
How to answer ‘evaluate’ questions
For questions that contain the command term evaluate, you are asked to
make judgements. You should judge the available evidence and identify and
discuss the most convincing elements of the argument, in addition to
explaining the limitations of other elements.

Example
Evaluate the role the US government played in relation to the civil rights of
African Americans from 1945 to 1965.
1 For this question you should aim to make judgements about the role
different US governments or presidencies played in relation to the civil
rights of African Americans. It is unlikely that the roles would have been
the same with each president so part of your task is to discuss what each
president did for civil rights. Explain why he pushed for certain actions or
why he remained inactive. Because the question provides a specific
timeline, be sure to cover the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower,
Kennedy and Johnson. Do not spend valuable time on discussing earlier
or later presidents. Stronger answers will include evidence of the historical
context of presidential actions. In other words, what Lyndon Johnson did
in 1964 and 1965 was different from what Harry Truman was able to
accomplish in 1945; this was partly due to the actions of the civil rights
movement and the receptiveness of the US public to change, as well as
how willing Congress was to overturn decades of de jure segregation.
2 Before writing the answer you should produce an outline – allow around
five minutes to do this. You might want to organize your thoughts by
dividing up each presidential term. You could include evidence such as:

President Truman (1945–53):
Truman needed the northern black vote.
He created a committee to investigate civil rights in the USA. The
report, ‘To Secure These Rights’, was an indictment of race relations.
H e banned segregation in the armed forces by executive decree in
1948. It would take two years to be enacted.
N AACP kept up pressure with court cases.
O verall, a helpful and crucial role, although limited by the
obstructive role of Congress. Local government role still vital.

President Eisenhower (1953–61)

C alled for an end to segregation in his first State of the Union
­a ddress (1953).
▼

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 O ften forced to act because of outside forces such as mob action in
Arkansas in 1957 and black activism.
D id not like Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of
Education.
C ongress forced to acknowledge that there were serious racial
­p roblems in the South.
1 956 civil rights legislation was weak , tepid.
O verall, a helpful role was somewhat forced on him.

President Kennedy (1961–3)

D uring his presidency there was a huge rise in black activism.
(Freedom Rides, Mississippi voter registration drives, Birmingham,
March on Washington.)
Southern white actions in which law and order was disregarded
forced Kennedy to act.
G enerally, Kennedy was slow to act.
Kennedy concerned about 1962 Congressional elections – he did not
want to endanger Democratic chances in elections.
His 1962 literacy bill which would have allowed African ­Americans
with a sixth-grade education to be able to vote was not passed.
1 963 Civil Rights bill did not go nearly far enough for Civil Rights
leaders.
Overall, a reactive role – needed black prompting.

President Johnson (1963–9)

1 964 Civil Rights Act.
1 965 Voting Rights Act.
C ongress finally acted with the Executive (president) and Judicial
(courts) branches of government to enact meaningful change.
Inability to stop US cities from burning. Problems in ghettoes ­continued.
U nparalleled role in the presidential promotion of racial
segregation in the South. Limited role in the Northern ghettos.

3 In your introduction, you will need to state your thesis. This might be: ‘the
various US governments from 1945 to 1965 could not avoid the growing
problems associated with racial discrimination. However, the degree to
which each tried to bring equal rights to African American citizens varied
greatly’. When you write your introduction, do not waste time by restating
the question. Just be sure to number your answer correctly.

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 Chapter 5: Role of governments in Civil Rights Movements in the Americas

An example of a good introductory paragraph for this question is given

below.

Great changes in the political, economic and social status of African
Americans took place between 1945 and 1965. Presidents Truman,
Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson could not avoid the growing
problems associated with racial discrimination. However, the degree
to which each tried to bring equal rights to African American
citizens varied greatly. Presidents Truman and Johnson seemed to act
out of conviction while Eisenhower and Kennedy seemed to be pushed
to action because of violent white backlashes threatening law and
order. Other key factors in the governments’ actions included the
quickening pace of civil rights actions, whether or not Congress was
willing to stand for change or the status quo and what political price
a president was willing to pay in order to do what he thought was
right.

4 In the body of your essay, devote at least one paragraph to each of the
topics you raised in your introduction. This is your opportunity to support
your thesis with appropriate evidence. Be sure to explicitly state how your
supporting evidence ties into the question asked. If there is any counter-
evidence, explain how and why it is of less importance than what you
have chosen to focus on.
5 A well-constructed essay will end with a conclusion. Here you will tie
together your essay by stating your conclusions. These concluding
statements should support your thesis. Remember, do not bring any new
ideas up here.
6 Now try writing a complete answer to the question following the advice
above.

Examination practice
Below are two exam-style questions for you to practise on this topic.
1 Assess the role of the Bolivian government in guaranteeing equal civil rights for its citizens.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘assess’ questions, see pages 121–2.)
2 Why was President Johnson’s civil rights programme derailed by the end of his term in office?
(For guidance on how to answer ‘why’ questions, see pages 140–1.)

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 Chapter 6

Youth culture and protests of the

1960s and 1970s
This chapter looks at the protests and the counterculture of disaffected youth in the
Americas in the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on case studies of the USA, Canada and
Mexico, it explains student motives and grievances, describes student actions and
government reactions, and evaluates their impact. You need to consider the following
questions throughout this chapter:
� Why, in what ways and with what results did the young in the USA rebel?
� How ‘new’, effective and widespread was 1960s’ US student radicalism?
� Why, to what extent and with what results did Canadian students adopt the
counterculture?
� Why, to what extent and with what results did Latin American youth rebel?

1 Youth culture and protests in

the USA
Key question: Why, in what ways and with what results did the young in
the USA rebel?

Why and how did Student protests 1961–9

students protest
In the 1960s, demographic change, an inspirational president, the Civil
1961–9?
Rights Movement, conservative university authorities and the Vietnam War
caused much student protest.

Demographic change
By the 1960s, the student population had rocketed. In 1960, 22 per cent of
young people were students, by 1975 it was 35 per cent. With mutual
inspiration and safety in numbers, and without jobs to lose or families to
support, they thought they should and could protest without risk.

President Kennedy 1961–3

In his inaugural address in 1961, President Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your
country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’ When he
suggested ‘peace and war’, ‘ignorance and prejudice’ and ‘poverty and

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

surplus’ as issues that people could take up, many students followed where
he led. Anything seemed possible in this optimistic and affluent society, with
its charismatic and idealistic young president.

The Civil Rights Movement

The African American struggle (see Chapter 2) inspired awareness of rights
and activism. The first mass student demonstrations resulted from student
KEY TERM
participation in the Civil Rights Movement: in May 1960, thousands of
students demonstrated against HUAC hearings in San Francisco (HUAC HUAC House Un-American
had targeted San Francisco because of local sympathy for the Civil Rights Activities Committee, which
Movement). pursued Communists in the
1940s and 1950s and others
College authorities and practices considered to threaten
Student radicalism erupted in the University of California at Berkeley. In internal security in the 1960s
1964, the university authorities tried to restrict the distribution of political and 1970s.
literature on campus. Thousands of students occupied the administration
building until the police ejected them and made 800 arrests. The leader of
Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement (FSM), Mario Savio, compared the
university to a machine and urged students to put ‘bodies against the gears,
against the wheels and machinery, and make it stop until we are free’. FSM’s
slogan was ‘You can’t trust anyone over 30’. The students gained considerable
support from the Berkeley faculty and the university gave in on free speech,
but the students remained restless. In 1965 there was another flareup when a
student was arrested for displaying the word ‘f**k’.
The Berkeley protests triggered nationwide student protests. Students had
no formal voice in university governments and complained that the
universities were impersonal, bureaucratic, and tried to regulate student
behaviour (the age of majority was still 21 so universities served in loco
parentis). Students who opposed the Vietnam War disliked universities doing
research for government defence agencies.

Columbia University protests

Spring 1968 saw a great number of campus protests, beginning at Columbia
University, New York, which received federal funding for work that assisted
the government in Vietnam. One student wrote to Columbia’s president that
‘society is sick and you and your capitalism are the sickness’. The protests
were triggered when the university, which had already encroached on
African American and Hispanic homes, tried to build a new gym adjacent to
Harlem, with a separate backdoor entrance for Harlem residents. Student
protest focused on racism and the Vietnam War. A small group occupied
college buildings, ransacked the president’s office, and held three officials
hostage for 24 hours. The university called in hundreds of New York City
police with clubs who hit innocent spectators as well as the student
occupiers. Most Columbia students went on a protest strike. The university
shut down for that term, but abandoned the gym and many defence
contracts. Hundreds of similar occupations across the USA followed.

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 KEY TERM The Vietnam War
Idealistic students were often pacifist. Established in 1959, the Student Peace
Pentagon Home of US Union had 3000 members by 1962. The escalating Vietnam War, which gave
Department of Defense.
the students a single cause on which to fix their dissatisfaction with their
Draft Conscription; parents’ generation and with the ruling élite, mobilized thousands more. In
compulsory call-up to the 1964, 1000 students from Yale University staged a protest march in New York
nation’s armed forces. City. During 1965, many universities held a ‘teach-in’, with anti-war lectures
ROTC College-based and debates: 20,000 participated in Berkeley. The protests frequently led to
programme to train officers disorder, as in 1965 when 8000 marchers (many from Berkeley) clashed with
for armed forces (Reserve the Oakland police and vandalized cars and buildings.
Officer Training Corps).
In 1967, the New Left (see page 177) organized the National Mobilization
Counterculture Alternative
Committee to End the War (the Mobe), which organized a high-profile
lifestyle to that of the
dominant culture. demonstration in Washington as part of the Stop the Draft Week. Their
favourite slogan was ‘Hell no, we won’t go’. Over 100,000 attended the
Beat Generation Post-
march, and prominent political and social radical Abbie Hoffman led a crowd
Second World War writers
who rejected materialism and
that tried to levitate the Pentagon. Draft cards were publicly burned
experimented sexually and throughout the country. Several thousand Berkeley radicals tried to close
with drugs. down the Oakland draft headquarters. The police attacked them with clubs.
The demonstrators retaliated with cans, bottles and smoke bombs. They put
Hippies Young people (often
students) in the 1960s who thousands of ball-bearings on the street to stop police on horseback. The
rejected the beliefs and demonstrators brought the streets around the draft headquarters to a
fashions of the older standstill, escaped from 2000 police officers, then vandalized cars, parking
generation, and favoured free meters, news stands and trees. Many were high on drugs. By 1968, many
love and drugs. protests were violent. ROTC offices and other campus buildings were
burned or bombed across the USA.

What was the The counterculture

alternative lifestyle?
Some students demonstrated contempt for contemporary USA in public
protests while others adopted an alternative lifestyle (the counterculture) to
that of the dominant culture. The roots of the counterculture lay in the 1950s’
Beat Generation, with its spontaneity, drugs, free love and general defiance
of authority and convention. Rejecting US society’s emphasis on
individualism, competitiveness and materialism, some students in the 1960s
favoured communal living, harmony and the uniform of faded blue jeans.
They listened to music that reaffirmed their beliefs, singing We Shall
Overcome with Joan Baez, All You Need is Love with the Beatles, and anti-war
songs. While their parents drank alcohol, which was socially acceptable, the
students smoked cannabis, which was not. The more extreme exponents of
the counterculture, ‘hippies’, graduated from cannabis to stronger drugs
such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide).
KEY TERM
Hippies
Happenings Events with In the mid-1960s, a group of alienated young people moved into the Haight-
large, youthful crowds, such Ashbury area of San Francisco, where they wore ‘alternative’ clothes (British
as Woodstock. ‘mod’ fashions, granny gowns, Indian kaftans), attended ‘happenings’,

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

smoked and sold cannabis, adopted new names (Blue Flash, Coyote,
Apache) and grew their hair. In spring 1967, they announced a ‘Summer of
Love’. Around 75,000 hippies visited Haight-Ashbury, which became a
KEY TERM
centre of a bohemian lifestyle and was re-christened ‘Hashbury’ because of
the popularity of hash. In autumn 1967, Time magazine reported that ‘hippie Hash A resin prepared from
enclaves’ had blossomed in every major US city. New York’s East Village had cannabis.
poetry readings, experimental theatre and underground publications such as
F**k You: A Magazine of the Arts. Time estimated that there might be 300,000
hippies.

Sex and drugs

In 1967, Republican politician Ronald Reagan told reporters that student
protesters’ activities ‘can be summed up in three words: Sex, Drugs and
Treason’. The common contemporary consensus was that hippies enjoyed
premarital and extramarital sex more often and more openly than previous
generations. Greater female sexual freedom was facilitated by the new oral
contraceptive, ‘the pill’.
A favourite hippie drug was cannabis, which induced relaxation and
happiness. LSD was a synthetic drug that produced colourful hallucinations
and inspired much psychedelic art and some rock music. Many musicians
preferred heroin, which was far more addictive and physically damaging.
Some liked to combine several addictive substances, such as alcohol, cocaine
and barbiturates. Harvard University professor Dr Timothy Leary discovered
hallucinogenic mushrooms on a visit to Mexico. His Psychedelic Review
openly advocated the use of drugs – Leary advised students, ‘Turn on, tune
in drop out.’ Harvard fired him.

Hairy problems
Following a drugs raid on a party in Norman, Oklahoma, two of those
arrested and charged were put in a mental hospital for observation because
of their long hair.

SDS and the New Left How significant was

the New Left?
Inspired by 1930s’ working-class radicals, the Beat Generation and student
participation in the Civil Rights Movement, Tom Hayden and other
University of Michigan students established the Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) in 1960. In 1962, representatives of SDS, SNCC (see page 73),
CORE (see page 56) and the Student Peace Union (see page 176) met at Port
Huron, Michigan. Their Port Huron Statement (see Source A, page 178)
called on college students to change the political and social system, and to
liberate the poor, the non-whites and all enslaved by conformity. SDS
emphasized the potential of the individual, currently stifled by the
impersonal nature of the big universities, bureaucracy and the centralization

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 of all power. They called for ‘participatory democracy’ and looked forward to
the emergence of a ‘New Left … consisting of younger people’ to awaken
Americans from ‘national apathy’.
Source A

An extract from the Port Huron Statement, written by student activists

According to Source A, why
(especially Tom Hayden), adopted at the SDS annual convention in 1962,
were the student activists of
quoted at www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/huron.html.
SDS dissatisfied with their
own country? We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in
universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit … We began to see
complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The
declaration ‘all men are created equal …’ rang hollow before the facts of Negro
life in the South and the big cities of the North. The proclaimed peaceful
intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military
investments in this Cold War status quo … While two-thirds of mankind suffers
undernourishment, our own upper classes revel amidst superfluous abundance.

KEY TERM
SDS became increasingly politically active, attacking racism, the military–
industrial complex, and in particular, the Vietnam War. SDS’s 1965 anti-war
New Left Term used by demonstration in Washington, DC drew national attention.
SDS to differentiate
themselves from the The New Left and other movements
Communist Old Left of the The counterculture and the New Left often overlapped but were not
1930s. synonymous. The counterculture distracted possible New Left recruits and
Yippies Radical student alienated potential sympathizers such as US labour, who might otherwise
group that wanted to pit the have supported the New Left’s anti-capitalism.
politics of freedom and
disorder against the machine- Other organizations affiliated to the New Left included the Yippies (see
dominated politics of the below) and SNCC. However, the alliance with African Americans was
Democratic Party at Chicago uneasy, as demonstrated by divisions amongst the 2000 delegates at the
in 1968. National Conference for the New Politics (1967) in Chicago, who tried
unsuccessfully to create a unifying political party. Indeed, by 1968 the New
Left was increasingly divided. Different groups seemed to be trying to outdo
each other in a radicalism that only served to antagonize most Americans.

What was the The Democratic National Convention in

significance of the
Chicago riots?
Chicago, August 1968
In 1968, the Mobe (see page 176) and Abbie Hoffman’s (Youth International
Party (Yippies), desirous to show contempt for the US political process, called
on young people to come to Chicago to disrupt the Democratic National
Convention. They spread rumours that they were going to put LSD in the
city’s water supply.
Around 30,000 members of the New Left arrived in Chicago. Mayor Daley
mobilized around 12,000 police and banned marches. The Yippies produced a
candidate for president, ‘Pigasus’, a squealing, rotund young pig. Some threw
bags of urine at the police, who removed their badges and nameplates and

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

retaliated with clubs and gas. One congressman accused radicals of wanting
‘pot instead of patriotism’ and ‘riots instead of reason’.
Source B

A sign welcoming delegates to the 1968 Democratic National Convention

What can you infer about
with a group of police officers in the foreground.
US politics and society in
1968 from Source B?

Source C

A British journalist writing about the Chicago riots, quoted in The

Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II by William Chafe, What would you want to
published by Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 2003, page 363. know about the journalist
before you trusted the
The kids screamed and were beaten to the ground by cops who had completely contention in Source C that
lost their cool … They were rapped in the genitals by cops swinging billies the police had ‘completely
[clubs]. lost their cool’?

The results of the student actions in Chicago

Events in Chicago confirmed, and sometimes perhaps caused, many voters’
support for the presidential candidate for law and order in 1968, the

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 Republican Richard Nixon. Many Americans were tired of students, protests
and violence. Polls recorded 56 per cent approval of police actions against the
protesters. ‘We just seem to be headed towards a collapse of everything’, said
one small-town Californian newspaper.
Historian William Chafe (2010) described Nixon’s victory in 1968 as a
‘watershed’. Traditional US values had been reasserted. The left had become
increasingly extreme, and reaction had set in on the right, although this did
not mean the end of student unrest.

How much student Student unrest in the Nixon years 1969–74

unrest was there in
Student protests continued under Nixon. Sometimes, the older generation
the Nixon years and
how did he deal with joined in, as in the 1969 Moratorium, the USA’s greatest ever anti-war
it? protest. Tens of thousands marched on the White House and in every major
city. The deputy attorney general believed students constituted the most
important group of protesters (‘We just can’t wait to beat up those … kids’).
KEY TERM Middle America was hostile: a 1969 poll showed that 84 per cent believed
student protesters, along with black militants, were treated ‘too leniently’.
Moratorium In this context,
suspension of normal Some students did more than march:
activities to facilitate
l Out of 2179 bombings or attempted bombings from 1969 to 1970, 56 per
nationwide anti-Vietnam War
protests in 1969. cent involved students.
l Radical students blew up buildings at the University of Colorado because
Middle America A term
scholarship funds for black students were frozen.
invented by the media to
l Anti-capitalist students in San Diego, California, set fire to banks.
describe ordinary, patriotic,
l Ohio State students demanded the admission of more black students and
middle-income US citizens.
the abolition of ROTC. In a six-hour battle with the police, seven students
were shot, 13 injured and 600 arrested, after which Ohio’s governor called
in the National Guard.
l A pro-Black Panthers demonstration set Yale Law School library books
on fire.

Kent State
When Nixon invaded Cambodia in search of Communist sanctuaries in
spring 1970, anti-war protests erupted again in over 80 per cent of US
universities. Police and National Guardsmen frequently clashed with
students, most famously at Kent State, Ohio, where students had rioted in
the central business district and firebombed the ROTC building. When Kent
State students held a peaceful protest rally, the National Guard shot four
dead and wounded 11. Two of the girls had simply being walking to their
classes.
Days later, two more students were killed and 12 wounded at Jackson State,
Mississippi, when police opened fire on the women’s dormitory. Some
Americans felt the government was deliberately murdering dissenters, but

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

Middle America agreed with Nixon, who criticized ‘these bums … blowing
up the campuses’. Over half of Americans blamed the students for what had
happened at Kent State.

Stopping the demonstrators

Anti-war demonstrators were convinced that Nixon was another Hitler who
planned to send troops into the campuses. He did not. Instead, he halted
federal scholarships and loans for convicted student criminals or those who
had ‘seriously’ violated campus regulations, adjusted the draft (August 1972)
so that students aged over 20 were no longer threatened, secretly monitored
disruptive groups, and took protesters to court.
In spring 1970, 10,000 people were arrested in Washington, DC. Although
most of the arrests were thrown out of the courts because they violated the
demonstrators’ civil rights, the litigation kept the protesters too busy and
broke (with legal fees) to cause more trouble. When in 1971, 30,000 peaceful
students camped out in Washington, DC, the police and military arrested a
record 12,000. The most famous court cases were those involving the Black
Panthers (see page 112) and the Chicago Eight, who had been arrested in
1968 at the Democratic National Convention. In 1969, the Nixon
administration charged these New Left leaders with conspiracy. Among the
eight were Tom Hayden of SDS, Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies and Bobby
Seale of the Black Panthers. Five were convicted by an exceptionally hostile
judge, although their convictions were eventually overturned on appeal.

The incomprehensible counterculture

Middle America observed the counterculture with incomprehension, as with
the greatest counterculture happening at the Woodstock rock festival in New
York State in 1969. Over 400,000 attended over the three days. Their favourite
slogan was ‘Make love not war’. The acts were led by Joan Baez, Jefferson
Airplane and Jimi Hendrix, who performed the ‘Star Spangled Banner’. One
enthusiastic participant recalled how ‘everyone swam nude in the lake,
[having sex] was easier than getting breakfast, and the pigs [police] just
smiled and passed out the oats [drugs]’.
Another famous 1969 happening was at Altamont Speedway in Livermore,
California. One audience member was stabbed by a member of the Hells
Angels, hired by the Rolling Stones to keep order. Another was apparently
trampled to death by the crowd.
Where the young people who flocked to Woodstock and Altamont saw
liberation and freedom, Middle America saw anarchy and worried about
youthful behaviour and role models (several great rock stars, Janis Joplin, Jim
Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, all died from drug overdoses within a 10-month
period in 1970–1).

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 What happened to the New Left?
The New Left student movement soon imploded, because:
l The authorities were clearly not going to grant any of their demands.
l SDS, which had always rejected a traditional leadership structure, had
dissolved into splinter groups that had different philosophies and
preoccupations: the ‘Up Against the Wall Motherf***ers’ adopted the
counterculture, the ‘Crazies’ advocated anarchy, the Progressive Labor
faction favoured Communism, and the Weathermen (a good example of
unsuccessful extremism) called for violent revolution.

The aims, methods and achievements of the Weathermen

Aims: The Weathermen’s manifesto (‘You Don’t Need a Weatherman To Tell
You Which Way the Wind Blows’) said the great contemporary issue was
‘between US imperialism and the national liberation struggles against it’.
They wanted ‘a classless world’, and freedom from the ‘iron grip of
authoritarian institutions’ and their ‘pigs’ (teachers, social workers and the
army).
Methods: The ‘Weathermen’ favoured terrorist violence.
Achievements: In 1969, the Weathermen staged a ‘Days of Rage’ campaign in
Chicago. Three hundred Weathermen turned up, dynamited a statue,
smashed windows and stole cars. Most were arrested. After Chicago they
went underground, randomly attacking established institutions. In March
1970, the movement was deprived of important leaders when several
Weathermen accidentally blew themselves up when building a bomb in
New York.

l Some members of SDS lost interest when Nixon ended the draft.
l Some retreated into communes and/or religion. Tom Hayden said, ‘There
is a race going on between religion and revolution to capture people’s
minds, and I’m afraid we are losing to the occult.’

The presidential candidate of the counterculture 1972

According to historian Stephen Ambrose (1989), the 1972 Democratic
National Convention was ‘the high watermark of the New Left’s
participation in national politics’. Influenced by the protesters at the 1968
National Convention (see page 178), the Democratic Party had reformed its
nomination process for the ‘maximization of participation’, so that in the
1972 convention, more delegates would be under 30 than ever before. This
had a massive impact on the 1972 presidential election. As a result of this
new nomination process, the Democrats chose their most left-wing option,
George McGovern, whom Middle America considered the candidate of the
counterculture. Middle America was further alienated when some long-
haired young delegates nominated Communist China’s leader Mao Zedong
as McGovern’s running mate, others urged the legalisation of cannabis and

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

Source D

President Nixon (left) greets Elvis Presley (right) in the Oval Office in
What do you suppose
1970. Presley (whose secret addiction to prescription drugs hastened his
Presley and Nixon each
early death) had offered to help in the war on drugs.
hoped to gain from this
photo opportunity in
Source D?

the recognition of gay rights, and the party’s platform called for the
‘equitable distribution of wealth and power’ and ‘the right to be different’. KEY TERM

Republicans played on conservative fears of McGovern, christening him the Acid, abortion and
‘3As’ candidate – ‘acid, abortion and amnesty’. Not surprisingly, Nixon won amnesty Republicans
by a landslide, with 60.7 per cent of the popular vote, which historian smeared Democratic
Michael Heale (2001) described as ‘a decisive repudiation of the permissive presidential candidate
George McGovern as being
sixties’. Nixon’s victory was assisted by the counterculture and the protests
in favour of legalizing LSD
and his decrease of their numbers, accomplished through the prosecutions,
and abortion, and pardoning
surveillance, and the end of the draft (see page 181). Also, many radicals Vietnam War draft dodgers.
were simply exhausted.

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 Source E

An extract from The Sixties in America: History, Politics and Protest by

What, according to Source E,
M.J. Heale, published by Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, UK,
were the two opposing
viewpoints on the 1960s? 2001, pages 2–4.
Which interpretation do you The New Left and the counterculture have had their critics … their members have
favour and why? been characterised as a ‘destructive generation’, as naive, utopian and self-
dramatising, indulging in fantasies that promoted violence and offered little of a
constructive nature … . Many studies of the 60s focus on discord, presenting a
picture of a society ‘coming apart’ or ‘unravelling’, perhaps even close to anarchy …
But the 60s … have had their defenders too: liberals … did something to
improve the quality of American life, particularly for the poor and minorities …
The decade as a whole, its admirers have argued, bequeathed a more egalitarian
political society and greater respect for a variety of cultural and lifestyle forms.
The withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam … [has] been cited as evidence that
the political system ‘worked’ …
The competing interpretations of the 1960s owe something to the continuing
relevance of the decade, which still evokes strong emotions. Conservatives deplore
sixties … ‘permissiveness’ … But for many the 1960s … was a time when ‘right’
and ‘wrong’ seemed clearly defined, when in particular there could be no doubt
that the black and white supporters of the Civil Rights Movement were on the
side of the angels … It was a period when both governments and individuals
seemed to be moved in part by more than self-interest … Liberation movements
of all kinds – African American, women’s, gay, grey – trace their origins to the
1960s. Some Americans credit the sixties with releasing them from a Victorian
moral code that they had found stifling. Students look with wonder and some
envy at the extraordinary youth movement of the 1960s, at the demonstrations
which seemed capable of … even bringing down governments.

Student rebellion
Why How
• Proportionately more young people and • Hippies – ‘all sex and drugs’
students • Counterculture
• Kennedy appealed to idealism • Anti-war protests
• Civil Rights Movement inspired activism • SDS – left-wing
• College authorities unpopular • Attempted sabotage of Democrat National Convention
• Pacifism, Vietnam War • Bombings

Results
• Destructive?
• Election of Nixon in 1968
• Exit Vietnam?
• More tolerant society?

Summary diagram

Youth culture and protests in the USA

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

2 Key debate
Key question: How ‘new’, effective and widespread was 1960s’ US
student radicalism?

Student protests: good or bad?

From the early 1970s, historians began to analyse the 1960s. Many, like
Allen J. Matusow (1983), blamed student extremism for damaging the great
US liberal tradition, but veterans of the student movement such as Todd
Gitlin (1980) wrote books defending and praising SDS and the New Left,
and bewailing their ruin at the hands of the counterculture’s selfishness and
excess.

Were the veterans’ accounts accurate?

Eventually the veterans’ interpretations were challenged. Ken Heineman
(1995) lamented the SDS leaders’ accounts’ focus on élite universities, and
found lots of students from blue-collar backgrounds dominating anti-war
protests in non-élite universities such as Penn State. While Gitlin described
Kent State as a backwoods university, Heineman pointed out that Kent
Staters were protesting a year before the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley
supposedly gave birth to white student activism. Kent State’s first anti-war
group was established one year before Berkeley’s, and Kent Staters were
among the founders of the Weathermen. Doug Rossinow (1994) challenged
the view that 1960s’ radicalism had imploded by the end of the decade,
arguing that women’s liberation emerged at the end of the decade and Are there elements of
1960s’ radicalism that
flourished afterwards.
are necessarily ‘young’
Thomas Sugrue (1994) also lamented the veterans of the 1960s having ‘the in perspective? How
corner on the market’ and maintaining the focus on the Black Panthers so? (Language, Reason,
and SDS, which actually had a ‘ very small membership’. Sugrue said, Social Sciences,
Perception, History.)
‘I teach a course on the sixties now, but in 50 years there will be no courses
on the history of America in the sixties.’ He argued that 1960s’ veterans and
historians were wrong in claiming ‘radical discontinuities’ with the 1950s.
KEY TERM
Mary Brennan (1995) suggested a more productive focus might be the
rise of neoconservatism and the ‘conservative capture of the GOP’ in Neoconservatism Ideology
the 1960s. combining traditional
conservatism with greater
faith in the free market.
GOP Grand Old Party
(nickname for the Republican
Party).

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 3 Youth culture and protests in
Canada
Key question: Why, to what extent and with what results did Canadian
students adopt the counterculture?

According to historian J.M. Bumsted (2007), ‘Revolution was in the air’ in

1960s’ Canada, ‘but it never quite arrived’. Student discontent manifested
itself in political activism and personal programmes.

Political activism
Political activism was usually focused in the universities. Many young people
joined the New Left movement, which was critical of the current system (for
example, capitalism) but not particularly clear on alternatives. Many joined
one of the several national organizations established by student activists,
such as the student Union for Peace Action (1965). Some campuses were
centres of student radicalism, particularly Simon Fraser, York, and the
Université de Montréal. Less extreme students tried to radicalize the New
Democratic Party (NDP) into supporting social reform.
Sometimes the political activists were violent, as in 1969 at Sir George
Williams University (now Concordia) in Montreal. Students occupied the
university for two weeks in protest against racial intolerance and Canadian
‘imperialism’ in the West Indies. They smashed computers and damaged
equipment and records worth several million dollars. Ninety occupiers were
arrested, including 41 black students, mostly from the Caribbean.
Quebec youth dominated the Front de liberation du Québec (FLQ). FLQ was
associated with over 200 bombings between 1963 and 1970 and kidnapped
two government officials (one of whom was murdered) in the October Crisis
of 1970. The Canadian government responded with martial law. In Quebec,
the situation was unusual in that French–Canadian adults sympathized with
the students, as they too felt oppressed by Anglo-Canadians.
Source F

Quoting relevant words, An extract from The Penguin History of Canada, by Robert Bothwell,
describe the attitude of the published by Penguin, Toronto, Canada, 2006, pages 437–8.
writer of Source F towards Like any other part of Canada afflicted by the baby-boom and the youth or
the counterculture and counterculture, Quebec endured a lot of noise, mostly oratorical, during the 1960s
protests. and 1970s; but in Quebec, unlike the rest of Canada, there were also bombs.

Personal fulfilment
Many politicized students were also hippies. Most were from middle-class
backgrounds. Manifestations of the counterculture included cannabis

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

smoking, affection for rock music and sexual promiscuity. In their search for
their true souls, some hippies lived in communes, close to nature, particularly
on isolated islands. Some adopted and adapted Eastern mystical religions.
Many took hallucinogenic drugs.

What caused the counterculture?

The great expansion of university education made the universities fertile
ground for mass middle-class rebellion. Some of the grievances were very
specific to students, including unresponsive administrative structures in
KEY TERM
schools and universities. The counterculture was a broader movement, a
rebellion by young baby boomers against the values of the older generation. Baby boomers Generation
Much of it was impressed and inspired by the counterculture and Civil born in the post-Second
Rights Movement in the USA. World War population surge.

The Vietnam War was inspirational and central to Canadian counterculture.

The war fuelled Canadian anti-Americanism, as seen in Al Purdy’s 1967
book, The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the United States.
Anti-war Canadians sent 5000 copies of the paperback Manual for Draft Age
Immigrants to Canada to the USA to encourage US citizens to leave their
country and come to Canada because of Vietnam. Perhaps 100,000 arrived.
Most attended Canadian universities or joined hippie communities.
There were some very Canadian concerns. Some Québécois, inspired by the
Algerian struggle to be rid of French imperialism, demanded independence
for Quebec. Again, US influence was important, as when the US Black Power
movement inspired Québécois terrorism.

Why did the youth movement end?

The youth movement ended because:
l In Quebec, many joined a more mainline political party, the Parti
Québécois, established in 1968.
l Many were shocked and frightened when Kent State (1970) showed how
brutal the authorities could be (see page 180).
l The idealistic students simply got older.
l The Canadian government tried to show some sympathy with the
protesters and the counterculture.

Canadian government sympathy

After the student protests against racism at Sir George Williams University,
the federal government offered to fund organizations such as the Black
United Front (BUF), set up in 1968 to combat Canadian racism after an
inspirational visit by Stokely Carmichael. Prime Minister Trudeau appointed
a commission to investigate non-medicinal drug usage. Its 1970 report did
not openly advocate the legalisation of ‘soft’ drugs such as cannabis, but
suggested that it was not the role of the state to enforce morality. Such
developments suggest that the counterculture contributed to the
liberalization of Canadian society.

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 Canadian counterculture

Why How
• More students • New Left
• Unpopular university administrators • Organizations
• Young vs old • Violence
• US influence • Hippies
• Vietnam War
• Quebec vs other provinces

Summary diagram

Youth culture and protests in Canada

4 Youth culture and protests in

Latin America
Key question: Why, to what extent and with what results did Latin
American youth rebel?

During the 1960s, young people protested in many Latin American

countries. Sometimes the issue was the running of the universities, as in
Chile (1967–8). Sometimes university issues developed into anti-government
protests, as in Mexico and Brazil. In some countries there was little or no
youth protest, owing to repressive governments, as in Argentina.

Why and with what The Mexican student movement

results did Mexican
As Mexico City prepared to host the Olympics in summer 1968, there was
students protest?
student unrest. It was uncoordinated, with varied grievances. On 22 July, the
Mexico City police were called out because rival student factions were
fighting. On 26 July, students gathered to peacefully celebrate the
anniversary of Fidel Castro’s first attempt to overthrow the Cuban
dictatorship. The police were called to disperse the crowd. The participants
reacted and the demonstration became violent. Four people died, and
hundreds were wounded. Students seized school buildings, and threw
homemade bombs at the police, who used bazookas on them. The students
established a National Strike Council and nationwide demonstrations
occurred in most high schools and universities. From August, more
students became radicalized in response to government repression and
police brutality.

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

The protests then spread to workers tired of authoritarian governments and

corruption, and to ousted government bureaucrats who had not been paid
for weeks. On 27 August, around half a million people joined in the biggest
anti-government demonstration in Mexican history in Mexico City. Mexico
was about to host the Olympics, so the government wanted to prove to the
world that it was in control. Armed soldiers and tanks broke up the
demonstration. Many students were beaten and jailed, and some were killed,
which increased the number and size of demonstrations.

Tlatelolco Plaza
On 2 October, 10 days before the Olympics were due to open, around 5000
students protested in Tlatelolco Plaza against the military occupation of the
National University, the continued use of the repressive riot police and the
cost of the Olympic Games. In among the protesters were people simply
passing by, watching the demonstration or sitting in the Plaza and talking to
friends, and children playing games.
Viewpoints on what happened next often vary according to political stance.
It seems that the demonstrators did not leave when requested, so the
soldiers used tear gas, clubs, rifles with bayonets and automatic weapons on
them. The government subsequently claimed the students were armed and
aggressive, and that the police and soldiers behaved exemplarily in the face
of great provocation. According to official reports, 43 died, although some of
the foreign reporters in Mexico City to cover the Olympics estimated up to
500 deaths. Hundreds, maybe thousands, were arrested. Some ‘disappeared’.
An estimated 2500 were wounded. It was subsequently revealed that the
police pulled the wounded from ambulances, that military vehicles
prevented doctors and nurses from accessing the wounded, and that hospital
emergency rooms were invaded by the military who dragged injured people
back into the street.

Causes of the protests

The counterculture and political and economic discontent contributed to the
protests.

The counterculture
Historian Eric Zolov (1999) attributed student unrest in part to the British
and US rock ’n’ roll music, popular in Mexico from the late 1950s. When
middle- and upper-class young people became influenced by rock ’n’ roll’s
rejection of traditional values, the Mexican press denounced their attitude as
rebeldismo sin causa (rebellion without a cause). The government attempted
to discredit rock ’n’ roll, for example, by circulating the rumour that Elvis
Presley had said he would ‘rather kiss three black girls than a Mexican’ and
by initiating an advertising campaign entitled ‘Die Elvis Presley’. Mexico had
its own rock ’n’ roll musicians, such as Los Loud Jets and Los Teen Tops, who
copied the Beatles, the Doors, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling
Stones. By 1965, the rock music focused on Mexico City’s coffee houses

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 constituted the centre of the Mexican counterculture. Countercultural heroes
included Che Guevara (see page 160), Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg
and Rolling Stone Mick Jagger. The authorities denounced the coffee houses
as ‘centres of perversion’ corrupted by decadent foreigners and tried to close
them down. Border officials were instructed to refuse entry to ‘dirty, long-
haired North American youth’.
Zolov (1999) linked the counterculture with the protests, pointing out that
those who supported the student demands for an end to state repression
were initially attracted to the movement because of its association with the
rock ’n’ roll subculture that had developed over the previous decade. Zolov
interviewed one student who confessed that he joined the movement
because it consisted of students who ‘listen to rock’. Others told Zolov that
the student movement recruited supporters by reminding them of state and
parental attempts to limit their access to rock music: ‘Isn’t it true they don’t
let you listen to rock?’ However, it is far more persuasive to see the
discontent as generated by political and economic problems in Mexico.

Political and economic discontent

There was considerable popular discontent in 1968. The government of
Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, in power since 1963, repeatedly stole elections at all
levels. The students were angry that Mexico, supposedly a democracy, had
become a single-party state, run for decades by the PRI (Partido
Revolucionario Institucional). Students felt the PRI had betrayed the
Mexican Revolution of 1910. Half a century after the revolution, most
Mexicans and indigenous people lived in poverty. Critics said the Olympics
were excessively expensive and taking money away from social programmes.

Results and significance of the protests

The bloody massacre at Tlatelolco Plaza ended the disorder, and the
Olympics went ahead. Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes dated the birth of a
new Mexico from these events at Tlatelolco Plaza, because it showed that the
government only survived on repression. However, the alienated young
people of Mexico felt little had changed and some turned to the
counterculture.

Hippies and rock ’n’ roll

Some students took the ‘hippie’ route and sought relief in psychedelic
mushrooms and the uncorrupted life of indigenous Mexicans. Working-class
youth took up the rock ’n’ roll culture of which many middle-class and
upper-class students tired after 1968. The culmination of urban ‘raves’ was
the Avándaro Rock Festival of 1971, which attracted nearly a quarter of a
million young people from all classes. As the older generation denounced
the music festival, one of the bands advertised that, ‘Rock isn’t about peace
and love; rock is about Revolution.’ The historian Eric Zolov (1999) claimed
that, Avándaro ‘revealed the political dangers of rock’. The PRI certainly
thought so, and worked even harder to stop the music.

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

Investigations of the Massacre at Tlatelolco Plaza

The government kept details of what became known as the Massacre at
Tlatelolco Plaza as quiet as it possibly could until the PRI finally lost power
in 2000, after which there was a full investigation of the massacre. In 2006, a
judge ordered the arrest of the 84-year-old former president Luis Echeverría
because of his responsibility for the deaths of the students and others in
1968. Some felt that President Vicente Fox was simply trying to deflect
criticism of his own conservative government’s record of abuse, particularly
against the indigenous population in Oaxaca and Chiapas (see page 19).

Similarities between student movements in the Americas

• Impatience with the administration of educational institutions.
• Some student violence.
• Some ‘dropped out’ and adopted the counterculture (especially in the
USA).
• Opposition to the Vietnam War (in USA and Canada).
• Ethnic separatist movements (in USA and Canada).
• Opposition to capitalism.
• Faced repressive governments (especially in Latin America).
• Student radicalism helped to provoke a conservative reaction (particularly
in the USA and Brazil).

Other Latin American protests

When, where, why
Although not of the Mexican magnitude, there were protests elsewhere in and with what results
Latin America. did young people
protest in Latin
Student guerrillas America?
After Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, he and his Argentine
colleague Che Guevara initially sought left-wing revolutions throughout
Latin America. They helped to inspire student guerrillas in countries such as
Uruguay and Argentina.

Uruguay
During the 1960s, Uruguay faced unprecedented economic and political
instability, which engendered widespread opposition from students and the
working class. The students were an important component of an
underground guerrilla movement named after the eighteenth-century Inca
revolutionary Túpac Amaru II. The ‘Tupamaros’ robbed banks and food
warehouses and distributed the money and the food to the poor. They
publicly exposed corruption in the Uruguayan élite. Their tactics became KEY TERM
more radical, and in the late 1960s included kidnapping and execution, most
famously of a USAID public safety officer known for training Latin USAID US Agency for
American police in surveillance and torture methods. They kidnapped a International Development.
leading bank manager and the British ambassador, demanding the release of

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 political prisoners and a guarantee of fair national elections. Their activities
contributed to the collapse of civilian government and an army coup in 1973.

Argentina
During the 1970s, Argentina was politically and economically unstable.
A considerable number of university students participated in a guerrilla
movement, the Montoneros, established in 1964. They favoured social
welfare programmes, citing those advocated and implemented by Eva Perón
(see page 208) in the 1940s and 1950s. They earned a great deal of money
from bank robberies, kidnappings and from multinational corporations who
paid them protection money to avert kidnappings. By 1978, the repressive
military regime had crushed them. Many university and high school students
‘disappeared’ (see page 210). Some had been politically active, but others
suffered simply because their name was down in the address book of a
political activist.

Brazil
In 1964, an era of democratic government came to an end when the military
overthrew the elected government of João Goulart. Despite the repressive
government, students mounted what historian Teresa Meade (2010)
described as ‘huge demonstrations’ against Brazil’s military government in
1968. Historians such as Boris Fausto (2006) say the trigger event was when
the military police killed a high school student protesting for cheaper meals
for low-income students in Rio de Janeiro. The protesters were joined by
large numbers of the industrial workers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The
government said Brazil was threatened by Communism and became even
more repressive and prescriptive (see Source G).
Source G

An excerpt from a 1973 Brazilian textbook quoted in The History of Brazil

What were the aims of the by Robert Levine, published by Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK,
Brazilian government in 1999, pages 129–30.
Source G? How effectively
does the text achieve those Brazil … is an enormous land distinguished by its greatness among the nations
aims? of South America; it is a land of hope, destined for power and for world
leadership. Its population of 110 millions form a western people forever united in
pride and bravery. We are known for our generous character and Christian
values … We speak the same language and are united behind the same flag. …
The very map of Brazil appears in the shape of the human heart … a heart
which incorporates blood from the Indian, Latin and African races … This is my
country; I am proud to call myself Brazilian … [The] safety of every Brazilian is
guarded by the nation’s armed forces … [which] stand vigilant to repel any
external threat. There stand other enemies within our midst: terrorists,
subversives, and militants of communistic ideologies. The armed forces combat
this menace, and remind us of our obligation for hierarchy and discipline … To
subordinate our own freedoms to the common good is the maximum norm of the
exercise of liberty in the social order.

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

Latin American student protests

Why How
• University administrators • Street protests
• Anti-government feeling • Rock music
• Zolov: rock ’n’ roll • Hippies
• Guerrilla activities

Summary diagram

Youth culture and protests in Latin America

led to a more liberal USA, others lament the

Chapter summary permissiveness.
The Canadian counterculture was also due to the
expansion of university education and conservative
Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and university administrations. Much of the unrest was due
1970s to the generation gap, but the influence of the US
The 1960s was characterized by protest movements in student movement and hostility to the Vietnam War
many countries. US student unrest was due to the were also important. Again, some sought personal
rising proportion of young people in college, where fulfilment and became hippies, others became
they discussed responding to President Kennedy’s call politically active. Some students became violent,
to idealism, to the Civil Rights Movement, to the especially Québécois separatists. The Canadian
perceived repression by the college authorities, and to government was more tolerant and sympathetic than
the Vietnam War. Some students sought personal the US government. This contributed to the petering
fulfilment, dropped out and adopted the out of the student unrest.
counterculture, most famously the hippies. Other In some Latin American countries, repressive
students, such as those in the New Left, sought social, governments ensured that there was no student
political and economic reform. Many students protest. Chilean students protested against university
participated in protests, as in Chicago in 1968. Perhaps administrators, Brazilian and Mexican students against
the most important result of the Chicago riots was their governments. The Mexican protests were on the
their contribution to the election (1968) and re- largest scale, influenced by rock ’n’ roll but especially by
election (1972) of Richard Nixon to the presidency. discontent with one-party rule, excessive expenditure
The Nixon administration responded to student on the Olympics, and the repressive, brutal
violence by trying to discredit the students and by using government response to protests. Some students
force and, some say, persecution. The protests avoided political protest and opted out as hippies.
eventually died out because of internal divisions, Some students’ hatred of the government was such
government repression and the exit from Vietnam. that they resorted to terrorism, as in Uruguay and
The 1960s remains controversial. Some people Argentina.
look back with affection on the decade as having

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 Examination advice
How to answer ‘in what ways and with what
effects’ questions
For questions that contain the command term in what ways and with what
effects stay focused on what is being asked. There are really two elements to
this question and both should be tackled.

Example
In what ways and with what effects did 1960s’ student movements challenge
traditional authority in two countries of the region?
1 A question of this sort is asking you to do several tasks. You are to discuss
both the ways student movements challenged authority and the effects of
these efforts. Be sure to provide supporting evidence that discusses the
two. You might be tempted to divide your essay in two, the first section
that deals with the ways and the second section with the effects, but this
will not score as highly as an essay that synthesizes the two. In other
words, discuss in one paragraph one way a group such as the SDS tried to
challenge authority and what resulted from its actions. It is also important
that you discuss student movements in two countries, not one. Try to
spend roughly equivalent space on each instead of an unbalanced
approach.
2 Before writing your essay, take five minutes to make an outline. For this
question, you might well choose the USA and Mexico. You are not asked
to compare and contrast the student movements although it would not
hurt to mention similarities where they exist.
3 In the body of the essay, you need to discuss each of the points you raised
in the introduction. Devote at least a paragraph to each one. Be sure to
make the connection between the points you raise and the major thrust of
your argument. An example of how one of the points could be addressed
is given below.

Mexico in 1968 was shaken by a series of protests and violent
repression by the authorities. In July, with the country on the verge of
hosting the Olympic Games, students organized a commemoration of
Castro’s first attempt at overthrowing the Batista dictatorship in
Cuba. The police responded violently and several students were killed
and hundreds wounded. Outraged students then challenged
authority by organizing a National Strike Council and
demonstrations. These were crushed by the authorities. Events came
to a head on 2 October 1968 at Tlatelolco Plaza in Mexico City. Five
▼

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 Chapter 6: Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

thousand students demonstrated against the military takeover of the

National University and the high costs of hosting the Olympics in a
country with severe poverty. The military ruthlessly responded to
this challenge to their authority and killed hundreds. Their crimes
were covered up and it would take decades before the wounds from
Tlatelolco would heal. Some students turned to the counterculture,
a few became terrorists. The challenge to traditional authority had
proved ineffective.

4 Now try writing a complete answer to the question following the advice
above.

Examination practice
Below are two exam-style questions for you to practise on this topic.
1 Why did student movements grow dramatically in the USA in the 1960s?
(For guidance on how to answer ‘why’ questions, see pages 140–1.)
2 Evaluate the social and political impact of the anti-war movement in
the USA.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘evaluate’ questions, see pages 171–3.)

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas
Chapter 7

Feminist movements in the

Americas
This chapter looks at the inequality suffered by women in the Americas. It investigates
the reasons behind the increased activism of women after the Second World War,
traces the actions they took to remedy their inequality, and assesses the extent to
which equality was achieved by the start of the twenty-first century. You need to
consider the following questions throughout this chapter:
� How and with what success have Canadian women attempted to achieve equality?
� How and with what success have Latin American women attempted to achieve equality?
� How and with what success have US women tried to achieve equality?
� When and why did the modern women’s movement start?

1 Women’s movements in
Canada
Key question: How and with what success have Canadian women
attempted to achieve equality?

To what extent did Background to 1945

the women’s
Nineteenth-century Canadian women lacked voting rights, equal
movement of the
1960s have roots in employment opportunities and control over their own reproductive systems
the past? and property when married. However, they entered the workforce in
increasing numbers despite the male-dominated society’s conviction that
their place was in the home, limited their pregnancies despite an 1892 law
criminalizing birth control and abortion, and exhibited a conscious desire to
organize separately from men. Pressure from women’s organizations gained
widows and single women the vote in city elections in several provinces in
the 1880s. From 1893, the National Council of Women in Canada (NCWC)
was an umbrella organization for groups that campaigned for the vote, better
working conditions, free access to the professions (in 1891 only 1.6 per cent
of doctors were women) and other social reforms.

The early twentieth century

During the First World War women obtained the vote in most provinces
(Quebec held out until 1940) and in federal elections. From the 1920s,

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

women became involved in party politics and political campaigns. In 1929,

KEY TERM
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council found that women were
‘persons’ under the law and therefore entitled to sit in the Canadian Senate, Judicial Committee of
but only a handful did. the Privy Council The final
Court of Appeal in Canada.
Before 1940, most women who worked were in low-paid jobs in offices,
shops or domestic service. The better educated could be teachers or nurses,
but the orthodoxy was that motherhood was the most suitable occupation.
The percentage of female university students was slowly increasing (10 per
cent in 1920, 24 per cent by 1940), but they were on a typical ‘women’s
courses’ such as nursing, household science and library studies.
The Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs,
established in 1930, campaigned for better training and fairer promotions for
women, but even among activists, there were those who did not envisage
their sex as equal (see Source A).
Source A

Judge Helen Gregory MacGill’s response to NCWC president Laura

What does MacGill’s letter to
Hardy’s suggestion in 1944 that the NCWC should the lobby the
Hardy (Source A) tell us
provincial and federal governments to establish female training
about attitudes to women
programmes for nurses, laboratory technicians, office assistants for
and employment in 1944?
doctors and dentists, household workers, bookkeepers, dressmakers and
switchboard operators. Quoted in History of the Canadian Peoples II by
Alvin Finkel and Margaret Conrad, published by Copp Clark Pitman,
Toronto, Canada, 1993, page 444.
But these recommendations are for training women to take subordinate positions,
yet the men in the Armed Services are offered full professional courses in
medicine, law, pharmacy, social service, personnel, engineering, biology,
bacteriology, chemistry, etc., graduating not as assistants, but as fully qualified
practitioners.
May I beg to remind you that these professions have been opened to women after
great struggle and only recently. No opportunity should be lost to give talented
women and girls an opportunity to enter any of the professions should they desire.

Women 1945–60 How, why and to what

extent did women
Historians Alvin Finkel and Margaret Conrad (1993) described women as
gain greater equality
‘still relatively powerless in Canadian society’ between 1920 and 1960. Before 1945–60?
1960, there were few women in the House of Commons or the provincial
legislatures (see page 41). One exception was Agnes Macphail, elected to the
House of Commons (1921–40), then the Ontario legislature (1943–5, 1948–
51). She was responsible for the first equal pay legislation in Canada.
Although it was increasingly common for women to undertake paid work,
those who worked remained mostly in low-paying jobs in offices and stores.
On average, males earned far more, often for the same job or for jobs that
required less skill.

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 Women lacked control over their personal circumstances. It remained
extremely difficult to get out of unhappy marriages. Abortions were illegal.
Post-war suburbanization often made upper middle-class homemakers
feel unfulfilled and disconnected with the outside world. Some sought
refuge in tranquillizers and/or alcohol.
The foundations of the political activism of the 1960s were laid in the
previous decades, but it was not until the 1960s that women really put their
gender grievances on the national agenda.

How, why and to what Women after 1960

extent did women Women gained greater equality after 1945 because the government
gain greater equality
after 1945?
responded to the women’s movement, which questioned gender roles and
was the largest and most challenging of the new political pressure groups.
Many feminists joined organizations. Some put pressure on the
government, businesses and community organizations to include women.
KEY TERM Others focused on consciousness-raising to bring about deeper changes in
behaviour.
Suburbanization Growth
of residential communities The women’s movement
outside cities. The Committee for the Equality of Women was established in 1966 as an
Homemakers Mothers umbrella group for all the women’s organizations that fought for women’s
staying at home to look after rights. Its threatened protest march on the capital and pressure from Judy
their families, rather than LaMarsh persuaded Prime Minister Lester Pearson to set up the Royal
going out to work.
Commission on the Status of Women in 1967.
Feminists Advocates of
equal political, economic and Judy LaMarsh 1924–80
social rights for women. Ontario-born Julia ‘Judy’ LaMarsh was elected member of parliament (MP)
Truth Squad Group that
for Niagara Falls in 1960. From 1963 she was a member of Lester Pearson’s
that monitored the speeches Cabinet. After an unguarded comment about Pierre Trudeau succeeding
of Prime Minister John Pearson as party leader was broadcast live on television, she left politics for a
Diefenbaker. media career (1968).
Source B

An extract about Judy LaMarsh, from A History of the Canadian Peoples by

Compare Bumsted’s account
J.M. Bumsted, published by Oxford University Press, Toronto, Canada,
of Harold Cardinal (see
2007, page 421.
page 42) with his account of
Judy LaMarsh in Source B. In 1962 she became part of the ‘Truth Squad’ … [which] drew her to the
Do you consider Bumsted to attention of the media. A short, overweight woman, she took to wearing obvious
be sympathetic to both wigs and knee-high leather boots. She was an extremely easy target for
Cardinal and LaMarsh? cartoonists to caricature, with increasing cruelty; and she was by her own
Quote from the sources to account ‘publicity prone’, a situation hardly aided by a tendency to shoot from
explain your judgement. the lip. In 1963 she made a famous appearance at a benefit impersonating a gold
rush prostitute … In 1963, LaMarsh was made a member of the Pearson
Cabinet and became Minister of Health and Welfare, a key portfolio that enabled
her to capture many headlines. She personally helped draft the legislation for the
Canada Pension Plan that was passed under her ministership. She was probably

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

better known for having given up smoking while Minister of Health and Welfare,
however. LaMarsh subsequently became Secretary of State, in charge of
Canada’s Centennial year, travelling thousands of miles to participate in
celebrations and helping to entertain visiting dignitaries … She also was partly
responsible for the creation of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women …
She subsequently retired from politics, leaving the incoming Parliament
extremely short of women members.

The government response

The government responded to the women’s movement with the Royal
Commission on the Status of Women and the Charter.

The Royal Commission on the Status of Women

The commission centralized and catalysed a great many complaints from all
over Canada. It recommended reforms in education, employment, family
law, childcare and the abortion laws, and that women should have unlimited
access to contraceptive devices and to graduate and professional schools (see
Source C).
Source C

An extract from the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of

What can you infer from
Women, 1970, quoted in History of the Canadian Peoples by J.M. Bumsted,
Source C as to the ways in
Oxford University Press, Toronto, Canada, 2007, page 420.
which women lacked equality
In particular, the Commission adopted four principles: first, that women should in Canada in 1970?
be free to choose whether or not to take employment outside their homes … The
second is that the care of children is a responsibility to be shared by the mother,
the father and society … The third principle specifically recognizes the
childbearing function of women. It is apparent that society has a responsibility
for women because of pregnancy and childbirth, and special treatment related to
maternity will always be necessary. The fourth principle is that in certain areas
women will for an interim period require special treatment to overcome the
adverse effects of discriminatory practices.

NAC
In 1972, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) was
established. NAC lobbied the government to ensure that the Commission’s
recommendations remained on the agenda. The largest feminist pressure
group, it included over 500 member organizations, such as the Canadian
Abortion Rights Action League and the Women’s Legal Education and
Action Fund (LEAF). These organizations lobbied for access to abortion,
better welfare provision, better day care, equal pay for equal work, tougher
laws relating to sexual assault, sexual harassment, wife beating and
pornography, and an end to discrimination against lesbians. Despite NAC
lobbying, there was a considerable gap between what the Commission
recommended and what was achieved in many areas, as shown with the
Charter in 1981.

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 The Constitution Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
The Canadian Constitution Act (1981) incorporated a Charter of Rights and
Freedoms. Section 28 said Charter rights ‘are guaranteed equally to male and
female persons’ and contained the explicit right to reproductive freedom and
to equal representation on the Supreme Court. Section 28 owed its existence
to concerted pressure from women’s groups, as the proposed Charter was
initially silent on gender equality. Even when incorporated, the Charter
provisions fell short of the demands of women’s groups, especially as it gave
the provinces the right to opt out on women’s rights.
Charter provisions on gender inequality came into force in 1985. A 1989
study prepared for the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women
said women were initiating few cases, and early court decisions by male
dominated courts favoured men. Feminist lawyers, especially in LEAF,
worked to change this, but clearly could not rely on the courts to guarantee
equality.

Equality in employment and pay

The 1970 Royal Commission’s recommendations for equal pay for equal
work prompted equal pay for equal work legislation by the federal and
KEY TERM provincial governments.

Glass ceiling An invisible However, problems with the ‘glass ceiling’ and pay disparity continued.
barrier that stopped women Women’s full-time earnings were 59.7 per cent that of men in 1971, and still
gaining top jobs. only 64 per cent in 1982. This exacerbated the problems of the many working
Double day Women had to divorcees or widows who were the sole providers of their family. National
do housework as well as paid Council on Welfare reports of 1975 and 1987 said more than half of adults in
work. poverty were female. Females found it hard to get childcare, and suffered
Women’s liberation from the ‘double day’. Although the feminist movement encouraged more
Militant feminists who women to become involved in unions, women in the service industries
emphasized male attitudes as usually remained unorganized.
the great barrier to equal
rights for women. Divorce and reproductive rights
The women’s liberation movement emerged concurrently with the Royal
Commission. A militant branch of feminism, they sought women’s control
over their own bodies (which necessitated access to birth control and
abortion) and easier divorce.
In 1969, divorce was made easier, which, coupled with the widely available
birth control pill, gave women greater control over their lives. However,
access to abortion varied across Canada.

Abortion
In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1969 law, which required abortion
to be approved by a three-doctor panel, violated Charter guarantees (see
above) for equal rights. The ruling made abortions more easily available but
there was opposition. First, the House of Commons tried to recriminalize
abortion in 1990, although the bill was rejected by the Senate. Second,

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

anti-choice campaigners threatened to take doctors who performed

KEY TERM
abortions to court, which made many doctors halt the practice. In 1992, a
Toronto abortion clinic was bombed. Many pro-choice individuals felt that Anti-choice Those who
this extremist act had been inspired by actions across the border in the USA. believe that a woman does
not have the right to
Political equality terminate her pregnancy.
Legislation helpful to women required sympathetic MPs. However, male Pro-choice Those who
MPs greatly outnumbered female MPs and were sometimes unhelpful. In support the right of a woman
1982, MP Margaret Mitchell spoke on behalf of women’s groups who sought to choose whether or not to
to expose male violence against women and children in the House of continue a pregnancy.
Commons. Her speech about wife battering elicited laughter and rude
comments from many MPs.
Although several women (for example, Rita Johnson) were elected to the
leadership of the provincial parties, and Audrey McLaughlin became the
leader of a federal party, the New Democrats, women remained under-
represented in politics.

Conclusions
Inequality in pay and employment, under-representation in parliament, and
increasingly uncertain access to abortion suggested that women had not
attained full equality by 2000.

Economic Few females Abortions Practised in

inequality in politics illegal organizing

1960s – women demand greater equality

Committee for the Royal Commission

Equality of Women 1966 on the Status of Women
1967–70

Divorce laws liberalized, National Action Equal pay Charter (1981)

abortion allowed 1969 – Committee on the legislation prohibited gender
but continued opposition Status of Women but courts not discrimination
1972 very helfpful

Summary diagram

Women’s movements in Canada

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 2 Women’s movements in Latin
America
Key question: How and with what success have Latin American women
attempted to achieve equality?

According to historian Kathryn Sloan (2011), Latin American women shared

‘a common history of subordination, initiative, and agency’.

Why and how far had The movement towards equality after 1945
the situation of
In 1945, despite campaigns by women’s organizations, women’s rights were
women improved by
the year 2000? not yet a major item on Latin American national political agendas. By 2000,
their situation had improved greatly, because of:
l the reaction to blatant gender inequality
l gaining the vote
l improved education
l participation in labour unions, organizations, political protest and
revolutionary wars
l regional and transnational influence
l government policies
l using the vote.

Blatant gender inequality

While slowly increasing numbers of Latin American women could vote by
1945, the ‘homemaker’ ideal persisted, even as more women went out to
work. In many Latin American nations it was difficult to get a divorce or an
abortion, women’s pay and working conditions were far worse than men’s,
and many women were victims of domestic violence and sexual harassment.
Women therefore campaigned for improvements.
Source D

Colombian feminist Ofelia Uribe de Acosta (1963) explaining the

How does Source D account
exploitation of women, quoted in Women in Latin American History – Their
for the exploitation of
Lives and Views edited by June Hahner, published by UCLA Press, Los
women?
Angeles, USA, 1984, pages 120 and 122.
Their husbands are employees, day labourers or agriculture workers. When these
men arrive home exhausted they want peace and quiet; a clean, comfortable
home; and a good meal. Their wives, who have put up all day with the children’s
nonsense and mischief, who have mended clothes, swept and cleaned, done the
shopping at the market with prodigious economy, and prepared the dinner, must
remain on their feet, rendering to their lords and masters the multiple attentions
and care that are their due. The men are the ones who supplied the money for
everything and they keep pointing this out. Their wives are parasites because

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

they do not earn money, merely living with their children at the men’s expense.
Women share this erroneous concept because they never stop to think that their
work at home is worth as much as or more than that of their husbands …
Women’s subservience and ignorance of the law have combined to work against
them … Since women are convinced they are inferior beings, they believe they
should earn less. This undervaluing of themselves leads them to regard as a gift
whatever miserable job they managed to obtain by pleading with men, the
supreme arbiters and distributors of public and private employment. Under such
circumstances, it is only natural that they should be exploited. They are also
unaware that the first step a female worker must take when starting on a job is
to join a union in order to obtain protection to which she is entitled.

Gaining the vote

By the 1960s, all Latin American countries had granted women the vote (see
the table), although not without a struggle. Their enfranchisement was
opposed by religious and social conservatives who feared that family life
would suffer. Some politicians were more interested in gaining support from
women voters than in the promotion of women’s rights, but whatever the
motivation, in periods of democracy, the vote gave women the opportunity
to elect more sympathetic politicians.
Enfranchisement of Latin American women
Country Year women enfranchised
Argentina 1947
Brazil 1932
Chile 1949
Colombia 1954
Costa Rica 1949
Cuba 1934
Mexico 1953
Peru 1963
Uruguay 1967
Venezuela 1958

Improved educational opportunities

After the Second World War, Latin American student populations rocketed.
For example, Mexico had 76,000 university students in 1960, and 1.3 million
in 1987. Among the students were increasing numbers of females. This new
generation was more confident and articulate in demanding equality.

Labour unions and organizations

During the twentieth century, the proportion of waged women increased, as
in Brazil where women constituted 10 per cent of the workforce in 1900 but
around 50 per cent by 2000. Many working-class women were empowered

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 and politicized by participation in trade unions and other organizations, such
as the Catholic Church’s Christian Base Communities (CEBs), established to
help the oppressed poor. Women were allowed to rise to positions of
authority in these organizations, which empowered them to seek leadership
roles in other ways.

Political protest
In the 1960s and 1970s, many Latin American regimes were exceptionally
repressive. The perceived apolitical and inferior status of women sometimes
enabled them to protest more effectively than men. Because of the lack of
trade unions and political parties and the murder or disappearance of
thousands of male activists, women took the lead against the military
dictators in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in the early 1970s.

Revolutionary wars
Women were important in and empowered by guerrilla revolutionary
movements in countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua and
El Salvador.

Nicaragua
The Somoza dynasty ruled Nicaragua for nearly half a century before its
overthrow in 1979 in a revolution led by the Sandinista National Liberation
Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or FSLN). According to
historians Keen and Haynes (2009), women played ‘a large role, militarily,
economically and politically’ in the Sandinista movement. Nearly one-third
of the Sandinista armies were female, some only 13 years old. Battalions
such as the Juana Elena Mendoza Infantry Company were all female and
there were a considerable number of female officers. Three women were
guerrilla commanders, two were on the general staff. The revolutionary
experience made the women more assertive (see Source E, page 207).

El Salvador
In the revolution against a brutal regime in El Salvador (1980–92), women
constituted 30 per cent of guerrilla fighters, and 20 per cent of the military
leadership. Guerrilla María Serrano said, ‘We grew up with a mentality …
that a woman is no more than a person to look after the house, raise the
children. But with the revolution this stopped; women found that they could
do the same things as men.’ However, once peace was restored, many
women felt relegated to inferiority again (see Source E, page 207).
El Salvador illustrates how some housewives began as human rights activists
on behalf of ‘disappeared’ family members, then developed into feminists. In
1977 the Catholic Church helped to establish CO-MADRES (Mothers and
Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared, and Assassinated in El
Salvador). The women staged demonstrations, hunger strikes, and sit-ins in
government buildings. Government forces bombed their offices five times
and kidnapped, tortured or raped over 40 members. After the civil war,
CO-MADRES focused on gender inequality.

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Regional and transnational influence

In 1975, the United Nations (UN) proclaimed the decade of women and
Mexico City hosted the first of many UN conferences on women.
Conferences brought women together to debate and network. The UN
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (1979) was ratified by many Latin American governments and
contributed to legislation to prevent and punish violence against women, as
in Peru. Regional organizations also raised consciousness, especially the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Government policies
By 2000, governments paid more attention to women. Some established
government departments devoted to women’s issues. The Fujimori
administration (1990–2000) in Peru set up a Ministry of Women and a Public
Defender for women, and passed laws against domestic violence and to
establish quotas for women in party lists of candidates. Countries such as
Costa Rica offered day care for workers, Chile gave maternity and paternity
leave for new parents, and Brazil tried to give women more power in labour
negotiations. Many governments eroded discriminatory family and labour
laws.

The use of the vote

Women voters became increasingly important, as in the late twentieth-
century ‘Pink Tide’ (see page 15) that saw socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
(Lula) gain the Brazilian presidency in 2002, and the progressive nationalists
Evo Morales and Rafael Correa become presidents of Bolivia (2005) and
Ecuador (2007), respectively. Such leaders were more likely to support
gender equality.

Women and political office

The election of women potentially contributed to gender equality. From the
1990s, women moved into government office at an unprecedented rate. By
2009, the Bolivian cabinet was 50 per cent female, along with 25 per cent of
the lower chamber and 47 per cent of the upper chamber. By 2010, 39 per
cent of the seats in Costa Rica’s lower chamber were held by women, and in
Argentina 39 per cent of the lower chamber and 40 per cent of the upper
chamber were women. Late twentieth-century Ecuador had a woman
president, Rosalía Arteaga, for a few days in 1997. Although Presidents
Mireya Moscoso of Panama and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina owed much
to their husbands’ prior presidencies, Michelle Bachelet of Chile (see
page 215) did not. However, women leaders were not necessarily
progressive: Violeta Chamorro was president of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1996,
but according to historian Kathryn Sloan (2011), she ‘recommended policies
that set women back decades. She thought women should be in the home
and dismantled day care and other services that allowed working women to
enjoy security and freedom.’

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 What factors retarded Obstacles to change
progress?
Forces that hindered change included unhelpful governments, problems
with quotas, conservatism, and divisions among women.

Unhelpful governments
In the 1990s, according to sociologist Rosa Geldstein, gender discrimination,
conditions in the workplace and pay worsened, owing to government
economic policies that favoured deregulation of the economy. Also,
government ministries were often underfunded and disconnected from
women’s organizations, and enforcement of laws to help women varied from
country to country. According to historian Jane Jaquette (2009), the new laws
‘are rarely adequately implemented’.

Problems with quotas

In the 1990s, countries such as Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia adopted quotas to
ensure that parties gave opportunities to female candidates. However,
problems remained. Thirty per cent of any Venezuelan party’s candidates had
to be women, but most Venezuelan women did not know about the rule and,
even when informed, voted for men instead. In Bolivia, the 30 per cent quota
was taken up by élite and right-wing women, and indigenous and rural
women often remained unengaged.
Political scientists Jutta Marx, Jutta Borner and Mariana Caminotti (2009)
compared gender quota laws in Argentina and Brazil and concluded that the
Argentine quota laws were far more successful because of particular features
of Argentina’s electoral system and loopholes in the Brazilian law. Historian
Michelle Taylor-Robinson (2005) showed that despite quotas, women were
excluded from powerful committees and leadership roles in Latin American
legislatures.

Conservatism
Feminist scholars Christine Bose and Edna Acosta-Belén (1995) describe
women as the ‘last colony’, with unwaged or low-wage labour, great poverty
and ‘structural subordination and dependency’. Cuba’s Communist regime
always prided itself on its programme for gender equality, but even there
discrimination still exists (see page 218). Although women played a key role
in the guerrilla movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua, feminist demands
for reproductive rights and employment equality have not been met. Former
Nicaraguan guerrilla Gioconda Belli said that traditional male dominance
undermined the feminist agenda in those countries (see Source E).

Reproductive rights
Conservatism is most in evidence with regard to reproductive rights. Many
Latin American women still lack control over their own bodies, as their
countries are bitterly divided over abortion. Under pressure from pro-life
groups, El Salvador (1997) and Nicaragua (2006) made abortion illegal, even
though polls showed public support for the right to choose in cases such as

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Source E

An extract from A History of Latin America: Independence to the Present,

Source E cites women who
Volume 2, eighth edition by Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, published
had fought against military
by Houston Mifflin, Boston, USA, 2009, page 299.
dictatorships. Would you
Despite their services [in revolutionary struggles], women in Cuba, Nicaragua, have any reason to doubt the
and the countries of the Southern Cone had not achieved full recognition of inequality under the new
their equality. Gioconda Belli, a former Nicaraguan guerrilla leader, complained, governments that they
‘We’d led troops into battle, we’d done all sorts of things, and then as soon as the describe?
Sandinistas took office we were displaced from the important posts. We’d had to
content ourselves with intermediate-level positions for the most part.’ The
complaint was echoed by a Uruguayan trade unionist who had taken part in the
struggle against the military dictatorship. ‘When the men came out of prison or KEY TERM
return from exile,’ she lamented, ‘they took up all the spaces, sat down on the
Southern Cone Argentina,
same chairs, and expected the women to go back home.’ And Rosa, one of the
Brazil, Chile, Paraguay,
Chilean working-class women who played key roles in the resistance to the Uruguay.
military dictatorship, remembered, ‘When the democratic government took over,
the men around here said, “It’s okay, Rosa, you can leave it to us now.” We Machismo Exaggerated
thought, “Have they forgotten everything we did during the dictatorship?” ’ sense of masculinity and
belief in male domination of
Consciously or unconsciously, the old prejudices persisted in the thought
women.
patterns of men – even radicals and revolutionaries – from one end of the area to
the other.

rape and where the mother’s health was endangered. In Uruguay, the 2005
electoral victory of the Broad Front (Frente Amplio) was expected to bring
about reproductive rights legislation, supported by 63 per cent of the
population. However, President Tabaré Vásquez hesitated to decriminalize
abortion and excluded the prohibition of gender-based discrimination and
domestic violence from his reforming programme. Some critics ascribed this
to the strong influence of the Catholic Church.
According to Jane Jaquette (2009), women’s movements ‘appear to have lost
momentum’ on reproductive issues, because of other successes, ‘persistent
machismo’, and the opposition of the Catholic Church and other
conservative sectors of society, including some women, such as Laura
Chinchilla, elected president of Costa Rica in 2010.

Churches
Along with the Catholic Church’s opposition to reproductive rights, some
attribute Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s conservatism since his
election in 2007 to his newfound fundamentalist Christianity. Previously, as a
Sandinista guerrilla and as president, he had been pro-women’s rights.

Divisions
Women’s progress has been retarded by divisions between women. Working-
class women frequently criticized traditional feminist organizations as
middle class and uninterested in their practical needs. When around 500

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 Central American women met in Nicaragua in 1992, class divisions emerged
as they talked about women’s issues. According to a Chilean woman activist,
‘We have things in common with middle-class women, but we also have
other problems that middle-class women don’t have, like the housing
shortage, debt problems, unemployment.’ Some conservative women do not
seek gender equality and/or oppose some aspects of it, such as reproductive
rights.

How do Argentina, Case studies of women in post-1945 Latin

Brazil, Chile, Cuba
and Mexico illustrate
America
how, why and to what Argentina: wife and mother power
extent women
In the early twentieth century, Argentine women’s organizations were
attained greater
equality? influential, particularly in the 1920s’ legislation that cut working hours,
provided facilities for nursing mothers in factories, and allowed married
women to sign contracts and pursue careers without permission from their
husbands. Progress was temporarily retarded by the military regime after
1930, but resumed under the populist regime of Juan Perón (1943–55).

Perón’s Argentina 1943–55

Perón gave women full voting rights in 1947, and increased their access to
education. The number who attended university was doubled within the
decade. Perón improved women’s working conditions and by 1949 had
established a minimum wage for the piecework many women did at home
and for the food and textile industries. By 1955, the wage differential
between males and females was down to around 11 per cent, one of the
lowest differences in the non-socialist world. Perón also legalized
prostitution, which gave workers legal protection.
Perón’s second wife Eva, whom the people called ‘Evita’ or ‘little Eva’, was his
unofficial minister for women. ‘Just as only workers could wage their own
struggle for liberation, so too could only women be the salvation of women’,
she said. After women gained the vote in 1947, she was important in the
foundation of the Perónist Feminist Party, which aimed to mobilize women’s
support for her husband. She established the Eva Perón Foundation, which
financed women’s centres that gave social, medical and legal services and
drummed up support for Perón. Such policies paid political dividends. In the
first presidential election in which women voted in 1951, 90 per cent of
Argentine women voted and 65 per cent of them voted for Perón. They also
ensured that the Argentine Congress contained the largest number of
elected female representatives in the Americas.
The early death of Evita in 1952 decreased her husband’s interest in women’s
rights, to which neither of them was fully wedded. He sought women’s
support, she only gained prominence because of him (she always claimed
that to be a complete woman, she needed him). Nevertheless, together they
did a great deal for women.

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Source F

An extract from My Mission in Life by Eva Perón, quoted in Women in

How does Source F perceive
Latin American History edited by June Hahner, published by UCLA Press,
feminists? To what extent
Los Angeles, USA, 1984, pages 107–11.
could Eva Perón be described
I confess I was a little afraid of the day I found myself facing the possibility of as a feminist?
starting on the ‘feminist’ path … I was not an old maid, nor even ugly enough [to
be the usual kind of feminist leader, who were] … women whose first impulse
undoubtedly had been to be like men … They were resentful of women who did
not want to stop being women. They were resentful of men because they would
not let them be like them … the immense majority of feminists in the world …
never seemed to me to be entirely womanly!
Every day thousands of women forsake the feminine camp and begin to live like
men. They work like them … Is this ‘feminism’? I think, rather, that it must be
the ‘masculinization’ of our sex … The number of young women who look down
upon the occupation of homemaking increases every day. And yet that is what
we were born for …
Even if we are chosen by a good man, our home will not always be what we
dreamt of when we were single. The entire nation ends at the door of our home,
and other laws and other rights begin … The law and the rights of man – who
very often is only a master, and also, at times, a dictator. And nobody can
interfere there. The mother of the family is … the only worker in the world
without a salary, or a guarantee, or limited working hours, or free Sundays, or
holidays, or any rest, or indemnity for dismissal, or strikes of any kind. All that,
we learned as girls, belongs to the sphere of love … but the trouble is that after
marriage, love often flies out of the window, and then everything becomes ‘forced
labor’ … obligations without any rights! … That is why the first objective of the
feminine movement which wishes to improve things for women – which does not
aim at changing them into men – should be the home.

When Juan Perón died during his second period in office in 1974, his third
wife, Isabel Perón, became president. However, both wives were prominent
because of him and not indicative of any great change in the role of women.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

Isabel Perón quickly lost power, and Argentina was soon under a military
regime, at its most oppressive between 1976 and 1982. The only public
opponents were a handful of mothers and grandmothers who, from 1977,
regularly marched outside the Plaza in front of the presidential palace,
demanding to know what had happened to their disappeared children.
Despite daily harassment by the military, these Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo were a great and international embarrassment to the brutally
repressive Argentine military regime, which promoted motherhood as the
most admirable role for women.

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 Source G

Extracts from statements from some of the Argentine Mothers of the

In some Latin American
Plaza De Mayo, quoted on womeninworldhistory.com/contemporary-07.
countries, mothers who
html
complained about their
‘disappeared’ children One of the things that I simply will not do now is shut up. The women of my
subsequently moved on to generation in Latin America have been taught that the man is always in charge
activism in other causes. and the woman is silent even in the face of injustice … Now I know that we have
Using Source G, explain how to speak out about the injustices publicly. If not, we are accomplices. I am going
mothers could develop into to denounce them publicly without fear. This is what I learned. María del
political activists. Rosario de Cerruti
We realize that to demand the fulfillment of human rights is a revolutionary act,
that to question the government about bringing our children back alive was a
revolutionary act. We are fighting for liberation, to live in freedom, and that is a
revolutionary act … To transform a system is always revolutionary. Madres of
the Plaza de Mayo

Source H

The Argentine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo protesting in Buenos Aires

What do you see in
in the 1970s about the disappearance of their children. The white scarves
Source H to suggest that this
symbolized their children’s nappies.
protest was effective?

Women further contributed to the weakening of the military dictatorship

when the Housewives of the Country campaigned against high prices and
organized shopping boycotts, and others campaigned for joint custody of
children, reproductive rights and sex education. However, general Argentine
conservatism was demonstrated by the fact that even with the return of
democracy, divorce was only allowed as late as 1987.

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Cristina Kirchner
Historian Teresa Meade (2009) claimed that prominent lawyer and senator
Cristina Kirchner was elected to the leadership of Argentina in 2007 ‘because
a vital feminist movement has been organizing to break down traditional
gender barriers that excluded women from positions of authority’, However,
the popularity of her husband Néstor Kirchner, who had preceded her as
president, was surely far more important. Significantly, Kirchner referred to
Eva Perón while campaigning for the election of her husband and of herself.

Brazil: from unions to presidency

Some early twentieth-century Brazilian women were active in their own
cause. In 1917, women weavers initiated the first Brazilian general strike in
the city and state of São Paulo. In 1922, women’s rights activists set up the
Brazilian Federation for Feminine Progress (FBPF).

The Vargas years 1930–45 and 1951–4

Women’s groups persuaded Getúlio Vargas (1930–45) to incorporate FBPF’s
’13 Principles’ (which included the vote for women, legal equality, equal pay
for equal work, paid maternity leave and affirmative action in government
employment) in the 1934 constitution.
In 1932, Vargas gave the vote to literate working women (only five per cent of
Brazilians were literate). However, when he became a dictator (1938), he no
longer needed women’s votes and his policies changed. Women workers
were encouraged to stay in the home, and single and childless women were
penalized by the tax code.

The impact of war

During the Second World War, Vargas’ dictatorship could not stop the
development of raised consciousness within the Women’s Division of the
League for National Defence, out of which developed the Women’s
Committee for Amnesty, which demanded greater freedom.

Women workers
In summer 1945, the women textile workers of São Paulo led another strike,
which gained thousands of supporters and forced Vargas to call an election.
The historians John French and Mary Lynn Cluff (1999) described the years
1945–8 as years of ‘important breakthroughs’ for Brazilian women thanks to
the activism of the working-class left.

João Goulart 1961–4

President João Goulart introduced a civil code that prohibited gender
discrimination in employment and gave married women legal control of
their earnings and shared ownership of jointly acquired property. However,
right-wing women’s groups played an important part in Goulart’s overthrow
when they led protest Marches of the Family with God, in which thousands
participated.

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 Source I

An extract from Women’s Roles in Latin America and the Caribbean by

What would you want to
Kathryn Sloan, published by ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, USA, 2011,
know about the author of
page 182.
Source I before you decided
how far you could trust her Rightist women did not act on their own initiative; men orchestrated their
assertion? political strategy.

Military dictatorship
Despite the demise of democracy, women’s activism continued. Influenced
by liberation theology and CEBs (see page 16), Brazilian women organized
community and neighbourhood groups in the 1970s that began by
demanding better water and housing but became far more politicized and
eventually demanded democracy. Concessions to women were few, although
from 1977 the military dictatorship allowed divorce.

Democracy restored
The restoration of democracy in 1985 slowly increased women’s participation
in politics. In the early twenty-first century, Benedita da Silva, the most
prominent Afro-Brazilian activist, became the first slum dweller to be elected
as a senator. The Coalition of Black Brazilian Women pressed President Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) to increase black representation in government,
education and business and he responded with affirmative action, the María
da Penha Law that protected women from domestic violence, and a Special
Secretariat on Policy for Women. Constitutionally prohibited from running
for a third term, Lula supported Dilma Rousseff in her successful run for the
presidency in 2010 (she belonged to the Workers’ Party).

Chile: conservatives and a female president

One-quarter of the early twentieth-century Chilean workforce were women,
mostly employed in dirty, unsafe sweatshops for meagre wages. Feminists
demanded a minimum wage, equal pay, a 48-hour week, the abolition of
night work, pre-natal healthcare, paid maternity leave and subsidized on-site
childcare.
Although illegal, abortion was widely practised and frequently botched: in
1936, five hospitals registered over 10,000 abortions that left the mother in
need of hospital care. The leftist feminist Women’s Liberation Movement
(MENCH) complained about ‘compulsory motherhood’ and the ‘slavery of
unwanted children’ and sought ‘the economic, juridical, biological, and
political emancipation’ of women.

The impact of the Second World War

During the Second World War, the Chilean Federation of Feminine
Institutions (FECHIF) represented 213 women’s organizations and mobilized
huge street demonstrations that demanded the vote for women in national
elections. Radical President Gabriel González Videla (1946–52) granted

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

women the vote in 1949 and organized women’s centres that provided
education, training and career services.

The 1960s: Conservatives versus Socialists

When Eduardo Frei won the 1964 presidential election, he asked women to
preserve the sacred Catholic family and set up 6000 women’s centres to
encourage domesticity. Left-wingers were more sympathetic. President
Salvador Allende (1970–3) established a Ministry of the Family and
community day-care centres. As the Chilean economy deteriorated, Allende’s
opponents mobilized middle-class women to protest by banging together
empty pots, which contributed to his overthrow. Such was the importance of
the female vote that by this time women were known as hacedoras de
presidentes (makers of presidents).

The Pinochet years 1973–90

During Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship:
l the husband’s legal control over the wife and her property was restored
l labour legislation that protected women was eliminated
l women’s access to employment was restricted
l women were prohibited from holding elected office
l women’s income was reduced to 68 per cent to 36 per cent that of men.

Pinochet encouraged The Feminine Power (EPF), a middle- and upper-class

organization that had opposed Salvador Allende. He emphasized family
values and established a National Ministry of Women. His wife, Lucia Hiriart,
revitalized clubs for homemakers that eventually claimed a quarter of a
million members.
Pinochet’s politicization of women
Pinochet politicized many women. His economic policies were unpopular
with working-class women and a women’s trade union group, the Women’s
Department (DF), organized the first anti-Pinochet demonstration on
International Women’s Day in 1978. Encouraged by the Catholic Church,
Chilean women imprisoned under the repressive Pinochet regime developed
three-dimensional textile pictures, the arpilleras, in which were hidden
scenes of the torture and abuse that they were suffering. Prison guards failed
to realize that the women were hiding messages about their sufferings. By
the 1980s, the opposition to Pinochet had mushroomed. The women’s
politicization had led them to:
l hide victims of the terror
l make and distribute bread containing messages about opposition
activities
l circulate information about the ‘disappeared’
l create critical arpilleras (see Source J, page 214)
l participate in hunger strikes
l chain themselves to public buildings such as the Supreme Court and
Pinochet’s house.

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 Source J

One of the original and most typical arpillera designs created by women
Look carefully at Source J.
unhappy with the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
How does this homely scene
contain protests about the
actions of the Pinochet
regime?

By the late 1980s, the Feminist Movement (MF) called for democracy in the
nation and in the home, civil equality, protection for women workers and
affirmative action to establish 30 per cent female employment.

The democratic 1990s

When democracy was restored in the early 1990s, the position of women
improved. However, a UN report noted, ‘Chile’s women had played a leading
role in the battle against the dictatorship and human rights, yet they had no
divorce law, were under-represented in decision-making positions and faced
severe constraints on reproductive health.’ Laws still described the husband
as ‘head’ of the family.
Socialist Ricardo Lagos was elected president in 2001 and one of his
campaign promises was to promote equality for women and indigenous
people. Despite a reluctant Senate, workplace discrimination was made
illegal. In 2004 divorce was finally allowed.

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Women became increasingly prominent in politics. Between 1990 and 2006

the percentage of women in the Chilean Senate rose from 2.6 to 5.2 per cent,
and from 5.8 to 15 per cent in the Chamber of Deputies. In those years, the
number of women in the president’s Cabinet rose from one to five, including
Michelle Bachelet, elected president of Chile in 2005.

President Bachelet 2006–10

Feminist Michelle Bachelet’s election was a somewhat surprising
development, given the strength of Chilean Catholicism and cultural
conservatism. Many upper-class women remained at the heart of the
pro-Catholic, conservative opposition to a more equal society. Bachelet was a
socialist, atheist, unmarried mother of three children, each with a different
father. Her narrow electoral victory was variously attributed to feminists, her
charisma, greater tolerance and the vagaries of the electoral system. In her
first annual address to the Chilean Congress she said, ‘I am here as a woman,
representing the defeat of the exclusion to which we were subjected for so
long.’ Even so, despite great UN pressure, in 2008 Chile remained one of
only three Latin American countries that did not allow abortions, even in
cases of rape or when the mother’s life was in danger.

Key debate: what was the role of gender in Bachelet’s election?

According to historian Kathryn Sloan (2011), ‘There is no doubt that Bachelet
was elected on a wave of women demanding a greater share of the political
discourse.’ Similarly, according to historian Teresa Meade (2010), ‘Her very
election reflected greater tolerance of a more radical, feminist agenda on the
part of the electorate, or a least a willingness to consider a more radical
cultural make-up.’ On the other hand, Marcela Rios Tobar (2009) concluded
that ‘feminist political mobilization had only an indirect influence on
Bachelet’s election’, which owed more to ‘the particularities of a close and
contentious electoral competition’.

Socialist Cuba
From 1952 to 1959, Cuba was ruled by the dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Following an unsuccessful rebellion in 1953, Fidel Castro returned from exile
in 1956. By 1959, Castro and the revolutionaries had overthrown Batista.
Women such as Haydée Santamaría and Celia Sánchez played an important
part in the revolt against the Batista dictatorship. The Association of United
Cuban Women and the Women’s Martí Civic Front created a network of
lawyers, medical aids, grassroots organizers, educators, spies, messengers
and soldiers (the Mariana Grajales Brigade was an all-female combat unit)
that was vital to the success of the revolution. Women revolutionaries
initially lived charmed lives thanks to the sexism of the Batista regime, but
suffered arrests, torture and jail when Batista became more desperate and
brutal after 1957.

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 Castro’s socialist regime 1959–
Castro’s socialist regime aimed to improve the situation of women. The most
important female in the new revolutionary government was Vilma Espín
(1930–2007), daughter of a rich Bacardí rum company executive, anti-Batista
revolutionary, and wife of Fidel Castro’s brother Raúl since 1959. She was a
member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the
Political Bureau.
In 1960, the Cuban Women’s Federation (FMC) was set up under Espín. The
FMC monitored women’s progress and established a childcare system for
working women, vocational education and healthcare programmes for
peasant women, and schools that taught maids and prostitutes other trades.
In 2000, the FMC remained Latin America’s biggest women’s organization,
with over three million members.
Source K

Vilma Espín, head of the Cuban Women’s Federation, talked about

How and why does Source K feminism in a 1972 interview, quoted in Women in Latin American History
criticize the feminist edited by June Hahner, published by UCLA Press, Los Angeles, USA,
movement?
1984, pages 167–8.
In my opinion, the liberation of women cannot be separated from the liberation of
society in general. There can be no liberation for a social group constituting half
of humankind, as long as exploitation of man by man continues, as long as the
means of production are owned by an exploiting minority.
… Historically, the feminist movement has put forth partial solutions,
struggling for political rights – as did the suffragettes – but in my opinion, it has
not attacked the roots of the problem, which is a capitalist society.
Of course, the feminist movement as such was progressive in its time, at the start
of this century, because it helped to create consciousness in the woman, to take
her out of the narrow confines of the home … Unfortunately many feminist
groups take away forces that could strengthen the genuinely revolutionary
movement. We even know of some capitalist countries where the ruling class
stimulates those movements, they do not persecute them, they let them grow
because to a certain extent these movements are playing into the hands of the
so-called democracies. Let’s not forget that women make up half of the electorate.
The problem of the liberation of women is a class problem and we can’t speak of
women’s liberation as long as the oppressed classes do not free themselves from
the exploitation of the oppressing classes.

‘Rights unparalleled in Latin America’?

Cuban women benefited greatly from the Castro regime, with complete
freedom of choice about abortion and birth control, assistance with childcare
and generous maternity leave. They obtained what historian Teresa Meade
(2010) evaluated as ‘rights unparalleled in Latin America – or most of the
world’. The 1974 Maternity of the Working Woman law gave women six

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

weeks of paid leave before birth and one year of job security after birth if the
mother chose additional unpaid leave. The 1975 Cuban Family Code
outlawed discrimination against females, recognized the right of women to
have an education and employment, made it law for husbands to assist in
household labour and childcare, and made divorce easier. However, Vilma
Espín admitted that the law was difficult to enforce (see Source L).
Particularly problematic was the double day. According to a 1988 survey, men
only did 4.52 hours per week in the home, while women did 22.28. On the
other hand, the survey said that the ratio was improving.
Source L

Vilma Espín’s assessment of the success of the Cuban Family Code,

To what extent does
quoted in A History of Latin America: Independence to the Present,
Source L give a useful
Volume 2, eighth edition by Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, published
assessment of the success of
by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, USA, 2009, page 298.
the Family Code?
Tradition is very strong. But we have advanced. Before, the machismo was
terrible. Before, the men on the streets would brag about how their wives took
care of them and did all the work at home. They were very proud of that. At least
now we have reached the point where they don’t dare say that. That is an
advance. And now with the young people you can see the difference.

When Soviet subsidies ceased in the 1990s, there were cutbacks in assistance
to women. Prostitution, racial exploitation of black women and general
gender discrimination all revived, even though they had supposedly been
wiped out after 30 years of socialism. According to historian Teresa Meade
(2010), this was ‘indicative that Cuba had not fully equalized gender
responsibilities’. On the other hand, few countries in the world even tried to
enforce strict gender equality and statistics demonstrated that women
gained enormously from the Cuban revolution.

Statistics to show progress in Cuba

• In 1953, 20 per cent of women were illiterate; by the early 1960s, all were
literate and able to access free education.
• In 1956, 45 per cent of university students were women; by 1990 it was
57 per cent in a university population that had increased ten-fold.
• Before the Revolution, women constituted 13 per cent of the workforce,
and one-third of those workers were in domestic service. By 1990, they
constituted 38.6 per cent of the workforce, 58 per cent of technical
workers, 85 per cent of administrative workers, and 63 per cent of service
workers, and had equal pay.
• By 1990, women achieved equality in local government positions.
• In 1990 women comprised only 27 per cent of the Communist party
leadership, 16 per cent of the National Assembly members, and 17 per
cent of People’s Power delegates. By 2006 they comprised nearly half of
the National Assembly of the People’s Power.

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 The statistics for Cuba (see the box on page 217) were generally far better
than for the majority of Latin America, but in 2000 Castro admitted that
Cuba was still not ‘a perfect model of equality and justice’ and that prejudice
persisted even though ‘we established the fullest equality before the law and
complete intolerance for … sexual discrimination in the case of women, or
racial prejudice’. In 2012 women only held around 25 per cent of high-level
administrative positions in government. When Castro became ill in 2006, not
one of the dozen possible successors discussed was female.

Mexico: revolution without enfranchisement

Women played a part in the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). Dolores Jiménez,
working-class leader of the feminist Daughters of Cuauhtémoc, was one of
the two main leaders of Mexico City’s 1914 urban revolt, which demanded
indigenous rights, equal pay for equal work and equal access to education.
Women also fought in and supported Emiliano Zapata’s peasant armies.
KEY TERM
Women revolutionaries demanded the right to vote but many males at the
Constitutional 1916 constitutional convention felt they would vote wrongly because only
convention Meeting to 17 per cent were waged and many would be influenced by the conservative
create a constitution for Catholic Church. Women were denied political rights in the new
revolutionary Mexico. constitution, but gained civil rights earlier than in any other Latin American
country. They obtained easier divorce, alimony rights, equal custody rights,
the ability to enter into contracts and to control their property and money,
childbirth benefits and childcare provisions in factories. However, in practice,
divorce was generally considered socially unacceptable and in contrast to
male adultery, female adultery was frowned on.
The government came under great pressure from the increasingly well-
organized and united women’s movement, in the vanguard of which was the
Communist Maria del Refugio ‘Cuca’ García’s United Front for Women’s
Rights. It incorporated over 800 women’s groups, had over 50,000 members,
and demanded the right to vote and to hold office, protective legislation for
women workers, legal equality, and centres for vocational and cultural
training and education.

The effectiveness of women’s organizations

In 1953, Mexican women finally got the vote, ‘largely due’ to pressure from
the Alliance of Women of Mexico, according to historian Kathryn Sloan
(2011). On the other hand, historian Carmen Ramos Escandón (1994) said
that late date demonstrated the ‘lack of effectiveness’ of the women’s
movement, which she contended remained ineffective until the emergence
of a new wave of feminism in the 1970s. The participants in this new wave
were young professionals, students and middle-class women, who focused
on inequality in everyday life, at home and at work. The particularly
depressed state of the Mexican economy from 1976 to 1986 gave a filip to
these women’s organizations (see Source M).

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Source M

A Mexican woman who joined an organization protesting against

What effect did participation
increasing poverty in 1988, quoted in The Women’s Movement in Latin
in an organization have upon
America: Participation and Democracy edited by Jane Jaquette, Westview
the writer of Source M?
Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1994, page 210.
Since I’ve been here I’ve felt a very important change. Before I had only my home
and my work and went from one to the other. Now it’s not only my home and my
work, it’s the group. I think that women are useful not only at home, and that’s
one of the main things I’ve learned in this organization.

Mexican conservatism was evident in that until a 1991 reform of sexual crime
laws, a Mexican male could get away with abducting an unwilling minor for
sex, so long as he agreed to marry her.

The USA and the maquiladoras

Mexican women were further inspired to militancy by employers who
frequently ignored the 1972 law that granted women equality in
KEY TERM
employment, pay and legal standing. That remained a problem in the 1980s
when, between 1982 and 1988, the number of maquiladora plants rocketed Maquiladora plants
from 455 to 2000. In 1998, two-thirds of the half million plant workers were Factories owned by
women, poor, uneducated, low waged and often harassed. Mexican laws multinational and US
mandated maternity leave, but these US companies frequently rejected companies, mostly located
near the US border.
pregnant job applicants, forced women employees to take the pill, checked
their menstrual cycles and either fired pregnant women or gave them
physically demanding tasks designed to result in resignation or a
miscarriage. The American Medical Association said the maquiladoras had
created ‘a virtual cesspool’ on the border.

Reproductive rights
In 1970, President Luis Echeverría became the first president to call for a
decrease in the Mexican population. He supported family planning clinics
and educational programmes. By 1988 annual population growth had
halved. In the face of opposition from the Catholic Church and from Felipe
Calderón’s conservative government (2006–12), Mexico City passed a
pro-choice abortion rights law unique in the Americas (tens of thousands of
women had died from post-abortion complications). It enabled females to
abort without parental or spousal consent. Placing reproductive choice in the
hands of the woman alone in this manner is not widespread, although it
exists in Cuba, European countries and some US states. The law was upheld
in the courts despite a challenge from anti-abortion campaigners in 2008.

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 Are Latin American Conclusions
women equal?
Source N

An extract from Women’s Roles in Latin America and the Caribbean, by

Kathryn Sloan, published by ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California, USA,
2011, pages xxiv–xxv.
In fact, Latin American women have surpassed many other regions in their
levels of political participation, in part due to legislated quotas. This is an
especially significant accomplishment considering their relatively late
achievement of the franchise. However, modern Latin American and Caribbean
women still experience many of the same inequities suffered by their colonial
sisters. Female gender subordination continues to plague women. Women earn
less for the same work; they suffer gender discrimination in hiring. Domestic
abuse continues to be a salient concern of many women’s lives as does the threat
of sexual abuse. Simply put, the historian must recognize that women have
Do you consider the achieved significant advances over more than 500 years of history, but at the
conclusions in Source N to
same time, they face some of the identical tensions, struggles, and injustices of
be fair?
their counterparts half a millennium ago.

Better and
Blatant gender Gained vote more education Human rights to
inequality led
women’s rights
Catholic to activism
Christian Labour unions
base communities
Why women’s lives
Could protest improved in More females elected
against repression twentieth century to government
more effectively
than men, sometimes Sometimes governments
more sympathetic
Wife and mother International organizations Socialism
power and pressure in Cuba

Success?
• Legislation for equality but often not enforced
• Economic equality – improving but still not there
• More females in politics, including national leaders, but often just because of husband

Summary diagram

Women’s movements in Latin America

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

3 Women’s movements in
the USA
Key question: How and with what success have US women tried to
achieve equality?

Historian Michael Heale (2001) opined that unlike the student protest
movements and the counterculture, which expired soon after the 1960s. ‘One
of the great triumphs of the 60s ferment, [feminism] became an all but
irresistible force in the 70s.’

US women in 1945 What was the

situation of women in
Women gained the vote in 1920, but the homemaker remained the ‘ideal’
the USA by 1945?
woman. The federal government encouraged women to join the workforce
during the Second World War (1941–5), but although the National War Labor
Board declared approval of equal pay for equal work, the principle was never
enforced. In 1945, women working in manufacturing still earned only 65 per
cent of what men earned and although many working women needed
childcare, the federal and state governments did not provide it.
The war did not alter majority attitudes about gender equality. Even
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins said, ‘Legal equality … between the sexes
is not possible, because men and women are not identical in physical
structure or social function.’ However, the director of the Women’s Bureau of
the Department of Labor noted ‘doubts and uneasiness’ about ‘a developing
attitude of militancy or a crusading spirit on the part of women leaders’.

Reasons for the development of the feminist Why did more women
movement become activists in
the 1960s?
Women’s activism burgeoned in the 1960s because of persistent inequality,
the activist tradition, economic pressures, Betty Friedan, other protest
movements and consciousness-raising.

Inequality
After the war, increasing numbers of women joined the paid workforce,
although mostly as waitresses, cleaners, shop assistants or secretaries.
College careers advisers steered educated women toward ‘female
occupations’ such as nursing and teaching. In the mid-1960s,
Congresswoman (1955–74) Martha Griffiths told an airline that had fired
stewardesses when they married or reached age 32, ‘You are asking … that a
stewardess be young, attractive and single. What are you running, an airline
or a whorehouse?’

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 Statistics were telling. In the early 1960s, women constituted:
l 80 per cent of teachers, but 10 per cent of headteachers
l 40 per cent of university students, but 10 per cent of the faculty
l two-thirds of the federal workforce, but two per cent of senior managers
l seven per cent of doctors and three per cent of lawyers
l 50 per cent of voters, but under four per cent of state legislators and
two per cent of judges.
Gender inequality was often enshrined in law or practice. Eighteen states
refused to allow women to be jurors, 17 forbade them from being bartenders,
and six said they could not enter into financial agreements without a male
co-signatory. Schools expelled pregnant girls and fired pregnant teachers.
Some states prohibited married women from accessing contraception. Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, a leading figure in the Nixon administration (1969–74),
admitted that ‘male dominance is so deeply a part of American life the males
don’t even notice it’. Articulate middle-class women began to agitate for
equal pay for equal work, equal opportunities and equal respect.

The activist tradition

The 1960s women’s movement did not come out of the blue. The National
Women’s Party, established in 1916, was still active, and ‘social feminists’ such
as labour unionists were influential in the Democratic Party and helped
persuade President Kennedy to establish a Presidential Commission on the
Status of Women. The commission called for equal pay but also for special
training for women for marriage and motherhood. It rejected feminist
demands that an Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee gender equality be
inserted in the Constitution.

Economic pressures
Twice as many women were employed in 1968 as in 1940. Working women
were naturally more aware of and inclined to discuss inequality in the
workplace.

Betty Friedan and domesticity

Women’s magazines, films and advertisements of the 1950s promoted
domesticity as the norm and the ideal. Sociologists pointed out how girls
were trained to play with dolls and later felt under pressure to emphasize
their femininity and hide their intelligence. Some women took refuge in
tranquillizers (the quantity taken more than doubled between 1958 and
1959) and/or alcohol.
In her early 40s, Smith College graduate and suburban housewife Betty
Friedan wrote about what she described as ‘the problem that has no name’
(see Source O). Her The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, averred that
women were imprisoned in a ‘comfortable concentration camp’, taught that
‘they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity’.
Friedan urged women to break out of the camp and fulfil their potential. Her

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

book tapped into women’s discontent and was a bestseller, particularly

among college students. Friedan was perhaps motivated by her husband, a
wife-beater, whom she divorced in 1969.
Source O

An extract from The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, published by

In Source O, what is ‘the
Penguin Classics, London, UK, 2010 (first published in 1963), page 1.
problem that has no name’
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American and what other problems did
women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women face?
women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each
suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for
groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her
children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night
– she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – ‘Is this all?’
For over 15 years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words
written about women, for women, in all the columns, books, and articles by
experts telling women their role was to seek fulfilment as wives and mothers …
By the end of the nineteen-fifties, the … proportion of women attending college
in comparison with men dropped from 47 per cent in 1920 to 35 per cent in
1958. A century earlier, women had fought for higher education; now girls went
to college to get a husband. By the mid-fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college
to marry, or because they were afraid too much education would be a marriage
bar …
Then American girls began getting married in high school. And the women’s
magazines, deploring the unhappy statistics about these young marriages, urged
that courses on marriage, and marriage counsellors, be installed in the high
schools. Girls started going steady at 12 and 13, in junior high. Manufacturers
put out brassieres with false bosoms of foam rubber for little girls of 10. And an
advertisement for a child’s dress, sizes 3–6x, in the New York Times in the fall of
1960, said: ‘She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set.’

The impact of other protest movements

Several protest movements had an impact on women.

The Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement provided the catalyst for feminism, in several
ways:
l It publicized that groups could be discriminated against on grounds of
culture and physical characteristics.
l It showed the power of pressure groups in gaining legislative reform (see
Chapter 2).
l Women faced discrimination and sexual harassment in organizations such
as SNCC, SCLC and CORE, which inspired many female civil rights
activists to campaign for gender as well as racial equality.

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 The SDS
Many female students joined SDS (see page 177) but even that radical
organization was sexist. ‘Women made peanut butter, waited on table,
cleaned up and got laid. That was their role’, confessed one SDS male. In
1964 females constituted 33 per cent of SDS members but only six per cent
of the executive. The anti-war slogan ‘Girls say yes to guys who say no’ said it
all. Whenever women in SDS tried to raise the issue of gender inequality,
they got nowhere. Although SDS approved a pro-women’s rights resolution,
the accompanying debate was characterized by ridicule and contempt. SDS
politicized many young women, some of whom moved on to women’s
organizations.

The Vietnam War

Some of the many women who participated in the anti-war movement (see
page 176) moved into further protests. In early 1968, hundreds of women
attended an anti-war meeting in Washington then marched to Arlington
National Cemetery and staged a mock ‘Burial of Traditional Womanhood’.

How did women The actions of the women’s movement

demonstrate their
The women’s movement organized, litigated and lobbied.
discontent?
National Organization for Women (NOW)
The government’s Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC)
KEY TERM publicly refused to enforce Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which
contained a ban on discrimination in employment on the basis of sex as well
Title VII The anti-sex
as race. This prompted Betty Friedan, pioneers of the labour movement,
discrimination section of the
1964 US Civil Rights Act. business women, professional women and participants in the civil rights
organizations to form the National Organization for Women (NOW). NOW
NOW National Organization
aimed to monitor the enforcement of the legislation, to demand an
for Women, established in
1966, is a US pressure group amendment to the Constitution that affirmed women’s right to equality in all
for equal rights for women. areas and, according to its Statement of Purpose (1966):
to break through the silken curtain of prejudice and discrimination against women
in government, industry, the professions, the churches, the political parties, the
judiciary, the labour unions, in education, science, medicine, law, religion, and
every other field of importance in American society. There is no civil rights
movement to speak for women, as there has been for Negroes and other victims of
discrimination. The National Organization of Women must therefore begin to
speak.

NOW’s tactics
NOW’s tactics included litigation, political pressure, public information
campaigns and protests. In 1970, NOW organized a national women’s strike
for equality. Thousands marched with ‘Don’t iron while the strike is hot’
banners. Some dumped their children on their husbands’ desks. NOW
produced a Bill of Rights for Women, which sought the enforcement of

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Title VII, equal access to education and employment, maternity leave,

federally funded childcare and reproductive rights.

The spread of women’s liberation

The movement of the women who sought equal rights became known as
known as women’s liberation or ‘women’s lib’. It spread quickly across
campuses and cities, through ‘consciousness-raising’ grassroots meetings.

Consciousness-raising
From 1967, women discussed discrimination and inequality in
consciousness-raising meetings in colleges (where women’s studies became
a popular course) and in the community. One group wrote Our Bodies,
Ourselves (1973), a bestseller with practical information on anatomy,
sexuality, rape, self-defence, sexually transmitted diseases, birth control,
abortion, pregnancy, childcare and the menopause. Gloria Steinem
published Ms., a magazine that explored issues such as female sexuality and
the glass ceiling. Women began to use the prefix ‘ Ms’  in protest against the
differentiation between ‘ Miss’  and ‘ Mrs’  that had no counterpart for
unmarried and married males. Only around a quarter of women said they
felt discriminated against in a 1960 opinion poll. The proportion rose to
two-thirds by 1974, due to consciousness-raising.

Increased radicalism
Women’s lib protests in 1968
In 1968, a group of over 100 women who objected to the swim-suited parade
at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, disrupted the proceedings with
a stink-bomb and crowned a live sheep ‘Miss America’. They threw bras,
girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs and other ‘women’s garbage’ into a
‘freedom trash can’, singing ‘Atlantic City is a town without class, they raise
your morals and they judge your ass.’

Too radical?
By 1977, NOW had nearly 70,000 members. They demanded ‘a fully equal
partnership of the sexes, as part of a worldwide revolution of human rights’,
childcare assistance for working mothers, legalized abortion (‘the right of
women to control their reproductive lives’), and particularly the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA).
Feminists had demanded an ERA since the 1920s but abortion was a radical
demand that alienated some women. However, for breakaway groups such
as the Radicalesbians, NOW was not radical enough.
During the 1970s, conservative opposition to feminist demands grew.
Opponents of the ERA said it would lead to the end of the nuclear family,
the conscription of women, and unisex toilets. However, despite the
conservative opposition, politicians had to take feminists seriously.

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 Did the US The government response
government grant
President Johnson (1963–9) responded to feminist lobbying with an
women equality?
executive order that banned gender discrimination in federal-connected
employment. Women’s groups monitored enforcement: NOW fought over
1000 legal cases on discrimination.

The Nixon years 1969–74

President Richard Nixon made it clear that he opposed the ERA even as
Congress overwhelmingly voted for it. He also opposed abortion, and vetoed
the 1971 Child Development Act, a bill passed by the Democrat-controlled
Congress for a national system of childcare centres for poor working
mothers, for which feminists had long lobbied. His veto pleased those who
valued the nuclear family and believed that mothers should stay at home
and look after the children, and those who felt the system would be too
expensive.
Nixon and many others feared the impact of change on family life. The
availability of the pill from 1961 gave women control over unwanted
pregnancies and in the more relaxed atmosphere of the 1960s many defied
traditional conventions about extramarital sex. The divorce rate doubled
between 1960 and 1980 to over 40 per cent as women gained the confidence
to exit unhappy marriages. Some women did not even bother to get married,
and married women had fewer children. The birth rate nearly halved
between 1955 and 1975, because women concluded that larger families were
more expensive and could limit the mother’s personal development. Not all
women lived happily ever after in this new world. Some felt they were
neglecting their familial duties, some felt inadequate without a career and
some struggled to juggle work and family.

Concessions to feminists
Despite his social conservatism, Nixon had to recognize that gender
inequality had become an important political issue. He was concerned when
an anxious adviser pointed out that only 3.5 per cent of his appointees were
women.
Others too paid attention. Television commercials that women found
demeaning were removed. The EEOC took enforcement increasingly
seriously and by 1971, NOW had won $30 million in back pay for women.
Most importantly, the Supreme Court seemed sympathetic to women’s
rights.

Violent women
Nixon’s adviser, Daniel Moynihan, feared there would be violence if women
were not granted equality because ‘by all accounts, the women radicals are
the most fearsome of all’.

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Source P

An extract from African American Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm’s

According to Source P, what
speech in the House of Representatives, 1969, quoted at gos.sbc.edu/c/
problems did women face in
chisholm.html.
the USA in 1969?
Why is it acceptable for women to be secretaries, librarians, and teachers, but
totally unacceptable for them to be managers, administrators, doctors, lawyers,
and Members of Congress? The unspoken assumption is that women are
different. They do not have executive ability orderly minds, stability, leadership
skills, and they are too emotional …
As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the
political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a
woman than because I am black.
Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to
eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to
admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very
little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double pay scales and the
classification of most of the better jobs as ‘for men only.’
More than half of the population of the United States is female. But women
occupy only 2 percent of the managerial positions. They have not even reached
the level of tokenism yet. No women sit on the [American Federation of Labour–
Congress of Industrial Organizations] council or Supreme Court. There have
been only two women who have held Cabinet rank, and at present there are
none. Only two women now hold ambassadorial rank in the diplomatic corps. In
Congress, we are down to one Senator and 10 Representatives … this situation
is outrageous.
It is true that part of the problem has been that women have not been aggressive
in demanding their rights. This was also true of the black population for many
years. They submitted to oppression and even cooperated with it. Women have
done the same thing. But now there is an awareness of this situation particularly
among the younger segment of the population…

The Supreme Court 1971–3

The greatest successes of the women’s liberation movement came through
the Supreme Court:
1. In Reed v. Reed (1971), the Supreme Court ruled against the state of
Idaho’s preference for men over women as executors of the estates, saying
that laws differentiating men and women had to be ‘reasonable not
KEY TERM
arbitrary’.
2. NOW played a big part in the 1972 Supreme Court unanimous ruling that Equal protection clause
the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment applied to women. Clause of the 14th
3. The court cited the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1973 Equal Pay Act when Amendment to the US
it ruled against hiring that discriminated against mothers with small Constitution that forbids
denial of equal protection of
children (Phillips v. Martin Marietta, 1971) and for equal pay in the armed
the law to citizens.
forces (Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973).

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 Abortion and Roe v. Wade
For many feminists, the right to abortion was the most important of
women’s rights. Many states made abortion a felony, which led to risky
backstreet abortions, where many unqualified practitioners used primitive
instruments and harsh chemicals. By the 1960s, college students could
usually obtain safe abortions performed by sympathetic doctors, but poor
women lacked such access. One feminist said, ‘When we talk about women’s
rights, we can get all the rights in the world … And none of them means a
doggone thing if we don’t own the flesh we stand in.’ In 1971, the National
Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) was set up to lobby state
legislatures to review traditional anti-abortion laws. NARAL established
crisis centres for victims of rape and physical assault.
In 1973, the Supreme Court looked at the case of an impoverished Texas
woman who did not want to bear a child that would grow up in poverty.
Abortion in Texas was punishable by fines and imprisonment, regardless of
the circumstances. The feminists’ lawyers argued that the rights of privacy
established in Griswold v. Connecticut (which allowed contraception) should
be extended to abortion. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that
women could abort in the first 13 weeks when a foetus could not sustain life
on its own.
Roe v. Wade thrilled organizations such as NOW and Planned Parenthood,
but the ruling mobilized conservatives who established the National Right to
Life Committee, and campaigned in the courts, in elections and in the
streets. Republican Representative Henry Hyde led Congress in the passage
of a law that banned the use of federal funds for abortion. In 1977, the
Supreme Court ruled Hyde’s bill constitutional and the following year,
Congress extended the ban on federally funded abortions to military
personnel and members of the Peace Corps. Anti-abortion activists were
highly effective at fund raising and recruitment. Their mailings (see
Source Q) were particularly successful.
Source Q

Extracts from a 1978 anti-abortion mailing that also contained graphic

Why do you think some
pictures, quoted in Unfinished Journey by William Chafe, published by
people found the Source Q
Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 1991, page 463.
mailing persuasive?
STOP THE BABY KILLERS … These anti-life baby killers are already
organizing, working and raising money to re-elect pro-abortionists like George
McGovern. Abortion means killing a living baby, a tiny human being with a
beating heart and little fingers … killing a baby boy or girl with burning deadly
chemicals or a powerful machine that sucks and tears the little infant from its
mother’s womb.

Phyllis Schlafly
Catholic lawyer and mother of six, Phyllis Schlafly, ‘Sweetheart of the Silent
Majority’, mobilized opinion against the ERA and abortion. Her ‘Stop ERA’

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

organization, the Eagle Forum, established in 1972 was joined by 50,000

people. When 20,000 feminists met in Houston, Texas, for a National
Women’s Conference in 1978, Schlafly organized a counter-rally that
attracted 8000 supporters. She said, ‘The American people do not want the
ERA, and they do not want government-funded abortion, lesbian privileges,
or … universal childcare.’ Symptomatic of a strong anti-feminist backlash,
Schlafly campaigned for women’s skirts to be two inches (50 mm) below the
knee.
Source R

A cartoon from a 1973 flyer in support of the ERA, produced by the

How effective is the cartoon
League of Women Voters.
shown in Source R?

The Ford years 1974–7

By the time Gerald Ford became president in 1974, women’s lives had
changed dramatically from the early 1960s. Over two-thirds of female college
students agreed that ‘the idea that the woman’s place is in the home is
nonsense’. Most women now expected to work for most of their lives, even
with young families. More women entered traditionally masculine
occupations such as medicine and law, although they only received 73 per
cent of the salaries paid to professional men.
First Lady Betty Ford championed the ERA and Roe v. Wade (‘great, great
decision’), but her husband did nothing to help women.

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 KEY TERM The Carter years 1977–81
President Jimmy Carter was sensitive to women’s rights. He appointed two
Ratification Amendments female cabinet members and more women to high-level posts than any
to the US constitution previous president. He supported the ERA, which Congress had passed in
require ratification (approval)
1972, but which still needed ratification by four more states.
by three-quarters of the
states. Carter was a conservative on abortion, opposing federal funding except in
New Right Right-wing cases of the endangerment of the mother’s life, incest or rape. Women now
voters who became spoke much more openly of rape. Each year an average 50,000 were
influential in the late 1970s. reported, although far more were not. Self-defence courses became popular
Their beliefs were a reaction and there were protests against police treatment of complainants.
to the counterculture of the
1960s, and included The New Right or Religious Right played a significant part in Carter’s defeat
opposition to abortion and in the presidential election of 1980. They favoured the Republican
feminism. presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, the apostle of the nuclear family.

The Reagan years 1981–9

‘Women’s Lib’ went quieter in the 1980s when the ascendancy of Reaganite
conservatives was demonstrated by the defeat of the ERA in 1982. Fashion
reflected the conservative trend. Suits were out, frills and high hemlines
came back: ‘Girls want to be girls again’, said one designer. Magazines
reflected the change. Newsweek magazine lamented divorce rates and
wondered whether working ‘Supermums’ were damaging their kids. Even
Ms. magazine switched from feminism to celebrity coverage. However,
liberals felt much remained to be done. Although the statistics were
improving, women still earned only 72 per cent of what men earned.

Abortion battles
The most divisive social issue in the Reagan years was abortion. Anti-
abortionists joined Operation Rescue (established 1988), a militant new
organization that used sit-ins to block access to abortion clinics. Thousands
of members were jailed in 1988–99 and a few of the most extreme bombed
clinics and killed medical practitioners. Increased social conservatism was
evidenced in 1988, when federal-funded family planning centres were
forbidden to discuss abortion with patients, and the Supreme Court ruling
Bowen v. Kendrick denied federal funding to pro-choice programmes. Reagan
said ‘chastity clinics’ that encouraged women to avoid sex would render
abortion unnecessary, but he failed to persuade the Democrat-controlled
Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.
In Webster v. Reproductive Services of Missouri (1989), the Supreme Court
ruled that states could deny women access to public abortion facilities.
Webster did not overturn Roe v. Wade (only three states followed Missouri’s
Give arguments for and example), which was reaffirmed by a 1992 Supreme Court decision.
against the unelected justices
of the Supreme Court being Bork battles
able to rule on issues such as In 1987, Reagan nominated Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. Bork
abortion. opposed abortion, claimed women’s rights were not included in the 14th

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

Amendment, defended a Connecticut law that would have denied

contraception to married couples and criticized the principle of racial
equality. Organizations such as NAACP (see page 55) and NOW mounted
an exceptionally aggressive congressional lobby drive and played a big part
in the Senate’s rejection of Bork by 58 votes to 42, the largest ever defeat for
a Supreme Court nominee.

A female president?
During the 1984 presidential election campaign, Reagan’s Democrat
opponent Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate.
Some were concerned at the prospect of a woman ‘a heartbeat away from the
presidency’. The Denver Post asked, ‘What if she is supposed to push the
button to fire the missiles and she can’t because she’s just done her nails?’
Vice President George H.W. Bush’s wife Barbara dubbed Ferraro ‘something
that rhymes with witch’.

The Bush years 1989–93

Earlier in his career, President George H.W. Bush had been pro-choice but in
the 1988 presidential election campaign he changed his mind and said
‘abortion is murder’, which pleased conservative Republicans. As president
he forbade doctors working in federal-funded clinics to give advice on
abortion, stopped military hospitals performing abortions, and cut off US
funding to UN agencies that tried to decrease the population of
impoverished countries through the use of contraceptives and abortion.

Clarence Thomas and the revitalization of feminism

In 1991, Bush nominated conservative Clarence Thomas as the replacement
for retiring African American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Thomas had expressed public doubts about a woman’s right to abortion but
anyone who criticized or rejected him would be open to charges of racism.
Thomas’s confirmation hearings became big news when Anita Hill, a black
Oklahoma University law professor, testified that he liked pornographic
movies, discussed his sexual prowess with female aides and had sexually
harassed her when they both worked for the EEOC. Republican committee
members subjected Hill to a brutal cross-examination and confirmed
Thomas’s nomination by 52–48.
The feminist movement had gone quiet. In 1975, even pioneer feminist Betty
Friedan had abandoned NOW, criticizing it as anti-male, anti-family,
anti-feminine and preoccupied with gay and lesbian issues. However, Hill’s
ordeal mobilized women on the issue of sexual harassment: many
campaigned for laws and regulations to protect women, particularly on
college campuses, and unprecedented numbers stood for local, state and
national office in 1992, pointing out that the 98 per cent male Senate had
brushed aside Hill’s accusations.

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 The Clinton years 1993–2001
Charismatic and pro-choice, Bill Clinton was highly popular with women
voters. By his presidency, the focus of feminism had changed.

‘Second-stage feminism’
First-stage feminism concentrated on equality under the law and in the
workplace. In the 1990s, NOW and other groups continued to litigate
successfully to enforce compliance to Title VII and the 14th Amendment (see
page 227). Several corporations had to compensate women for
discrimination. By the early 1990s, six states had passed ‘pay equity laws’.
However, some women felt that such ‘progress’ simply made women into
successful men and that a new emphasis was needed. Most feminists agreed
that women ought to go beyond first-stage feminism. Paid work was
increasingly important to women owing to the rising divorce rate and the
number of single mothers, which made many women heads of households.
Feminists now wanted to focus on the problems in combining work and
homemaking. They wanted to make it easier for women by means of the
provision of good childcare facilities in the workplace, longer paternity and
maternity leave, and harsher penalties for divorced fathers who were remiss
in paying child support.
President Clinton was important in the passage of the 1993 Family and
KEY TERM
Medical Leave Act, which increased employers’ flexibility over parental leave.
New Democrat Member While Clinton himself was more of a New Democrat, his wife Hillary and
of the Democratic Party who congressional Old Democrats sympathized with second-stage feminism
believed that the party and (unsuccessfully) sought state-supervised childcare centres for the
needed to move more to the working poor, which conservatives derided as ‘government babysitting’.
centre to be electable.
Old Democrat Member of More abortion battles
the Democratic Party who Clinton quickly signed executive orders reversing President Bush’s abortion
believed in large-scale policies and a 1993 Supreme Court decision rejected a Louisiana state law
government intervention and that prohibited the vast majority of abortions. Polls showed that a majority of
expenditure to ameliorate Americans were pro-choice, although extremism flourished. For example, in
social and economic ills. 1993 pro-life activists shot and killed a Florida gynaecologist outside an
abortion clinic where he worked.

Was there equality by Women at the end of the twentieth century

2000?
Economic equality?
Statistics demonstrated progress in employment. In 2000, women held
nearly 50 per cent of executive and managerial positions (compared to 32 per
cent in 1983). Although under-represented in the boardrooms of the largest
companies and in the professions (only 20 per cent of doctors and lawyers
were women), they constituted around 50 per cent of students entering law
and medical schools. Full-time female workers’ earnings were still only
76 per cent of men’s in 2000, although the incomes of childless young
women were virtually the same as those of comparable males. Continuing

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

inequality reflected both sexism and the desire of some women to interrupt
their careers to give time to homemaking.

Political equality?
Although increasing numbers of women were elected to the House of
Representatives (62 in 2000, compared to 28 in 1991) and in the Senate (13,
compared to three in 1991), the numbers remained depressingly low.

Sexual harassment
Toleration of sexual harassment in the workplace had decreased. Inspired by
sympathetic Congressional legislation and Supreme Court rulings, groups
such as NOW (see page 224) filed many successful lawsuits on behalf of
sexual harassment plaintiffs. However, after a municipal courthouse
employee claimed that the exhibition of an impressionist painting of a
nude  constituted sexual harassment, and won her case, a backlash set in.
By 2000, 58 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women agreed, ‘We have
gone too far in making common interactions between employees into cases
of sexual harassment.’

Tradition of organizing

Great gender More in

inequality workforce

Why did women

Sexism Impact of
become more militant?
Civil Rights Movement

Betty Friedan
Era of protests Consciousness raising

President Johnson banned gender discrimination

in federal-connected employment
ERA never
Publicity ratified

How successful was

women’s activism?
Conservative
Supreme Court rulings:
reaction
Roe v. Wade,
Reed v. Reed, etc.
Nearer to economic Less sexual harassment
parity but still not there

Summary diagram

Women’s movements in the USA

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 4 Key debate
Key question: When and why did the modern women’s movement
start?

Historian William Chafe (1972) argued that women’s views were crucially
transformed by the Second World War, ‘a watershed’, ‘a catalyst which broke
up old modes of behavior and helped forge new ones’. Others date the
women’s movement from the 1950s. Joanne Meyerowitz (1994) argued that
the domesticity ideal was already undermined before Betty Friedan.
Historians of the Civil Rights Movement emphasized black women’s
activism in the 1950s (Vicki Crawford, 1990), and historians of the labour
movement have noted women’s militancy in the 1950s (Nancy Gabin, 1990).
Leslie Reagan (1997) pointed out that ordinary women had been pressing for
abortions long before the women’s movements of the 1960s and Roe v. Wade,
and that pressure from these ordinary women had led sympathetic doctors
to campaign for the legalization of abortion. Sara Evans (1979 and 2000)
took the more conventional line that it was the 1960s, especially the Civil
Rights Movement and the New Left, that stimulated white women activists
to begin the real struggle for gender equality.

The wage gap

Nancy MacLean (2006) considered the puzzle as to why the USA, which had
What are some
examples of language ‘the world’s strongest women’s movement’, also had one of the largest wage
used by men (and gaps between the sexes. She argued that this was more to do with the
some women) to general existence and acceptance of economic inequalities within the USA
oppose the women’s than with gender inequality. That continuing wage gap is also a reminder
movement? (Language, that while most historians (for example, Ruth Rosen, 2000) agree that the
Reason, Perception, women’s movement was one of the most (if not the most) influential social
History.) movements in modern US history, they perhaps overestimate the
movement’s success.

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

such as El Salvador and Nicaragua found themselves

Chapter summary marginalized by male co-revolutionaries once peace
was restored. Effective enforcement of laws against
discrimination varied from country to country. Several
Feminist movements in the Americas women were elected to national leadership roles,
After the Second World War, Canadian women had although some owed their position to politically
the vote but had not attained equality in education and prominent husbands, and some were unsympathetic
employment. Divorce was difficult, abortions were to women’s rights. Reproductive rights and economic
illegal. In the great decade of protest, the 1960s, equality had not been fully attained by the early
Canadian women became far more organized and twenty-first century. In many societies the belief that
militant, forcing Lester Pearson set up the Royal domesticity was the most appropriate role for women
Commission on the Status of Women (1967), which remained strong. Even socialist Cuba failed to totally
recommended great changes, including equal pay eradicate gender discrimination.
legislation. Although divorce was made easier (1969) In post-Second World War USA, many people
and abortion was legalized, the latter remained considered that the ideal woman was a homemaker,
controversial. Male domination of the political and legal working women were usually in low-paid jobs and
systems ensured that even when pressure from women lacked full reproductive rights. The women’s
women’s groups led to the prohibition of gender movement developed because of inequality, the activist
discrimination in the new constitution of 1981, tradition, economic pressures, Betty Friedan, and the
women’s groups believed women’s rights had not impact of the Civil Rights Movement, SDS and the
been fully attained. Women’s pay improved but Vietnam War. The federal government granted some
remained on average less than men’s. concessions, for example over abortion, but
The situation of Latin American women improved conservatives waged a fierce and sometimes successful
during the twentieth century, due to the reaction to rearguard action. The Equal Rights Amendment was
blatant gender inequality, to gaining the vote, to more never enacted. Women still had problems with the
and better education, to participation in leftist double day and childcare for working mothers. The
movements, labour unions and political protest, to proportion of female politicians remained low.
international organizations and to sympathetic However, women made considerable progress in
governments. However, women who participated in equality in education and employment, and sexism was
struggles against oppressive governments in countries frowned on.

Examination advice
How to answer ‘compare and contrast’
questions
For compare and contrast questions, you are asked to identify both
similarities and differences. Better essays tend to approach the question
thematically. It is best not to write half of the essay as a collection of
similarities and half as differences. Finally, straight narrative should be
avoided.

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 Example
Compare and contrast the social and political impact of feminist movements
in two countries in the region after 1960.
1 Your first step will be to decide which two countries you wish to discuss.
Be sure to choose examples for which you have plenty of supporting
evidence. It also helps to put your answer into context. In other words, if
you choose the USA and Canada, for example, you will want to discuss
what was occurring in each country that might have affected the political
and social impact of the women’s movements. Furthermore, you will find
that in some cases there were stark differences between the two countries’
movements while in others very close similarities. Answers that will
receive higher marks often will explain why there were differences and
similarities instead of just stating what these were.
2 Take five minutes before you begin writing your essay to jot down
examples of political and social impacts of feminist movements in both
the USA and Canada. Your notes might look something like this:


USA
Political impact:
1963: Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique.
N ational Organization of Women founded in 1966: group wanted to
enforce legislation; organized protests; consciousness raising.
S upreme Court issued important rulings on equal protection (Reed
v. Reed, 1971) and reproductive rights (Roe v. Wade, 1973).
Movement to pass Equal Rights Amendment failed in 1982, but
politicians were taking more notice.
Backlash from social conservatives.
Under-representation in politics.
Social impact:
Women became better educated.
Women had greater control over their bodies but controversial.
Working and pay conditions improved.
Women were better organized; gender consciousness raised.

Canada
Political impact:
Women joined movements in greater numbers.
J udy LaMarsh: member of Truth Squad; Minister of Health and
Welfare (1963) and then Secretary of State.
▼

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 Chapter 7: Feminist movements in the Americas

1 966: Committee for the Equality of Women formed. Umbrella

group.
1 967: Government forced by pressure from women’s groups to set up
Royal Commission on the Status of Women.
1 972: National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC)
created. Umbrella group of over 500 organizations.
1 981: Canadian Constitutional Act. Incorporated Charter of Rights
and Freedom.
Under-representation in politics.
Social impact:
Slow progress made after release of report from Royal Commission.
1969: divorce made easier.
1988: greater access to abortion, but divisive.
Improvement in pay disparities.

3 In your introduction, clearly state the areas in which the political and
social impact of feminist movements were similar and different in the
USA and Canada. Don’t worry if there are more similarities or differences.
You will be judged on the evidence you present.
4 In the body of the essay, you need to discuss each of the points you raised
in the introduction. Devote at least a paragraph to each one. It would be a
good idea to order these in terms of which ones you think are most
important. Be sure to make the connection between the points you raise
and the major thrust of your argument. An example of how one of the
points could be addressed is given below.

The formation of women’s political pressure groups in both Canada
and the USA helped put pressure on their respective governments.
The creation of the Committee for the Equality of Women in Canada
in 1966 was mirrored by the establishment of the National
Organization of Women (NOW) in the USA, also founded in 1966.
Both groups lobbied politicians and brought attention to the
disparities in income and opportunity for women. In the case of
Canada, the government felt compelled to set up the Royal
Commission on the Status of Women. The Commission’s report was
published several years later and was slow to be implemented. In the
case of the USA, NOW pushed for the enforcement of ignored
legislation and brought pressure to bear on politicians through

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 marches, petitions and demonstrations. As in Canada, the results
were slow in coming. Nonetheless, in both countries, politicians were
served notice that they could no longer take women’s votes for
granted and that change was coming.

5 In your conclusion, you will want to summarize your findings. This is your
opportunity to support your thesis. Remember not to bring up any
evidence that you did not discuss in the body of your essay. An example of
a good concluding paragraph is given below.

In conclusion, feminist movements had significant political and
social impact in both the USA and Canada. While the two
neighbouring countries shared similar results from pressure by
women’s groups, as well as backlashes and under-representation in
the political system, there were differences. In Canada, women were
guaranteed political rights that US women were not, especially with
the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment.

6 Now try writing a complete answer to the question following the advice
above.

Examination practice
Below are two exam-style questions for you to practise on this topic.
1 To what extent have women achieved equal rights in the Americas?
(For guidance on how to answer ‘why’ questions, see pages 140–1.)
2 Evaluate the role of women in Latin American politics after 1945.
(For guidance on how to answer ‘evaluate’ questions, see pages 171–3.)

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 Timeline

Pre-19th Europeans conquered indigenous 1953 Eisenhower administration

century inhabitants of the Americas and planned reservation termination;
imported African slaves Mexican women enfranchised a
quarter of a century after the
1787 Constitution of new USA
Mexican Revolution
enshrined African American and
Native American inferiority 1954 US Supreme Court ruled against
segregated education (Brown)
Early Establishment of Latin American
19th century republics; non-whites oppressed 1955 Montgomery bus boycott
throughout Americas triggered US civil rights
movement
1861–5 US Civil War ended slavery
1957 Nine African American students
Late Segregation laws restored white tried to enter Central High School
19th century supremacy in US South; US and in Little Rock, Arkansas
Canadian ‘Indians’ placed on
1959 Socialist Castro regime gained
reservations; Latin American
power in Cuba, promising racial
indigenous population lacked
and gender equality
land and rights; women lacked
rights throughout Americas 1961 National Indian Youth Council
(NIYC) established, more radical
1920 19th Amendment to the US than National Congress of
Constitution ratified. Women American Indians (NCAI)
allowed to vote
1963 Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a
1920s Latin American indigenismo dream’ speech during the March
movement on Washington; King
1933 Gilberto Freyre declared Brazil a masterminded Birmingham
racial democracy campaign; publication of Betty
Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
1933–45 Roosevelt administration helped
African Americans and Native 1964 Civil Rights Act ended
Americans segregation in US South; first of
four years of US ghetto riots; Free
1939–45 Second World War helped to Speech Movement at Berkeley
trigger civil rights activism
1965 Voting Rights Act enabled
throughout the Americas
Southern African Americans to
1947 Truman’s commission vote; Malcolm X assassinated
recommended civil rights
1966 Chants of ‘black power’ on the
legislation (‘To Secure These Rights’)
Meredith March; National
1952 Land redistributed to indigenous Organization of Women (NOW)
population in Guatemala and established (USA); Bolivian
Bolivia Military–Peasant Pact

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 1967 New Left students organized 1978 Bolivian indigenous activist
anti-Vietnam War demonstration Domitila Barrios de Chúngara’s
in Washington; Royal Let Me Speak! published
Commission on the Status of 1980 Shining Path guerrillas
[Canadian] Women encouraged indigenous Peruvians
1968 Student protests in Chicago to seize land; US Supreme Court
important trigger of conservative upheld affirmative action (Bakke)
reaction; liberation theology 1982 US Equal Rights Amendment
prominent at Catholic Bishops finally rejected
conference at Medellín, Colombia; 1989 Many Latin American states
most radical Native American ratified Convention 169 of
organization, American Indian International Labour
Movement (AIM), established; Organization, which required
student protests led to massacre governments to ensure
in Tlatelolco Plaza, Mexico City; indigenous equality
students demonstrated against
Brazilian government; Dr Martin 1988 Centenary of abolition of slavery
Luther King Jr assassinated in Brazil
1990 Mohawk militancy in Quebec
1969 Trudeau’s White Paper confirmed
First Peoples assimilation not 1992 Guatemalan indigenous leader
viable; student violence in Rigoberta Menchú awarded
Montreal Nobel Peace Prize
1969–71 Militant Native Americans 1994 Mayan rebellion in Chiapas,
occupied Alcatraz Mexico

1970 1995 Black organizations marched on

Student protests led to violent
Brazilian capital to demand
response at Kent State (USA)
enforcement of anti-
1973 Canadian Supreme Court ruled discrimination legislation
Aboriginal title to land could not
1997 UN report on genocide of
be extinguished; US Supreme
Guatemalan indigenous
Court legalized abortion (Roe v.
population
Wade), triggering conservative
backlash; Wounded Knee incident 1998 Pardo Hugo Chávez elected
president of Venezuela (part of
1975 Indian Self-Determination Act Pink Tide)
(USA); UN proclaimed decade of
women; Cuban Family Code 1999 Nunavit established; Bolivian
outlawed discrimination against water wars began
women and prescribed male 2001 Indigenous march on Mexico City
housework 2005 Aymara Evo Morales elected
1977 CO-MADRES established in El president of Bolivia
Salvador; Mothers of the Plaza de 2006 Feminist Michelle Bachelet
Mayo first protest in Argentina elected president in Chile

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 Glossary

Aboriginal Canadian term for the indigenous nationalism, black political power, black working-class
populations. revolution, black domination.
Aboriginal title Claim to land based on centuries of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Established in 1824, the
residence by the indigenous population. BIA had responsibility for Native Americans. From the
Accommodationism Booker T. Washington’s philosophy, late twentieth century, it focused more on advice and less
which advocated initial black concentration on economic on control.
improvement rather than on social, political and legal Caciques Local leaders of indigenous groups.
equality. Campesinos Peasants.
Acid, abortion and amnesty Republicans smeared Carnaval Annual festival before the deprivations of Lent.
Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern as
being in favour of legalizing LSD and abortion, and Central Obrero Boliviano (COB) National labour union
pardoning Vietnam War draft dodgers. set up in the early days of the revolutionary MNR
government to represent the general voice of Bolivian
Affirmative action Positive discrimination to help those
workers.
who have had a disadvantageous start in life.
Chaco War War between Bolivia and Paraguay 1932–5.
Afro-Latin Americans Residents of Latin America with
black ancestry, including those of mixed race. Chapters Local branches of a national organization.
Agency In this context, where black actions were Che Guevara An Argentine Communist who promoted
influential, as opposed to black history being determined revolution in Latin America and Africa.
by white actions. Cheyenne Native American tribe in the western USA.
Agrarian reform The Latin American indigenous Cholos Bolivian mestizos or indigenous Bolivians who
population owned a disproportionately small amount of are city dwellers or more prosperous farmers, speaking
land. Sometimes governments redistributed the land to both Spanish and an indigenous language.
remedy this inequality.
Civil Rights Movement Movement for legal, social,
Amendment The US Congress could amend the political and economic equality for African Americans.
Constitution if 75 per cent of the states approved.
Coca Leaf that can be used as a mild sedative or
Andes South American mountain range running through processed into cocaine. Coca tea is a traditional drink for
Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina most Andean natives.
and Chile.
Cold War The state of extreme tension between the
Anti-choice Those who believe that a woman does not capitalist USA and Communist USSR and their allies
have the right to terminate her pregnancy. 1945–91.
Aymara Member and language of an indigenous ethnic Communist Believer in the economic system under
group in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. which capitalism and the private ownership of property
Aztecs Central Mexican people conquered by Spain in are rejected and the land and industry are controlled by
the sixteenth century. the state in order to attain economic equality.
Baby boomers Generation born in the post-Second Confederacy The 11 Southern states that left the Union
World War population surge. became the Confederate States of America.
Bands First Nations tribes. Congress Legislative branch of US government,
Beat Generation Post-Second World War writers who consisting of the Senate and the House of
rejected materialism and experimented sexually and with Representatives.
drugs. Constitution The rules and system by which a country’s
Black nationalist Favouring a separate black nation government works.
either within the USA or in Africa. Constitutional convention Meeting to create a
Black Power A controversial term, with different constitution for revolutionary Mexico.
meanings, such as black pride, black economic self- Counterculture Alternative lifestyle to that of the
sufficiency, black violence, black separatism, black dominant culture.

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 De facto segregation Segregation of the races in fact GOP Grand Old Party (nickname for the Republican
rather than in the law. Party).
De jure segregation The legal segregation of the races, Grandfather clause Southern state laws allowed the
set down in laws in the South until 1964. illiterate to vote if they could prove an ancestor had voted
Democrat The Democratic Party favours government before Reconstruction, which no African American could
intervention on behalf of the less fortunate. do.
Department of Indian Affairs Canadian government Great Depression Worldwide economic depression
department set up under the 1880 Indian Act to regulate which began in 1929 and lasted for around 10 years.
First Nations peoples. Great migration Early twentieth-century northward
Direct action Physical protest, such as occupation of movement of black Southerners.
land. Great Society President Johnson in 1965 declared a ‘war
Dixiecrat Breakaway Southern Democrat party founded on poverty’ and called for a revolutionary programme of
in 1948. social welfare legislation that involved unprecedented
federal expenditure on education, medical care for the
Double day Women had to do housework as well as elderly and an expanded Social Security Program.
paid work.
Guerrillas Groups of fighters who use tactics such as
Draft Conscription; compulsory call-up to the nation’s sabotage, raids and assassination, usually against
armed forces. governments.
Equal protection clause Clause of the 14th Amendment Haciendas Great landed estates.
to the US Constitution that forbids denial of equal
protection of the law to citizens. Happenings Events with large, youthful crowds, such as
Woodstock.
Favelas Shantytowns in Brazil.
Hash A resin prepared from cannabis.
Federal government The USA is a federal state, where
political power is divided between the federal Hippies Young people (often students) in the 1960s who
government (consisting of the President, Congress and rejected the beliefs and fashions of the older generation,
the Supreme Court, all located in Washington, DC) and and favoured free love and drugs.
the states. Hispanics Spanish-speaking people in the USA, usually
Feminists Advocates of equal political, economic and of Latin American origin.
social rights for women. Homemakers Mothers staying at home to look after
Filibuster Use of tactic to delay congressional voting on their families, rather than going out to work.
a bill. Howard Prestigious African American university in
First Nations Indigenous peoples in Canada. More Washington, DC.
recently, members of the various nations refer to HUAC House Un-American Activities Committee,
themselves by their tribal or national identity. which pursued Communists in the 1940s and 1950s and
First-come, first-served Southern buses were divided others considered to threaten internal security in the
into black and white sections. Sometimes black people 1960s and 1970s.
would be standing while the white section was empty. Inca Indigenous Peruvian; the Inca Empire stretched
They therefore sought seating on a first-come, first- from Ecuador to Chile before the Spanish conquest.
served basis. Indian Act The 1876 Indian Act said how reserves and
Founding Fathers The men who drew up the US tribes should operate and who should be recognized as
Constitution in 1787. ‘Indian’. It was amended on many occasions.
Freedom Summer SNCC voter registration campaign in Indian Agents Canadian government representatives
Mississippi in 1964. with ultimate authority over reserves.
Genocide Deliberate destruction of an ethnic group. Indigenismo Latin American movement that revered
Ghettos Areas in cities inhabited mostly or solely by indigenous culture as a source of what was best in
(usually poor) members of a particular ethnicity or national values.
nationality. Indigenous Original/native inhabitants.
Glass ceiling An invisible barrier that stopped women Integrationist Desirous to participate in the ‘American
gaining top jobs. dream’ without separation of the races.
Globalization Increasing internationalization of national International Labour Organization (ILO) An agency of
economies, finance, trade and communications. the United Nations which seeks the promotion of social

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 Glossary

justice and internationally recognized human and labour struggle between several different Mexican groups that
rights. lasted until about 1920.
Inuit Indigenous people in Canada, formerly known as Mi’kmaq Aboriginal of eastern Canada.
Eskimos. Middle America A term invented by the media to
Jim Crow A popular 1830s’ comic, black-faced, minstrel describe ordinary, patriotic, middle-income US citizens.
character developed by white performing artists. Minority leader Leader of the party with fewer
Post-Reconstruction Southern state laws that legalized members in Congress.
segregation were called ‘Jim Crow laws’.
Miscegenation The mixing of races through marriage
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council The final and interbreeding.
Court of Appeal in Canada.
Miskitos Indigenous population resident on the
Justice Department Branch of the federal government in Nicaraguan and Honduran coasts.
Washington, DC with special responsibility for enforcing Mobilization Being inspired/roused into activism.
the law and administering justice.
Mohawk Native American, resident on the US and
Katarismo Bolivian movement to re-create Aymara Canadian east coasts.
ethnic solidarity.
Moratorium In this context, suspension of normal
Korean War The USA, South Korea and the United activities to facilitate nationwide anti-Vietnam War
Nations fought against Communist North Korea and protests in 1969.
China in 1950–3.
Mulatto Of European–African descent.
Ku Klux Klan Violent, white supremacist organization.
Narrangansetts Native American tribe of eastern USA.
Labour union An organization of workers seeking
improved pay and working conditions. National Convention Before the presidential election,
the Republicans and Democrats hold conferences in
Latin America The countries in Central and South which each party selects or confirms its candidate for the
America that gained their independence from Spain and presidency.
Portugal in the nineteenth century.
National Guard State-based US armed forces reserves.
Left wing Those sympathetic to the ideas of socialism,
Navajo and Hopi Native Americans of Arizona, Utah
under which system the national economy is controlled
and New Mexico.
by the government to prevent extremes in wealth or
poverty. Neoconservatism Ideology combining traditional
conservatism with greater faith in the free market.
Liberation theology Latin American Catholic clergy
movement, inspiring parishioners to work for change in Neoliberal Proponent of an economic system that
this life, rather than waiting for their reward in heaven. promotes free trade and private business rather than
government intervention to deal with inequality.
Lynching Unlawful killing (usually by hanging).
New Democrat Member of the Democratic Party who
Machismo Exaggerated sense of masculinity and belief
believed that the party needed to move more to the
in male domination of women.
centre to be electable.
Mao Zedong Leader of Communist China 1949–75. New Left Term used by SDS to differentiate themselves
Maquiladora plants Factories owned by multinational from the Communist Old Left of the 1930s.
and US companies, mostly located near the US border. New Right Right-wing voters who became influential in
Marxist Someone who believes in Marx and Engels’ the late 1970s. Their beliefs were a reaction to the
political, economic and social principles. counterculture of the 1960s, and included opposition to
Maximum leader Recognition of one leader as superior abortion and feminism.
to all other tribal leaders. NOW National Organization for Women, established in
Mayan Indigenous person(s) of southern Mexico or parts 1966, is a US pressure group for equal rights for women.
of Central America. Old Democrat Member of the Democratic Party who
Merengue Music and dance created by Afro- believed in large-scale government intervention and
Dominicans. expenditure to ameliorate social and economic ills.
Mestizos Offspring of Europeans and native peoples. Oligarchy Government by a privileged few.
Métis Of mixed European and First Nations or Inuit Pardo Mixed-race.
blood. Passive resistance Non-violent refusal to comply with a
Mexican Revolution A revolt against the dictatorship of particular policy.
Porfirio Díaz began in 1910 then developed into a Pentagon Home of US Department of Defense.

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 Pink Tide The left-wing governments elected in many Status Indians Also known as registered Indians; listed
Latin American countries from the end of the on Indian Register and entitled to benefits under the
twentieth century. Indian Act.
Poll tax Tax levied on would-be voters that made it Suburbanization Growth of residential communities
harder for blacks (who were usually poor) to vote. outside cities.
Popular front Alliance of several leftist parties. Sun Dances Religious ceremonies of prairie First
Populist regimes Governments that courted support Nations peoples.
from large groups such as labour unions and the poor. Supreme Court The judicial branch of the federal
Potlatches Ceremonial exchange of gifts by coastal First government, which rules on the constitutionality of
Nations peoples of British Columbia. actions and laws.
Primaries Elections to choose a party’s candidate for Survival schools Under Title IV of the Indian Education
elective office. Act (1972), Native Americans could control their
children’s education.
Pro-choice Those who support the right of a woman to
choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy. Title VII The anti-sex discrimination section of the 1964
US Civil Rights Act.
Pueblo Native American tribe of the West.
Treaty Indian Status Indian.
Quechua Member/language of an indigenous ethnic
group in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile. Truth Squad Group that monitored the speeches of
Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
Radical left Communists, militant labour unionists.
Uncle Tom Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel
Ratification Amendments to the US constitution require Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) was perceived as excessively
ratification (approval) by three-quarters of the states. deferential to whites by twentieth-century African
Reconstruction When the 11 ex-Confederate states were Americans, who described obsequious contemporaries as
rebuilt, reformed and restored to the Union. Uncle Toms.
Republican The Republican Party tends to favour USAID US Agency for International Development.
minimal government intervention in the economy and USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the name
society. given to Russia from 1922, also known as the Soviet
Reservation An area of land set aside for Native Union.
American tribes in the nineteenth century. Vietnam War War between non-Communist South
Reserves Areas officially designated as living space for Vietnam (supported by the USA) and Communist North
Canada’s indigenous population. Vietnam and its allies in the South (1954–75).
Rights revolution Increasingly assertive movements for War on children Brazilian street children were seen as a
equal rights for minorities and women in the 1960s. threat to the property and life of the more prosperous
ROTC College-based programme to train officers for classes, who employed security forces to be rid of them,
armed forces (Reserve Officer Training Corps). sometimes resulting in murder.
Scorched-earth campaign Destruction of crops so the War on Poverty President Johnson’s programmes to
population lacks food. help the poor, e.g. Social Security Act (1965).
Separatism Desire for African Americans to live separate Welfare dependency Reliance on federal aid.
but equal lives from whites, in all-black communities or White-collar worker Person who performs professional
even in a black state or Africa. or office work rather than manual labour.
Sioux Native American tribe, mostly resident in the Women’s liberation Militant feminists who emphasized
Great Plains. male attitudes as the great barrier to equal rights for
Sit-ins African American protesters sat in and refused to women.
move from white-only restaurants in the mid-twentieth Yanomamis Amerindian tribe living in the Amazonian
century. rainforest.
Socialism Political philosophy that society should be as Yippies Radical student group that wanted to pit the
equitable as possible in terms of economic and social politics of freedom and disorder against the machine-
standing. dominated politics of the Democratic Party at Chicago
Southern Cone Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, in 1968.
Uruguay. Zapotec Indigenous people in Mexico’s Oaxaca province.

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 Further reading

Latin American history: general Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru) contain
stimulating extracts from contemporaries and
John Chasteen, Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise historians.
History of Latin America, third edition, Norton, 2011
An engaging overview of Latin American history. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States,
Students find Chasteen’s approach interesting and Longman
informative. Multiple editions attest that this is a good read,
particularly sympathetic to and strong on Native
Marshall Eakin, The History of Latin America:
Americans.
Collision of Cultures, Palgrave, 2007
A stimulating overview. Chapters 2 and 3
Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, A History of Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the
Latin America: Independence to the Present, Houghton King Years, 1954–63, Simon & Schuster, 1989
Mifflin, 2009
An exhaustive look at the formative years of the Civil
An easy read that recognizes the need to balance
Rights Movement.
generalizations about Latin America with specific
case studies. There is a related useful website: John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil
college.hmco.com/pic/keen8e Rights in Mississippi, University of Illinois Press,
Eduardo Galeano, Century of the Wind, Norton, 1994
1998 Local studies such as this are always a useful
An interesting approach to the history of the 20th corrective to the ‘national’ narrative.
century in the Americas. Galeano presents his
Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil
interpretation in small vignettes organized by date and
place. Rights Struggle in Louisiana 1915–1972, University of
Georgia Press, 1999
Teresa Meade, A History of Modern Latin America: Another useful local study.
1800 to the Present, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010
The author admits that it is very difficult to sustain the Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and
reader’s focus when flitting between 20 Latin Equality, 1890–2000, Penguin, 2002
American countries, and even more difficult to cover Probably the best single-volume history of the African
all 20 countries in one book, but if the reader is American story.
patient and able to systematize the content, Meade is
particularly good on women and the indigenous David Garrow, Bearing the Cross, William Morrow,
population. 1986
Excellent biography of Martin Luther King Jr, full of
Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin
contemporary quotations that give the reader a real
America, Penguin, 2009 ‘feel’ for the Civil Rights Movement.
Excellent overview that copes well with the problems
of handling so many different countries. Peniel Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour:
A Narrative History of Black Power in America,
Chapter 1 Henry Holt, 2006
Greg Grandin et al. (editors), The Guatemala Reader, As with Manning Marable (below), raises the
Duke University Press, 2011 interesting question as to whether African Americans
All the volumes in this Duke series (Argentina, Brazil, write the best histories of African Americans.

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 Michael Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: Henry Louis Gates Jr, Black in Latin America, New
The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial York University Press, 2011
Equality, Oxford University Press, 2006 Summarizes the author’s investigations for a television
A much-needed overview of the role of the Supreme series of the same name. Much of it is inevitably in the
Court and the quest for equality. rather irritating style of ‘I met this expert and [s]he
said …’ and ‘As an African American I felt …’, but
Steven Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the many interesting insights.
Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1968, Rowman &
Littlefield, 2006 Chapter 6
Insightful analyses accompanied by relevant documents. William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America
Manning Marable, Malcolm X, Penguin, 2011 Since World War II, Oxford University Press, 2003
Currently considered the definitive biography. Liberal author, with excellent selection of interesting
points and contemporary quotations that bring the
Chapter 4 account to life. Raises the interesting question as to
Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President, whether only a liberal reader can enjoy and believe a
liberal historian.
Simon & Schuster, 1990
Biographies of presidents are usually a good Michael Heale, The Sixties in America: History,
introduction to government actions and Politics and Protest, Edinburgh University Press,
preoccupations in any particular period. Ambrose’s 2001
writing holds the reader’s interest. Easy and balanced read.
Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, Eric Zolov, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican
1962–72, Simon & Schuster, 1989 Counterculture, University of California Press, 1999
Exhaustive but not exhausting, balanced insight into Fascinating read. The claim that rock ’n’ roll provoked
one of America’s most hated presidents. the 1968 student riots again raises interesting
Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, historiographical questions – do historians sometimes
try too hard to be ‘cool’ and radical, and is that good
1973–90, Simon & Schuster, 1993
history?
As above.
Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter? The Presidency of Chapter 7
Lyndon Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1996 June Hahner, Women in Latin American History:
Useful, balanced account. Their Lives and Views, University of California, 1980
David McCullough, Truman, Simon & Schuster, Difficult to find but excellent examination of the
contribution of women in Latin American History.
1992
Another biography that brings the president alive. Jane Jaquette (editor), Feminist Agendas and
Waltraud Morales, A Brief History of Bolivia, Facts Democracy in Latin America, Duke University Press,
On File, 2010 2009
Jaquette’s introductory overview is good; as always
Far easier read than Herbert Klein’s A Concise History
with collections of articles, some are far better than
of Bolivia, text enlivened by author’s sympathy for the
others. Marcela Rios Tobar on Michelle Bachelet and
indigenous population and a reader-friendly layout,
Chile is one of the better ones.
nicely broken up by subheadings, photographs and
interesting information boxes. Kathryn Sloan, Women’s Roles Through History:
Women’s Roles in Latin America and the Caribbean,
Chapter 5 Greenwood, 2011
George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America: Has some really useful nuggets of information, but
1800–2000, Oxford University Press, 2004 within the thematic organization (family, law, religion,
Detailed, solid. work, culture, politics), poorly balanced chronological

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 Further reading

coverage. The emphasis is really pre-twentieth l Role of government:

century, and there it gives useful and interesting detail. For students (and teachers) who wish to read the
full decisions of the Supreme Court that relate to
Nancy MacLean, The American Women’s Movement,
the civil rights of African Americans:
1945–2000: A Brief History With Documents,
http://civilrights.findlaw.com/civil-rights-
Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2008
Excellent coverage of the women’s movement in the overview/civil-rights-u-s-supreme-court-
USA, accompanied by essential documents. decisions.html
l Youth movements:
Internet resources Links to student and anti-war movements in the
l Library of Congress portal with thousands of 1960s: www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_
sources on African Americans, Native Americans docs/Sixties.html and www.jaysleftist.info/
and Women: directory/subjects/history.htm
l Women in Latin America:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
l Native Americans, First Nations, Amer-Indians: Also from the excellent University of Texas portal
A portal with many links to websites on North on all things Latin American: http://lanic.utexas.
American native peoples: www.multcolib.org/ edu/la/region/women/
homework/natamhc.html Films
A Brazilian website devoted to the many
There are several documentaries that fit in well
indigenous tribes in Brazil: http://pib.
with this book. Among them are:
socioambiental.org/en
l African-Americans and the Civil Rights l Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years,
Movement: 1954–1965. This six-hour series covers important
An excellent site with transcripts, film and events in the early years of the movement.
interviews: l Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial

www.teachersdomain.org/special/civil/ Crossroads, 1965–1985. Eight hours of

US National Archives resources for teachers. documentary film which includes sections on
Many excellent sources on the Civil Rights Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and the Black
Movement: www.archives.gov/education/index. Panthers.
html l We Shall Remain: America Through Native Eyes.

Interesting links to important sources on the Seven-and-a half hour series on Native
Civil Rights Movement: www.hartford-hwp.com/ Americans. Of particular interest is the last
archives/45a/index-b.html episode. It details the 1973 standoff at Wounded
l Martin, Malcolm and the Black Power Knee.
movement: l Black in Latin America. The Afro-Latino

From the World History Archives site, many links experience in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and
to articles about Martin Luther King Jr, as well as Peru is explored.
documents by King: www.hartford-hwp.com/ All of the above are from pbs.org
archives/45a/index-bc.html
An interesting collection of sources relating to
Malcolm X: www.malcolm-x.org/docs/
l Afro-Latinos:
Many resources for the African diaspora in Latin
America, some in English, especially those in the
International Resources section:
http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/african/

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 Internal assessment

The internal assessment is a historical investigation on a historical topic. Below

is a list of possible topics on Civil Rights and Social Movements that could
warrant further investigation. They have been organized by chapter theme.
Native Americans and civil rights in the Role of governments in Civil Rights
Americas Movements in the Americas
1 How was the Peruvian government able to 1 How was President Johnson able to pass the
defeat the Sendero Luminoso? Civil Rights Act of 1964?
2 Why did the American Indian Movement 2 Why did the Sandinista government
seize and occupy the town of Wounded persecute the Miskito tribe in Nicaragua?
Knee? 3 How effective were President Eisenhower’s
3 What cultural impact did Canadian residential race policies?
schools have on First Nations children in the
twentieth century? Youth culture and protests of the
1960s and 1970s
African Americans and the Civil Rights 1 What factors led the Mexican government to
Movement carry out the Tlatelolco Massacre?
1 How did the NAACP contribute to the Civil 2 Why did the Chicago police attack protesters
Rights Movement? at the 1968 Democratic National
2 What impact did the Freedom Riders have Convention?
on public opinion? 3 Why was the 1969 Moratorium the USA’s
3 Why did the US Supreme Court agree to ‘greatest ever anti-war protest’?
hear civil rights lawsuits in the 1950s?
Feminist movements in the Americas
Martin, Malcolm and Black Power 1 What role did women play in the Nicaraguan
1 Why was Malcolm X assassinated? revolution?
2 What factors led to the demise of the Black 2 To what extent did the National Organization
Panthers? for Women improve working conditions for
3 Why did Malcolm X break from the Nation women in the USA?
of Islam? 3 Why was Quebec the last Canadian province
to allow women the vote?
Afro-Latin Americans
1 To what extent was Gilberto Freyre’s thesis
that Brazil was a racial democracy a myth?
2 What impact did the Cuban revolution have
on the Afro-Cuban community after 1959?
3 What led to the growth of Afro-Brazilian
groups in the 1970s?

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 Index

A coca and cocaine 14, 161, 162, 163, 165,

168
Counterculture 176–7, 178, 181, 182, 183,
184, 185, 186–7, 189–90, 191, 221
African Americans
education 53, 54, 55, 56, 59–60, 83, 90, education 126, 154–5, 156, 157, 159, 162 Cuba 125, 188
92, 93, 106–7, 109, 116, 143, 145, 150 gas dispute 164–6 education 126
historical tensions 53–4 indigenous population 154–7, 160–8 foreign visits 129, 130
impact of Second World War 56 military governments 159–61 racism 123, 137
National Revolution 157–9 women’s rights 206–7, 215–18
origins of Civil Rights Movement 54–5
protests 16
see also individuals and specific
movements; Civil Rights Acts; USA
water wars 162–3, 164–5
Brazil
D
Abortion 200–1, 202, 206–7, 212, 215, 216, Divorce 200, 202, 210, 212
employment opportunities 126
219, 225, 226, 228–9, 230–2, 234 Du Bois, W.E.B. 55
racial democracy 127
Afro-Latin Americans
racism 124, 134–6, 136, 138–9
Civil Rights Movement 128–31, 133–9
student protests 192 E
cultural developments 127 Ecuador, enfranchisement of indigenous
women’s rights 211–12
education 126, 129, 134 people 17
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) 59–60,
effect of slavery 123 Education Acts
64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 72, 98, 145–6
employment opportunities 126 Canada 38
Bush, George H.W. 36, 152, 231, 232
ideology 127 USA (1972) 31, 33–4, 83–4
labour unions 126
populations 131–3
C Eisenhower, Dwight D. 28–9, 70, 71–2,
Canada 145–6
sympathetic regimes 125–6 Enfranchisement 12, 15, 17, 40, 53, 54, 56,
counterculture 186–7
Alcatraz Island 31 58, 61, 68, 71–2, 76, 80, 82–3, 94, 95,
government 40, 41–3, 46–7
American Indian Movement (AIM) 30–2, 96, 98, 99, 148–9, 158, 196, 202, 203,
Supreme Court rulings 40, 41, 44–5, 46,
40, 46 208, 211, 212–13, 218, 221
49
American Indian Religious Freedom Act Essays 4–5
women’s rights 196–201
(1978) 36 Examination questions 3–4, 6
youth culture 186–7
Árbenz, Jacobo 21–2 ‘analyse’ questions 51–2
see also First Peoples
Arévalo, Juan José 21
Cardinal, Harold 42, 43, 198 ‘assess’ questions 121–2
Argentina
Castro, Fidel 125, 129, 137, 188, 191, 215–18 ‘compare and contrast’ questions 235–8
student protests 192
Catholic Church 13–14, 15, 23, 131, 134, ‘evaluate’ questions 171–3
women’s rights 208–11
204, 207, 213, 218, 219 ‘in what ways and with what effects’
Aymara 15, 18, 154, 155, 160, 161, 162,
Chiapas 12, 19–21, 24, 191 questions 194–5
164–5, 167
Chicago riots 178–80 ‘to what extent’ questions 86–8
Aztecs 10
Chile ‘why’ questions 140–1
Pinochet dictatorship 213–14 see also Essays
B women’s rights 212–15, 217, 218, 226,
Barrios de Chúngara, Domitila 16
Biographers
230, 232
Civil Rights Acts
F
Farmer, James 56, 74, 111, 116
Bernstein, Irving 84 (1957) 71–2
Clegg, Claude Andrew 105, 118 Feminism, see Women’s movement
(1960) 72
Haley, Alex 108, 118 First Peoples
(1964) 68, 78, 80–2, 83–4, 98, 148–9,
Marable, Manning 118 discrimination 39, 43–4, 44–6
224, 227
Pearson, Hugh 114 education 38, 40, 44, 48
(1968) 33
Perry, Bruce 118 see also individual countries and civil effect of European settlement 38–9
White, John 67 rights movements living conditions 38–9, 43, 48–9
Black muslims, see Nation of Islam Clinton, Bill 18, 36, 153, 232 militancy 38, 40
Black Panthers 112–15, 116, 119, 180, 181, Coalition of Workers, Peasants and residential schools 47–8, 49
185 Students (COCEI) 19 self-government 46–7
Black Power 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, Cold War 18, 29, 101, 109, 144, 178 White Paper (1969) 40, 41–3, 48
104, 105, 108–19, 149, 150, 187 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 56, see also Canada; Land rights
Bolivia 72, 74–5, 92, 95, 96, 98, 105, 108, 110, Freedom Rides 74–5, 77
Agrarian Reform Law 158 111, 115, 116, 177, 223 Friedan, Betty 221, 222–3, 224, 231, 234

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 G Kirkwood, Burton 21 K
García Pérez, Alan 18 Klein, Herbert 154, 157 Katari, Tupac 160, 161, 162
Garvey, Marcus 55, 101–2, 114, 118 Lawson, Steven 100, 101 Kataristas 160
Ghettos 30–1, 43, 55, 82, 90, 91–3, 94, 95, Lytle, Clifford 37 Kennedy, John F. 29, 77–8, 80–1, 84, 98,
97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107–10, MacLean, Nancy 234 99, 104, 146–8, 151, 174–5, 222
114, 116, 149, 150, 151 Marks, Paula 34 Kennedy, Robert 29, 75, 76, 78, 82
Guatemala 16, 21–4, 142, 166 Meade, Teresa 25, 135, 139, 166, 192, King Jr, Martin Luther 53, 62, 63, 64, 65,
Guerrilla groups 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 129 211, 215, 216, 217 67, 68, 69, 80, 103, 104, 109, 110, 112,
involvement of women 204, 206–7 Meier, August 17 129, 139, 149
student 191–2 Meyerowitz, Joanna 234 assassination attempt 97–8
Morales, Waltraud 157, 162, 163, 165 Chicago campaign 91–5
H Morris, Aldon 67, 68, 101 comparison with Malcolm X 105–8
Hampton, Fred 114–15 Matusow, Allen J. 185 importance to Civil Rights Movement
Hippies 176–7, 186–7, 190 Newman, Mark 67, 68, 100 98–100
Historians 7, 101, 117–18, 127, 147, 185 Oates, Stephen 83 Vietnam War 94–5, 97
Ambrose, Stephen 71, 182 Ogbar, Jeffrey 119 Where Do We Go From Here? 97
Andrews, George Reid 125, 127, 131, on Martin Luther King Jr 63 see also Chicago riots; Watts riots
134, 137, 139 Parman, Donald 37 Klarman, Michael 68
Arocha, Jaime 169 Patterson, James 101 Ku Klux Klan 60, 65, 112, 116
Badger, Anthony 100 Payne, Charles 68
Bracey, John 117
Brennan, Mary 185
Pearcy, Thomas 24 L
de la Peña, Guillermo 13, 25 Land rights
Brock, Lisa 135 First Nations people 38, 40, 41, 42,
Powledge, Fred 100
Bumsted, J.M. 42, 43, 45, 47, 186, 198, 44–6, 47, 48, 49
Reagan, Leslie 234
199 Latin America 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15–16,
Rosen, Ruth 234
Carson, Clayborne 64, 100, 101, 118 18, 19–20, 21–2, 24, 25, 128, 154,
Rossinow, Doug 185
Chafe, William 68, 179, 180, 228, 234 155–6, 157–60, 162, 163, 164, 167
civil rights movement 67–8 Rout, Leslie 138
Rudwick, Elliot 117 Native Americans 27–8, 30, 32–3, 34,
Cluff, Mary Lynn 211 36, 37
Conrad, Margaret 39, 40, 197 Sitkoff, Harvard 67
Sloan, Kathryn 202, 205, 212, 215, 218, Latin America indigenous population
Cornell Stephen 37
220 activism 12–17, 169–70
Crawford, Vicki 101, 234
statistics, use of 11 conquerors and attitudes towards them
Debo, Angie 28
Sugrue, Thomas 185 9, 10, 11
Deloria Jr, Vine 30, 32–3, 37
culture 10, 11
Dittmer, John 67 Taylor-Robinson, Michelle 206
independence from conquerors 9
Dudziak, Mary 101 television, impact of 79
inequality 9, 10–11, 12–15, 17–18, 25–6
Escandón, Carmen Ramos 218 Tobar, Marcela Rios 215
land rights 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15–16, 18,
Evans, Sara 234 Tuck, Stephen 67, 101
19–20, 21–2, 24, 25, 128, 154, 155–6,
Fairclough, Adam 55, 67, 101 Tyson, Timothy 119
157–60, 162, 163, 164, 167
Fausto, Boris 139, 192 Van Cott, Donna Lee 169
proportion of population 11, 12
Finkel, Alvin 39, 40, 197 Van Deburg, William 119
racial divisions 10
Fixico, Donald 28, 36, 37 Wade, Peter 169 women’s rights 202–8
French, John 211 Williams, Yohuru 119 see also specific countries and individuals
Gabin, Nancy 234 women’s movement 234
Garrow, David 68, 91 Liberation theology 13–14
Zolov, Eric 189–90
Gates Jr, Henry Louis 127, 130, 138,
139 M
Gitlin, Todd 185
I Malcolm X 77, 79, 102, 103–5, 110, 113,
Incas 11, 154, 191 118, 129, 135
Gott, Richard 129, 130
Hale, C.R. 170 Indian Self-Determination Act (1974) 33 comparison with Martin Luther King Jr
Harley, Sharon 119 International Labour Organization (ILO) 105–8
Haynes, Keith 17, 21, 204, 207, 217 Convention 169: 14–15, 18 Mayans 20
Heale, Michael 183, 184, 221 guerrilla group in Guatemala 21–4
Heineman, Ken 185 J Menchú, Rigoberta 16, 24, 25
Jaquette, Jane 206, 207, 219 Jim Crow laws 54, 55, 59, 64, 73, 98, 100, Meredith March 94, 96–7, 110, 111
Joseph, Peniel 118, 119 143, 145, 148, 151 Mestizos 9, 11, 19, 166
Keen, Benjamin 17, 21, 204, 207, 217 Johnson, Lyndon 30, 33, 80–1, 82, 83–4, Mexico
Kicza, John 25 91, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 109, 144, Afro-Latin Americans 130, 138
Kirk, John 67 148–51, 226 counterculture 189–90, 191

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 Index

education 203 P T
effect of revolution 10 Parks, Rosa 56, 60, 62–3, 64, 65, 135 Till, Emmett 61
mestizo domination 18–21, 127 Perón, Eva 192, 208–9 Tlatelolco Plaza 189, 190, 191
national identity 9, 10 Perón, Isabel 129 Toledo, Alejandro 18
student movement 188–91 Perón, Juan 126, 208–9 Trail of Broken Treaties 32
women’s movement 203, 205, 218–19 Peru Truman, Harry S. 28, 57–8, 144–5, 146
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party enfranchisement 17, 203
Tupamaros 191
(MFDP) 80, 110 government sympathetic to indigenous
Montgomery bus boycott 62–5, 67–8, 71, population 14, 18
72–3, 94, 98, 100, 101, 146 oil and gas 18 U
Morales, Evo 161, 163–9, 205 politicization of the peasants 13 Unión de Comuneros Emiliano Zapata
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo 209–10 rebellion 15 (UCEZ) 19
unionization 16 United Nations 16–17, 22, 114, 131, 161,
N women’s rights 203, 205, 206 166, 167, 205, 214, 215, 231
Uruguay 191–2
Nation of Islam 102–4 see also Shining Path
National Association for the Pinochet, Augusto 213, 214 USA
Advancement of Colored People Powell, Adam Clayton 56, 92, 97 affirmative action 151–2
(NAACP) 29, 54, 55–6, 59–61, 62, 63, counterculture 176–7, 178, 181, 182–3,
64–6, 67, 68–71, 72–3, 76, 78, 80, 81, Q 184, 185, 221
83, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100–1, 105, 107, Quechua 14, 15, 18, 154, 155, 156, education 27, 29, 31, 33, 37, 53, 54, 55,
109, 110, 112, 114, 119, 126, 143–4, 159, 161 56, 59–60, 83–4, 90, 92, 106–7, 187,
145, 146, 231 223, 225, see also African Americans,
National Congress of American Indians R education
(NCAI) 29–30 Racism ERA amendment 225, 226, 228–9, 230
National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) 30 African Americans 65, 68, 75, 77, 143, federal system of government 24
National Organization for Women 175, 178, 231 New Deal 55, 67, 144
(NOW) 224–5, 226, 228, 231, 232, Afro-Latin Americans 123, 124, 128, New Left 175–6
233 131, 133–7, 138–9 Second World War 2, 28, 55, 56, 57, 67,
Native American Housing and Self- First Nations people 44, 187 73, 221, 143, 145, 150, 234
Determination Act (1996) 36 Latin America 17, 165, 166 student protests 174–6, 178–82
Native Americans Native Americans 27, 30 Supreme Court rulings 30, 34, 36, 54,
effect of European settlement 27 see also Enfranchisement 55–5, 227–8, 230–1, 232, 233
Eisenhower years 28–9 Rainforests 15, 17, 18 women’s movement 221–34
impact of Second World War 28 Randolph, A. Philip 55, 56, 58, 62, 67, 78,
see also African Americans; Native
increased assertiveness 29–37 98, 109, 144
Americans
land rights 27–8, 30, 32–3, 34, 36, 37 Reagan, Ronald 36, 37, 151–2, 177, 230–2
Red Power 30–1
litigation 33
populations 34, 35 Richardson, Gloria 119, 227 V
Rivera, Diego 10 Venezuela 125
Roosevelt years 27–8
Roe v. Wade 228, 229, 230, 234 education 126
Truman years 28
Voting Rights Act (1965) 68, 82–3, 98, 107,
victims of racism 27
writers 32 S 148–9, see also Enfranchisement

see also Indian Self-Determination Act Sandinista National Liberation Front 18,
(1974); Native American Housing 142, 204, 207 W
and Self-Determination Act (1996) Seale, Bobby 112, 113–14, 181 Washington, Booker T. 55
Second World War 2, 28, 55, 56, 57, 67, 73, Watts riots 91, 109, 149
Newton, Huey 112, 113–14
94, 128, 203, 211, 212–13, 221, 234 Whitening 123, 127, 138
Nicaragua 132
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) 15 Williams, Robert 119
black groups 169
Southern Christian Leadership Women’s movement
rebellions 15, 18, 20–1, 142, 204
Conference (SCLC) 65, 68, 72–5, 76,
women’s rights 205, 206–7 Canada 196–201
77–8, 80, 82–3, 91–5, 96, 100, 101,
Nixon, E.D. 62, 67 Latin America 202–20
105, 110, 112, 223
Nixon, Richard 30, 32, 33, 110, 115–6, 151, USA 221–34
Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating
179–81, 182, 183, 222, 226 Committee (SNCC) 73–4, 76, 80, Wounded Knee 32
82–3, 96, 98, 105, 108, 110–11, 112,
O 115, 116, 146, 147, 177, 178, 223 Z
Occupation 30, 31, 32, 161, 175 Suárez, Hugo Banzer 160 Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Oil and gas 18, 28, 45, 164 Subcomandante Marcos 20–1 (EZLN) 20, 21

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 The publishers would like to thank the following for Shapes of Baptist Social Ethics by Larry McSwain and
permission to reproduce material in this book: William Lloyd Allen, 2008. Monthly Review Press, Let Me
Oxford University Press for extracts from A History of Speak! by Domitila Barrios de Chúngara, 1978. William
the Canadian Peoples by J.M. Bumsted, 2007. SR Books Morrow, Bearing the Cross, by David Garrow, 1999. New
for an extract from The Indian in Latin American History: York University Press, Black in Latin America by Henry
Resistance, Resilience and Acculturation edited by John Louis Gates Jr, 2011. Orbis Books, Martin and Malcolm
Kicza, 1999. University of Mississippi for extracts from and America by James Cone, 1991. Oxford University
transcripts of interviews with Freedom Riders (© The Press, Afro-Latin America: 1800–2000 by George Reid
University of Mississippi). Andrews, 2004; Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and his
Times, Volume I, by Robert Dallek, 1991; The Unfinished
The publishers would like to acknowledge use of the Journey: America Since World War II by William Chafe,
following extracts: 2003. Palgrave, The History of Latin America by Marshall
Curtis Brown for an extract from The Feminine Mystique Eakin, 2007. Palgrave Macmillan, The History of Brazil
by Betty Friedan, Penguin Classics, 2010. Edinburgh by Robert Levine, 1999. Penguin, The Autobiography of
University Press for an extract from The Sixties in America: Malcolm X by Malcolm X, 1965; The Penguin History of
History, Politics and Protest by M.J. Heale, 2001. UCLA for Canada by Robert Bothwell, 2006. Playboy , Martin Luther
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Lives and Views, edited by June Hahner, 1984. Houghton Recordings Program, University of Virginia, An extract
Mifflin for extracts from A History of Latin America: from President Johnson’s words to Walker Stone,
Independence to the Present by Benjamin Keen and Keith prominent conservative editor of the Scripps Howard
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Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission. Pearson for Broadcasting Service. Saturday Evening Post, Extract on
extracts from A People’s History of the United States by Malcolm X’s autobiography, 1964. Simon & Schuster,
Howard Zinn, 1996. Truman by David McCullough, 1992; Eisenhower by
Stephen Ambrose, 2003. Stanford University. http://
Acknowledgements: teacher.scholastic.com. Texas A&M University Press,
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the Caribbean by Kathryn Sloan, 2011. www. 2001. University of California Press, The Papers of Martin
bolivianconstitution.com, Constitution of the Plurinational Luther King Jr., III edited by Clayborne Carson,1997.
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‘Indians of All Tribes’ from Alcatraz, 1969. Peniel Joseph Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders,
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legacy’, 2006. Longman, Sweet Land of Liberty by Robert Publishers will be pleased to make the necessary
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