The experience of black Americans and the obstacles of segregation, prejudice and the Ku Klux Klan, the development of the civil rights campaign, the role of key individuals and groups, and the gains and limits of the movement by 1968.

What this key area is asking

The SQA wants you to explain the experience of black Americans between 1918 and 1968, the obstacles they faced, how the civil rights movement developed, the role of key individuals and groups, and how far the movement succeeded. This is a European and World option assessed by extended-response (essay) questions, so you must weigh factors and judge how much really changed.

The experience of black Americans and the obstacles

• Segregation. "Separate but equal" Jim Crow laws, upheld by Plessy v Ferguson (1896), kept schools, transport and public facilities segregated and unequal.
• Disenfranchisement. Literacy tests, poll taxes and grandfather clauses kept most Southern black citizens off the voting rolls (in Mississippi only around 5 per cent were registered by the early 1960s).
• Violence and prejudice. Lynching and the revived Ku Klux Klan (around four million members in the 1920s) terrorised black communities; in the North, the Great Migration met discrimination in jobs and housing, creating ghettos.

The development of the civil rights campaign

• Legal route. The NAACP pursued court cases, winning Brown v Board of Education (1954), in which the Supreme Court under Earl Warren ruled school segregation unconstitutional, overturning Plessy.
• Direct action. The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955 to 1956), sparked by Rosa Parks and led by King, the Greensboro sit-ins (1960), the Freedom Rides (1961), the Birmingham campaign (1963, where police used dogs and fire hoses on live television) and the March on Washington (August 1963) put mass pressure on the system.

The role of individuals and groups

• Martin Luther King led the non-violent campaign through the SCLC and inspired millions, notably with his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech.
• The NAACP, SCLC, SNCC and CORE organised legal cases, voter registration and protests.
• Malcolm X and Black Power. More radical voices, including Malcolm X (of the Nation of Islam until 1964) and the Black Power movement (Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers from 1966), rejected non-violence as the only method and stressed black pride and self-defence.

The gains and limits by 1968

By 1968 legal segregation and voting barriers had largely been dismantled and black voter registration in the South rose sharply. But de facto segregation, poverty, unemployment and inner-city deprivation persisted, especially in Northern cities; the urban riots (Watts 1965, Detroit 1967) and King's assassination in April 1968 showed how much remained undone. The achievement was real but limited.

Examples in context

A strong analytical paragraph weighing King's leadership might run: "Birmingham in 1963 shows both King's importance and its limits. King deliberately chose a city with a violent police chief, Bull Connor, so that the televised images of dogs and fire hoses turned against unarmed protesters would shock national opinion and pressure President Kennedy. The strategy worked and helped produce the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yet Birmingham succeeded only because thousands of ordinary activists, including schoolchildren, filled the jails, and because the NAACP's earlier legal victories had already established the principle of desegregation. King supplied leadership and publicity, but the movement was always larger than one man." This makes a point, supports it with precise detail, and reaches a balanced judgement.

Try this

Q1. Which 1954 Supreme Court case ruled school segregation unconstitutional? [1 mark]

• Cue. Brown v Board of Education.

Q2. Name the two major civil rights laws won in 1964 and 1965. [2 marks]

• Cue. The Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).