African American Odyssey Introduction
| Overview
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Exhibit
Sections:
Slavery
| Free
Blacks | Abolition
| Civil
War | Reconstruction

Booker T.
Washington Era | WWI-Post
War | The
Depression-WWII | Civil Rights Era |

The Civil Rights Era
Part 1: Desegregation
| Civil Rights
in the Arena and on the Stage
Part
2

The post-war era marked a period of unprecedented energy against the second
class citizenship accorded to African Americans in many parts of the nation.
Resistance to racial segregation and discrimination with strategies such as
civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, marches, protests, boycotts, "freedom
rides," and rallies received national attention as newspaper, radio, and
television reporters and cameramen documented the struggle to end racial
inequality. There were also continuing efforts to legally challenge segregation
through the courts.

Success crowned these efforts: the Brown decision in 1954, the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 helped bring about the demise of
the entangling web of legislation that bound blacks to second class citizenship.
One hundred years after the Civil War, blacks and their white allies still
pursued the battle for equal rights in every area of American life. While there
is more to achieve in ending discrimination, major milestones in civil rights
laws are on the books for the purpose of regulating equal access to public
accommodations, equal justice before the law, and equal employment, education,
and housing opportunities. African Americans have had unprecedented openings in
many fields of learning and in the arts. The black struggle for civil rights
also inspired other liberation and rights movements, including those of Native
Americans, Latinos, and women, and African Americans have lent their support to
liberation struggles in Africa.

Few other institutions can present the African American mosaic of life and
culture as completely as the Library of Congress. The Library's photographs,
film footage, newspapers, magazines, manuscripts, and music holdings chronicle
this period better than any other collection in existence. In addition to the
NAACP and NUL papers, the Library also holds papers of civil rights activists
such as Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Patricia Roberts Harris, A. Philip
Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Mary Church Terrell, Robert Terrell, Nannie Helen
Burroughs, and others. Although the quest may not be fully realized, the
Library's collections document the relentless and significant process of
pursuing full equality.

Desegregation

President
Harry Truman Wipes Out Military Segregation

Press release for Executive Order
No. 9981, establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment
and Opportunity in the Armed Forces.
July 26, 1948.
Typescript
document.
NAACP Collection, Manuscript Division.
(9-1)
Courtesy of NAACP

On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued two executive orders.
One instituted fair employment practices in the civilian agencies of the
federal government; the other provided for "equality of treatment and
opportunity in the armed forces without regard to race, color, religion,or
national origin."

"By Executive Order--President Truman
Wipes Out Segregation in Armed Forces."
Chicago Defender, July
31, 1948.
Copyprint from microfilm.
Serial and Government Publications
Division. (9-2)
Courtesy of the Chicago Daily Defender,
Chicago, Illinois.

This was a major victory for civil rights advocates in the quest for
full citizenship.

Land Where Our
Fathers Died

Oliver W. Harrington (1912-1995) knew he wanted to become a cartoonist
during grade school, when drawing caricatures made him feel better about
disturbing situations. Harrington received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree
from Yale University. In 1951, he left the United States, but continued to
provide cartoon strips for American newspapers. His images address the
social and political injustices of capitalism and racism. Harrington's
Dark Laughter strip first appeared in The Amsterdam News in
May 1935.

Oliver W. Harrington.
Dark
Laughter.
"My Daddy said they didn't seem to mind servin' him on
the Anzio beach head. . ."
Published in the Pittsburgh
Courier,
April 2, 1960.
Crayon, ink, blue pencil, and pencil on
paper.
Prints and Photographs
Division. (9-28)
Courtesy of Dr. Helma Harrington

Psychological
Effects of Racism

Kenneth B. Clark.
The Genesis
of Racial Identification and Preferences in Negro Children,
1940.
K. B. Clark Papers, Manuscript Division. (9-15)

In the "doll test," popularized by social psychologists Kenneth
Bancroft Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, children were given a
black doll and a white doll and asked which one they preferred. Most black
children preferred the white doll, to which they also attributed the most
positive characteristics. During court trials relating to segregated
schools, the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund enlisted Kenneth
Clark's services as an expert witness on the detrimental effects of racial
exclusion and discrimination. The Defense Fund lawyers also submitted a
report that explained the test results to the Supreme Court as evidence in
the Brown v. Board of Education case. In a unanimous ruling in 1954, the
court found that separate schools were inherently unequal and specifically
cited the Clark report.

Thurgood Marshall
on "Saving the Race"

Thurgood Marshall was the first African American to serve on the U. S.
Supreme Court. His legal career began with the NAACP. Many of the NAACP's
records reveal Marshall's grueling traveling and meeting schedule, as well
as his acute sense of humor, even in the face of threats from whites and
distrust by African Americans. After the inauspicious beginning of a case
challenging the Texas primary, Marshall wrote this memo.

Thurgood Marshall to the NAACP,
Tuskegee Institute, Research Department.
November 17, 1941.
NAACP
Collection, Manuscript Division.
(8-16)
Courtesy of the NAACP

Brown
Decision--Separate Is Inherently Illegal

George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall,
and James Nabrit, congratulating each other, following Supreme Court
decision declaring segregation unconstitutional,
1954.
Copyprint.
New York World-Telegram and Sun Photograph
Collection, Prints and Photographs
Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-111236
(9-11)
Courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos.

Beginning in 1950, the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys
worked on a school desegregation case originating in Charleston, S.C. In
1952 the case came before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose members decided to
hear it with cases from Delaware, Virginia, Kansas, and the District of
Columbia under the collective title Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers argued the case and won. Brown
marked a landmark victory in the fight for full citizenship, offering hope
that the system of segregation was not unassailable.

Daisy Bates and
The Little Rock Nine

Daisy Bates to Roy Wilkins, December 17,
1957, on the treatment of the Little Rock Nine.
Holograph
letter.
NAACP Collection, Manuscript Division. (9-18a)

Arkansas-born Daisy Bates worked as a crusading newspaper
owner-journalist, becoming president of the Arkansas NAACP. After the 1954
Brown school-desegregation decision, Little Rock school board officials
decided to begin desegregation of Central High School in September
1957.

The Little Rock Nine, ca
1957-60.
Copyprint.
NAACP Collection, Prints and Photographs
Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-119154
(9-18b)
Courtesy of the NAACP

Arkansas governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to
preserve order, a euphemism for keeping the nine prospective African
American students out. However, on September 25, 1957, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed
paratroopers to carry out the desegregation orders of the federal courts.
Bates supported the students throughout the year and with them received
the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1958.

The Montgomery
Bus Boycott

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person in
Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested in December 1955, she set off a
train of events that generated a momentum the civil rights movement had
never before experienced. Local civil rights leaders were hoping for such
an opportunity to test the city's segregation laws. Deciding to boycott
the buses, the African American community soon formed a new organization
to supervise the boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).
The young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Reverend Martin
Luther King, Jr., was chosen as the first MIA leader. The boycott, more
successful than anyone hoped, led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning
segregated buses.

"5,000 at Meeting Outline
Boycott; Bullet Clips Bus." Montgomery, Alabama, Bus
Boycott.
Montgomery Advertiser, December 6, 1955.
Copyprint
from microfilm.
Serial and
Government Publications Division. (9-3)
Courtesy of the
Montgomery Advertiser.

James Meredith
and Ole Miss

In September 1962, a federal court ordered the University of
Mississippi to accept James Meredith, a twenty-eight-year-old Air Force
Veteran, much to the consternation of segregationists. Governor Ross
Barnett said he would never allow the school to be integrated. After days
of violence and rioting by whites, Meredith, accompanied by federal
officials, enrolled on October 1, 1962. Because he had earned college
credits elsewhere, Meredith graduated the following August without
incident.

Marion S. Trikosko. James Meredith,
Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. Copyprint. New York World-Telegram and Sun
Photograph Collection, Prints and
Photographs Division. Reproduction Number: LC-U9-8556-24 (9-8)

In 1966 Meredith began a 220-mile "March Against Fear" from Memphis,
Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. He hoped to demonstrate a positive
change in the racial climate, but he was shot soon after he commenced the
march. Civil rights leaders rallied to the cause and came to continue the
march from the point at which Meredith fell.

Civil Rights in the Arena and on the
Stage

Gospel Singer
Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia Jackson was born in New Orleans in 1911, and from childhood
sang in church. She resisted the lure to secular music saying, "When you
sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong. But when
you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on." She first
sang in church store-fronts, but as her recognition grew, she began giving
church concerts, making records, and touring the U.S. and abroad. She also
sang on radio and television. Jackson became involved with the civil
rights movement at the urging of Martin Luther King, Jr. In this
photograph she is singing at the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom at the
Lincoln Memorial--a civil rights rally, held on the third anniversary of
the Brown decision. Jackson also sang just before King's "I have a Dream"
speech during the 1963 March on Washington.

Mahalia Jackson at the May 17,
1957, Prayer Pilgrimage of Freedom in Washington, D.C.
Silver gelatin
print.
NAACP Collection, Prints
and Photographs Division.
Reproduction Number:
LC-USZC4-6177/LC-USZ62-119977 (9-16)
Courtesy of the NAACP

Jazz and the
Civil Rights Movement

Max Roach.
We Insist! Max
Roach's Freedom Now Suite.
New York: Candid Records,
1960.
Record jacket.
Motion
Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
(9-6)
Courtesy of Candid Production, LTD

Jazz performers responded to the force of the civil rights movement by
recording and performing their music. The most ambitious response was the
Freedom Now Suite of Max Roach, recorded in August and September
1960, and involving such major performers as Coleman Hawkins, Abbey
Lincoln, and Nigerian drummer Olatunji. The Freedom Now Suite was
issued on the small label Candid Records rather than on Max Roach's
regular label, Mercury.

Two Baseball
Greats

William C. Green. [Willie Mays,
standing, with his arm around Roy Campanella], 1961.
Copyprint.
New
York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Prints and Photographs Division.
(9-25)

Born in 1921 in Philadelphia, Roy Campanella was inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. Willie Howard Mays, Jr. ("Say Hey"), born
in 1931 in Westfield, Alabama, was inducted ten years later. Both
Campanella, who was a catcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers for most of his
professional years, and Mays, the third African American player in the
1951 Giants outfield, began their careers in the Negro Baseball Leagues.
Although Jackie Robinson was the first black player in the major leagues,
these other players also faced difficulties and sometimes even danger from
hostile players and fans.

Record Breaking
Hank Aaron

By hitting his 715th home run in 1974, Henry Louis Aaron, born in
Alabama in 1934, broke Babe Ruth's famous home run record at the age of
40. Some whites resented an African American taking this coveted record
and sent thousands of hate letters and threatened Aaron's life and family
as he was nearing the record. Before he retired from the Atlanta Braves,
Aaron increased the record to 755 runs and held twelve other major league
records, including most at bats, most total bases, and most runs batted
in. In 1969 the Atlanta Braves fans named "Hank" Aaron the greatest player
ever. In 1982, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Richard Scott Rennert.
Hank
Aaron.
New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993.
General Collections.
(9-26)
Courtesy of Chelsea House

The Civil Rights Era:   Part 1 | Part 2

Exhibit
Sections:
Slavery
| Free
Blacks | Abolition
| Civil
War | Reconstruction

Booker T.
Washington Era | WWI-Post
War | The
Depression-WWII | Civil Rights Era |

African American Odyssey Introduction
| Overview
| Object
List | Search