HIS 204 WEEK 4
A Single American Nation. When the First World War began, African-American leaders pressed the government to provide black men the right to go to combat to prove their devotion to their country. Hoping that their service would lay a stake on citizenship which the nation would have no choice but to honor, the “New Negro” of the 1920s adopted a more militant stance toward civil rights. The civil rights struggle envisioned at the time, however, made few concrete gains. Discrimination and disenfranchisement persisted.
African-American leaders responded to the Second World War much as they had to the First, offering their services while expecting recognition in return. They intended to fight a “Double-V Campaign” against fascism abroad and racism at home. They helped to kill fascism abroad; racist policies at home survived, but only for a time. Less than a decade after the war ended, the Brown case struck down the principle of “separate but equal” in schools. A grass-roots movement emerged to challenge discrimination elsewhere. By 1965, nonviolent means had murdered Jim Crow. Yet, the 60s were nothing if not a violent decade, marred by war, riots, and assassinations. By the end of the decade, Americans were as divided in some ways as they had ever been, and hopes for integration into a single American nation largely gave way to an emphasis on the unique needs and interests of different groups within the nation.
Chart the progress of the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1965. Identifying specific events from that period, explain why the movement succeeded so well during this period when similar struggles had gained so little in previous decades. Compare and contrast the different approaches to gaining civil rights adopted by different leaders in this period, those of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, for instance. Finally, explain why the Civil Rights Movement splintered at the end of the decade by discussing at least TWO of the following groups, drawing from the primary sources below:
a. Native Americans
b. Women
c. The Black Power movement
d. Chicanos
e. Students
Summarize your response by considering the following questions:
a. What precisely did the Civil Right Movement gain?
b. What objectives did it fail to achieve?
c. Why did so many new movements emerge by the end of the 1960s?
d. Was the nation more or less divided in 1970 than it had been in 1950?
When writing your response, draw from material in the following video:
a. Let freedom ring: Moments from the civil rights movement, 1954-1965
Also in your response, draw from at least TWO of the documents listed below:
a. “The bottom of the economic totem pole”: African American women in the workplace
b. The Port Huron statement of the students for a democratic society
c. “The cycle of poverty”: Mexican-American migrant farmworkers testify before Congress
d. “We must destroy the capitalistic system which enslaves us”: Stokely Carmichael advocates black revolution
e. “Self determination of free peoples”: Founding documents of the American Indian Movement (AIM)
f. “All our problems stem from the same sex based myths”: Gloria Steinem delineates American gender myths during ERA hearings
g. Gay power comes to Sheridan Square
Your initial post should be at least 200 words in length. Support your claims with examples from the required material(s) and/or other scholarly resources, and properly cite any references. Respond to at least two of your classmates’ posts by Day 7 in at least 100 words. When responding to classmates, you should refer to the material from one of the sources which you did not reference in your initial post.
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