Christopher Carlson
Professor Strickland
AFROAM 236
October 3, 2012
Government’s Role in Black Equality
During the beginning of the black rights movement, the United States government performed little or no action to promote black equality. The thought process of most white people during the early 1900s was that they were superior to any other race. The white population used any ways to stop black people from gaining any rights. The black population was refused the right to vote by techniques such as grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and literacy tests. During the 1930s, the government started to get minimally involved. “The Roosevelt Administration began the desegregation of federal rest rooms, cafeterias, and secretarial pools.” Some black people wanted to keep protesting for more rights, but due to the Second World War, the protests were put aside. Due to the mechanization of cotton production, black families were forced to abandon farms and were attracted into the city for new jobs. The New Deal and the Second World War had tarnished the hopes of for the federal government to give black people civil rights and economics possibilities. The new fear of communism was used against the black rights movement to disrepute any civil rights action. As the 1950s progressed, the federal government stepped up in the involvement of the civil rights movement, and played an even bigger role in the 1960s.

In the 1950s, the high court decided to stop Jim Crow on the railroad dining carts. They also decided that separate-but-equal seemed unachievable. Brown decided that separate but equal was not true. Brown would set a precedent for making any state segregation unconstitutional. This gave the black population confidence that they could chall...

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