Why were black people considered to be second class citizens in America during 1945 and up until 1960?

Answer 1

The simple, single word answer is "Racism." Racism may be defined as "the prejudice that members of one race are intrinsically superior to members of other races" (Princeton University definition). In These United States, black people in particular, and all other "nonwhite" races, and certain religions, and women, have far too much been treated as second class from the very beginning. It remains sometimes a sad, ugly fact of American life, but we're working on it. We have just elected our first African American president in history. Before that, we had our first black secretaries of state (back to back, one of whom was a woman). In each case, it really seemed that skin color was not a factor! Our problem is a human one: progress is painfully slow, but like the tortoise, we get there.

When Thomas Jefferson in 1776 wrote that "All men are created equal," it's no secret that what he meant - was Men: White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant Christian, Propertied and very often slave owning White Men. The framers of the Constitution began, "We the people …," but it's also no secret that in 1787, "The People" meant White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant Christian, Propertied and very often slave owning White Men.

It is precisely because of this peculiarity of our Founding Fathers that, as national attitudes gradually changed, sometimes with great violence, the nation has been on a collective guilt trip since the 18th Century.

But you specifically asked about black people between 1945 and 1960 (for purposes of this discussion I shall use the common terms "white" and "black," although I dislike both: we are, all of us humans, varying shades of brown). Racism is the curse and tragedy of the entire world (see under Darfur), but it was especially a curse and a tragedy in the USA because of slavery. We Americans are to this day struggling with the poisonous legacy of slavery. It caused our Civil War, it caused what we call Jim Crow in the post Civil War south, it has caused immeasurable pain and suffering for all "nonwhite" people, sometimes right down to the present minute, despite our having elected a person of color to the Presidency. Our present Attorney General, Eric Holder, himself a person of "mixed race" has said, rightly or wrongly, that America is a Nation of Cowards because we Americans cannot look racism (or any other -ism) in the eye and deal with it honestly.

During World War 2 (≈1942-1945), black citizens served in every branch of the military, but the military was strictly segregated. Black men were put into units that consisted entirely of black men, but their officers were usually white, because the conventional wisdom of the time, even as late as the 1940's, was that black people couldn't do anything right unless they were led by white people. Nevertheless, thousands of black men in uniform distinguished themselves in the fight to the death against Fascism, which is itself nearly synonymous with Racism. This experience changed the black veteran and helped lead to the Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968).

Also during World War 2, black citizens served in every war industry. Thousands flocked from south to north where the industries were and faithfully helped build the fabulous American war machine that did so much to defeat the Axis Powers. This experience also changed the black citizen and helped lead to the Civil Rights Movement.

But in 1945 the war ended, and an economic recession began. War industries downsized and returned to peacetime pursuits, or disappeared altogether. At the same time tens of thousands of white soldiers returned from the battlefronts looking for jobs. Blacks, even black veterans were immediately displaced, but with no jobs they had nowhere to go. They couldn't return to the south where many had come from. There were even fewer jobs there. So they stayed where they were, in crowded black ghettos, where they made their way as best they could while crime and violence tended to rise, and the northern white population lifted its collective nose and sneered, "Typical."

But blacks by this time had had enough. In the north they were jammed into ghettos and denied work. Their children were allowed to go to integrated schools, but many white teachers dismissed black children as "not as smart" as whites, which could become a self fulfilling prophecy. In the south blacks were subjected to laws that prohibited them from "whites only" schools, movie theaters, drinking fountains, and space on the bus (President Barack Obama could not have taken a sip from a "whites only" water fountain in, say, Alabama as late as 1965). The great catalytic moment came in 1955, when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks, tired and with sore feet, refused to stand on a Montgomery, Alabama bus so that a white man could sit. She was, she said, "Tired of giving in."

In 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order integrating the armed services. It wasn't until 1954 that the last all-black unit was fully assimilated, and the armed forces didn't at first like it, but it was a beginning, and a powerful beginning.

By 1960, the whole country was beginning to change in its attitudes. In the north, as more and more black people began to appear and do well in teaching and doctoring and business and government and professions, northern whites were forced to take a second look at their assumptions about the competency of black people. On February 1, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four young black students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Ordinary (black) kids with extraordinary courage, enduring not only not being served, for months, but having food and liquid dumped on them, yet enduring nevertheless. Their courage and determination triggered other nonviolent protests across the southern U.S. Black leaders began to challenge Jim Crow in nonviolent marches and demonstrations. In December, 1960, a flurry of obscure Supreme Court decisions begins to legally dismantle Jim Crow in the south.

There was a long road ahead, and many murders and lynchings, some very famous. For us who lived it, it seemed to start with the murder in 1963 of President John F. Kennedy. No one knows what the motive was, and there is no evidence that Kennedy's support of civil rights had anything to do with it, but it seemed to trigger a cascade of assassinations and attempted assassinations. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in 1968. Senator Robert Kennedy, running for president, was murdered in 1968. President Lyndon Baines Johnson refused to run again in 1968, exhausted from the growing debacle in Vietnam, but also Johnson had been at the forefront of not-always-popular civil rights legislation. Yet, by 2008 this "racist" nation overlooked the darker color of a man's skin and judged him on the Content of his Character and elected him President of the United States. There is hope for us.

Answer 2

In 1955 African Americans were very discriminated against and Jim Crow laws were in full force. They couldn’t vote until 1968 with the voting act. They had no civil rights. Children had to attend schools that were only for African American students, women couldn’t use dressing rooms, restrooms were locked, drinking fountains were segregated, restaurants were segregated, buses were segregated and colleges were segregated.