Six Degrees of Segregation: Teaching the Long Civil Rights Movement – Part 4 Transportation

1. Six Degrees of Segregation: Teaching the Long Civil Rights Movement – Part 4Transportation Yohuru Williams, PhD Vice President for History Education The American Institute for History Education

2. Part 4: Transportation & Public Accommodations

3. Document Spotlight: A Pennsylvania Judge Endorses (1867)

4. Transportation Morgan v. Virginia (1946) • In July 1944, 27-year-old Irene Morgan, from Gloucester County, Virginia boarded a Greyhound Lines intercity bus for Baltimore, Maryland, where she planned to see a doctor. The mother of two sat down four rows from the back of the bus, in the section marked "colored" people. When a white couple boarded and needed seats, the driver told Morgan and her seatmate to move farther back. Morgan refused.

5. The First Freedom Rides • Morgan's case inspired the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, during which 16 activists from the Chicago-based Congress of Racial Equality rode on interstate buses through the Upper South to test the enforcement of the Supreme Court's ruling. The activists divided themselves between Greyhound and Trailways bus lines and usually rode with an interracial pair in the white-area of the bus, with the other activists disguised as disinterested observers in the racial sections that applied to them.

6. Morgan v. Virginia (1946) • The group traveled uneventfully through Virginia, but once they reached North Carolina they encountered violence and arrests. By the end of the Journey, the protesters had conducted over 24 "tests" and endured 12 arrests and dangerous mob violence. Famous civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, in a flagrant violation of the Irene Morgan decision, was sentenced to 22 days on a chain gang in North Carolina for his participation in the Journey. The 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, far ahead of its time in its use of tactics of nonviolent direct action, inspired the highly publicized Freedom Rides of 1961, also organized by CORE.

7. Transportation & Public Accommodations • The Civil Rights Act of (1875) • The Civil Rights Cases of (1883) • Plessey v. Ferguson (1896) • Jim Crow Laws and State Laws on Color • The Civil Rights Act of (1957) • The Sit-Ins • The Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Katzenbach v. Mclung (1965)

8. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 • With the Federal Government and States like Ohio once again fighting for equal rights for all citizens segregationist found fewer ways to evade the law. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade racial discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodation engaged in interstate commerce. Ollie McClung, the owner of Ollie's Barbecue in Birmingham, Alabama, continued to refuse service to blacks after the passage of the Act, and brought suit against Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach contesting the Act's enforcement.

9. The 14th Amendment

10. Ollie’s Argument • While serving a mainly-local clientele, Ollie's Barbeque served approximately 500,000 meals annually, grossing $350,000. The restaurant could serve a maximum of 220 diners at any given time and had 36 employees, 26 of whom were black. The question before the Court was whether Title II was a valid exercise of the power of Congress as applied to Ollie's restaurant.

11. The Government’s Argument • Between July 1, 1963 and July 1, 1964, Ollie's Barbeque purchased almost $70,000 of beef and pork from Hormel. The beef and pork had traveled in interstate commerce to arrive at the restaurant.

12. Katzenbach v. McLung 1964 • While the owner of Ollie's Barbeque argued that the refusal to serve blacks did not burden interstate commerce to an extent that Congress could legitimately prohibit such discrimination, the Supreme Court disagreed. In an opinion authored by Justice Clark, the Court found that discrimination in restaurants posed significant burdens on "the interstate flow of food and upon the movement on products generally." Additionally, discrimination posed restrictions on blacks who traveled from state to state. Accordingly, Congress's passage of the Act to resolve this problem was appropriate and within its bounds to regulate interstate commerce.

13. Part 5: Employment

14. Unfair Labor Practices

15. One of the primary fears was ensuring that Blacks would continue to work in the South

16. This led to southern whites to seek to resurrect a labor system similar to slavery through a variety of unfair labor practices • Sharecropping • The Crop Lien System • Tenant Farming • Debt Peonage

17. Sharecropping • Sharecropping arose at the end of the Civil War out of the plantation system. Many planters had ample land but little money for wages. At the same time most of the former slaves were uneducated and impoverished. The solution was the sharecropping system, which continued the workers in the routine of cotton cultivation under rigid supervision. Economic features of the system were gradually extended to poor white farmers.

18. Sharecropping • The cropper brought to the farm only his own and his family's labor. Most other requirements—land, animals, equipment, and seed—were provided by the landlord, who generally also advanced credit to meet the living expenses of the cropper family. Most croppers worked under the close direction of the landlord, and he marketed the crop and kept accounts. Normally in return for their work they received a share (usually half) of the money realized.

19. Sharecropping • From this share was deducted the debt to the landlord. High interest charges, emphasis on production of a single cash crop, slipshod accounting, and chronic cropper irresponsibility were among the abuses of the system. Farm mechanization and a marked reduction in cotton acreage have virtually put an end to the system.

20. Debt Peonage • Document Spotlight: The Married Life of Georgia Peons

21. Segregation • If Southern whites seemed intent on maintaining Black labor they were equally insistent that Blacks occupy a separate social status than whites. Several factors fed this including • Fear of miscegenation • Anxiety about Black domination (revenge) • Fear of losing political control to Blacks • Fear of losing economic advantages • Anxiety over losing social status to blacks

22. The Segregationist Impulse • While most students would believe that segregation was most common and prevalent in the South, in fact many northern communities displayed the same fears.

23. Unfair Labor Practices • The Mississippi Black Codes • Vagrancy Laws • The 13th Amendment • Tenant Farming • Sharecropping • The Crop Lien System • Debt Peonage • Segregated Unions

24. Employment: Document Spotlight: The Married Life of Georgia Peons • During the antebellum period, Georgia and the rest of the South relied heavily on slave labor for farming and jobs that required hard labor. But with emancipation and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery as an institution and a form of labor became illegal. After the Civil War (1861-65), landowners had a difficult time finding, and controlling, a labor force.

25. Document Spotlight: The Married Life of Georgia Peons • Some Georgians saw the prisoners at the state's penitentiary in Milledgeville as the solution to their problems—a workforce that could be firmly controlled. Georgia leaders were also concerned about the costs associated with operating a penitentiary, as the prison population increased and included many more African Americans. In an effort to resolve these issues, officials during Reconstruction (1867-76) approved the leasing of prisoners to private citizens.