The Fight for Equal Opportunity: Blacks in America - From Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

INTRODUCTION

In 2008 the Democratic Party nominated Barack Hussein Obama, an African-American, to represent the party in the U.S. presidential race. This was, indeed, a historic event: a Black American being nominated to become the most powerful person in the world. On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama became America’s forty-fourth president and first Black president.

This landmark event was part of a long journey for African-Americans to achieve equal opportunity. To overcome the many obstacles they faced, minds and hearts had to be changed, and laws enforced—the former being a facilitator of the latter.

During our two-hundred-year history of slavery, negative attitudes about Blacks became deeply ingrained in the minds of America’s dominant group. Whites believed Blacks to be inferior, even less than human. Southerners commonly believed that the Bible supported the concept of the inferiority of Blacks. While negative attitudes about Blacks were pervasive in the South, even Northerners did not believe Blacks were equal to Whites.

So how did we, as a nation, move toward the historic moment when Americans would elect a Black president by a large majority?

As an African-American with a thirty-year record of service in the U.S. Air Force, followed by a twenty-year career with Tuskegee University, I have had the opportunity to make a study of the history of civil rights in the United States, with a particular interest in how issues of race and civil rights have played out in the military. Our progress as a nation toward the ideal of equality for all—which we have long cherished, but not always successfully implemented—has been incremental, impassioned, and often painful. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we can take pride in the election of America’s first Black president as a magnificent symbol of progress toward equality of opportunity for Blacks, and indeed, for all Americans.

As Americans, our pride is deepened and our appreciation for the struggles and vision of our ancestors is enriched when we study the path we have taken to reach this point. Most importantly, understanding our history as a nation is illuminating. Our grasp of the actions taken by our predecessors serves as a beacon to inform our actions, goals, and dreams as we move into the future.

Commenting in the New York Times on a recent study on racial inequality, University of Virginia assistant psychology professor Noelle Hurd observes: “Research has shown that youth who are aware of racial discrimination and whose parents have prepared them tend to be less negatively affected when it happens. When teaching children about racism, it is incredibly important to highlight all of the ways in which blacks have resisted mistreatment and persisted in the face of adversity. This includes learning about black heroes and heroines. Racial pride has been associated with better academic and mental health outcomes.”1

To examine how we got where we are today, this book will focus on two remarkable leaders: General Benjamin O. Davis Jr. and Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. I have chosen these men to represent the countless men and women who have contributed to the fight for equality of opportunity. We find in their stories energy, commitment, and vision—qualities we must all embody as we continue to move toward equality for all.

Gen. Davis and Dr. King made their contributions just before and at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, when the walls of segregation began to crumble. Before their time, America had already undergone a century of national civil-rights struggle. The brief summary that follows is expanded upon in subsequent chapters.

emancipation proclamation

A hostile environment existed in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation order that freed slaves in rebellious territories of the South. Also in 1863, War Department general order 143 created the U.S. Colored Troops, allowing freed slaves to engage in the fight for their own freedom. Approximately 186,000 African-Americans served in the Union Army in the U.S. Colored Troops.2 This infuriated Southerners, further poisoning the environment in which freed slaves would reside.

Slaves were not only freed into a hostile environment, but most were freed without any assets or means by which to support themselves. Because they had no other options, many slaves were forced to enter into a subordinate relationship with their previous slave masters. Thus a form of slavery, or a forced servitude akin to slavery, persisted for some eighty years after slavery was abolished. One of the more common relationships was known as sharecropping, under which the sharecropper worked the farmland of the owner in exchange for a place to live, loans during the crop year, and an end-of-year payment. Often the sharecropper’s year ended in a debit rather than a credit, forcing the sharecropper to stay for at least another year.

reconstruction

During the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War (1865-1877), Constitutional Amendments and laws were passed that were intended to help freed slaves be recognized as U.S. citizens and enjoy all rights and privileges afforded individuals with such status. The Thirteenth Amendment of 1865, which freed all slaves, was followed in 1868 by the Fourteenth Amendment, making them citizens, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870), which gave Black men the right to vote. As a result of the Fifteenth Amendment, a large number of Blacks were elected to state and national offices, increasing the number of Republican lawmakers.3 Since Republicans favored intervention in the South and more aid to former slaves, the new Black lawmakers were able to facilitate the passing of impressive civil rights laws.

the first civil rights act

Soon after the Civil War, despite turbulence and hostility, the first civil rights bill was passed in 1866 with a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, overturning President Andrew Johnson’s veto.

From the Civil Rights Act of 1866, “An act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their vindication”:

…[A]ll persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens of every race and color, without regards to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit to all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, to the contrary notwithstanding.4

the second civil rights act

The next Civil Rights Act, designed to provide Blacks with equal access to public accommodations, was passed in 1875 by the last multiracial Congress of the nineteenth century, and was considered a major achievement at the time.

From the Civil Rights Act of 1875, “An act to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights”:

Whereas, it is essential to just government we recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its dealings to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political; and it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental principles into law:

Therefore, be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.5

the 1883 supreme court decision

The two Civil Rights bills of 1866 and 1875 were not successful because they lacked sufficient support by Whites, and in 1883 the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional. The decision, which nullified equal access to public accommodation for Blacks, reflected the makeup of the 1883 Supreme Court, mostly Southerners.

Furthermore, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, dislike for Blacks turned into hatred: the nation saw the rise of lynching, riots, and terrorism. The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866, after the first Civil Rights Act, with stated goals to assert White supremacy and to terrorize Blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities. The organization still...