394 CHAPTER 13|CIVIL RIGHTS
profi le and its racial politics, America’s “race problem” was no longer a southern
problem. Although conditions for blacks were generally better outside the South,
they still faced discrimination and lived largely segregated lives throughout the
nation. In World Wars I and II, black soldiers fought and died for their country in
segregated units. Professional sports teams were segregated, and black musicians
and artists could not perform in many of the nation’s leading theaters. Blacks
largely were hired for the lowest-paying, menial jobs.
Real progress began in the 1940s. The Supreme Court struck down the white
primary in 1944, Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball
in 1947, and President Harry Truman issued an executive order integrating the
U.S. armed services in 1948. Then came the landmark decision Brown v. Board
of Education (1954), which rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine, followed by
Brown II (1955), which ordered that public schools be desegregated “with all delib-
erate speed.” These events set the stage for the growing success of the civil rights
movement, discussed later in this chapter.Native Americans, Asians, and Latinos
The legacy of slavery and racial segregation has been the dominant focus of U.S.
civil rights policies, but many other groups as well have fought for equal rights.
Understanding the history of these struggles is also necessary to understand
today’s civil rights policies.
Native Americans were the fi rst group to confront the European immigrants.
Though most initial relations were good, the settlers’ appetite for more land and their
insensitivity to Native American culture fostered continual confl ict. The Native
Americans were systematically pushed from their land and placed on reservations.
The most infamous example was the removal of 46,000 members of the “Five Civi-
lized Tribes” from the southeastern United States under the Indian Removal Act
of 1830. Thousands of Native Americans died on the “trail of tears” on their way to
reservations in Oklahoma.^9 Native Americans had no political rights; they were con-
sidered “savages” to be eliminated. They did not gain the right to vote until 1924, just
after women and well after black men. Although the U.S. government signed trea-
ties with them that regarded their tribes as sovereign nations (not foreign nations
but “domestic dependent nations”),^10 in practice the government ignored most of the
agreements. Only recently has it started to uphold its obligations, although compli-
ance remains spotty. Native Americans have struggled to maintain their cultural
history and autonomy in the face of widespread poverty and unemployment.
Latinos also have struggled for political and economic equality. The early his-
tory is rooted in the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and the conquest by the
United States of much of the territory that today makes up most of the southwest-
ern states. One of their fi rst major political successes was Cesar Chavez’s eff ort to
organize farm workers in the 1960s and 1970s. He established the United Farm
Workers union and forced growers to bargain with 50,000 mostly Mexican Ameri-
can fi eld-workers in California and Florida. While many Mexican Americans have
roots that go back hundreds of years, most Latinos have been in the United States
for less than two generations and have become a political force only recently,
despite now constituting the nation’s largest minority.
Latinos’ relative lack of political clout when compared to African Americans
derives from two factors. First, Latinos vote at a much lower rate than African