154154 Chapter 5 | Civil Rightsin the South. But blacks’ northward migration to urban areas throughout the first
half of the twentieth century transformed the nation’s demographic profile and its
racial politics. America’s “race problem” was no longer just 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. Moreover, blacks largely were hired
for the lowest-paying menial jobs.
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 deliberate speed.” These events
set the stage for the growing success of the civil rights movement, discussed later in
this chapter.Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans
The legacy of slavery and racial segregation in the South has been the dominant
focus of U.S. civil rights policies, but many other groups have also fought for equal
rights. Native Americans were the first group to come in contact with the European
immigrants. Although initial relations between the Native Americans and the
European settlers were good in many places, the settlers’ appetite for more land
and their insensitivity to Native-American culture soon led to a state of continual
conflict. 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 Civilized Tribes” from the southeastern United States following the
enactment of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Thousands of Native Americans died on
the Trail of Tears on their way to reservations in Oklahoma.^11 Native Americans had no
political rights; indeed, through much of the nineteenth century the U.S. government
considered them “savages” to be eliminated. They did not gain the universal right
to vote until 1924, just after women and well after black men. Although the U.S.
government signed treaties with Native-American tribes that recognized them as
sovereign nations (not as foreign nations but as “domestic dependent nations”),^12 in
practice the government ignored most of the agreements. Only in recent decades has
the government started to uphold its obligations, although compliance remains spotty.
Native Americans have struggled to maintain their cultural history and autonomy in
the face of widespread poverty and unemployment.
Latinos have also struggled for political and economic equality. The early history
of Latinos in the United States is rooted in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848)
and the conquest by the United States of the territory that today makes up most of the
southwestern states. Since that time, Mexicans have resided in large numbers in the
Southwest. Although Latinos had long experienced prejudice and discrimination,
one of their first major political successes was Cesar Chavez’s effort to organize
farmworkers in the 1960s and 1970s. He established the United Farm Workers Union
and forced growers to bargain with 50,000 mostly Mexican-American fieldworkers in
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