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Unlock This CourseBy 1957 the Supreme Court had ruled against segregated schools and buses, but Congress had passed no civil rights law since 1875. Remember, Southern senators could kill any bill with a filibuster.
President Eisenhower's government now proposed a bill that was mainly about voting. Only about one in five black adults in the South was registered to vote. Eisenhower found voting rights easier to support than mixed schools, and his Republican Party hoped to win black votes in the North.
The bill was steered through the Senate by Lyndon Johnson of Texas, the leader of the Democrats there. He wanted a law to pass without splitting his party, so he let Southern senators cut the bill down. Even then Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spoke against it for 24 hours and 18 minutes on 28-29 August 1957, the longest speech any senator had made. It did not work. Eisenhower signed the Act on 9 September 1957.
Key terms:
It set up the Commission on Civil Rights and the Civil Rights Division. It also allowed the federal government to ask a federal court for an injunction against anyone who stopped, or threatened, a citizen trying to vote. For the first time since the 1870s, protecting black voters became a job for the federal government, not just for the states.
The Senate removed a section that would have let the government go to court over other civil rights, such as school segregation. It also added a jury trial rule: an official who defied an injunction could, in serious cases, be tried by a jury. Southern juries were all white, so a guilty verdict was very unlikely. The Commission could only report. It could not punish anyone.
The results were small. Cases had to be fought slowly, one county at a time, before Southern judges who often favoured segregation. By 1960 fewer than three in ten black adults in the South were registered, and far fewer in Mississippi. Congress passed a second Civil Rights Act in 1960 to tighten the rules, which shows the first was not working. Some campaigners said the 1957 Act was too weak to be worth having. Roy Wilkins, the leader of the NAACP, accepted it as a start.
The Klan was first formed in the South in the 1860s, after the Civil War. It was refounded in 1915 and had millions of members in the 1920s, but it then shrank, and its national organisation closed in 1944.
The Brown ruling of 1954 brought it back. Many white Southerners feared that the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Little Rock were the start of the end of segregation. Some joined the White Citizens' Councils, which used jobs, loans and politics as weapons. Others, often poorer white men, turned to the Klan and to violence.
The new Klan was far smaller than in the 1920s and was split into rival groups. The largest, the U.S. Klans, was set up in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1955 by Eldon Edwards. In 1958 it was thought to have 12,000 to 15,000 members. Klansmen wore white robes and hoods, held night rallies and burned crosses to frighten black families. They also beat, bombed and murdered.
The Klan could act so freely because some local policemen were members or supporters, and all-white juries rarely found white men guilty of attacking black people.
It spread fear. Black people who tried to register to vote, or who joined the NAACP, knew they risked their homes and lives. This is one reason why the 1957 Act added so few voters.
It did not stop the movement. Leaders such as Shuttlesworth carried on. Reports of bombings also shocked many people in the North and showed that black Southerners needed federal protection.
Don't write that the 1957 Act ended segregation or gave black Americans the vote. It dealt only with voting, and it was too weak to change much. Don't describe the 1950s Klan as a mass movement of millions either: that was the 1920s. In the 1950s it was small, divided and violent.
'The main reason why black Americans made only limited progress towards civil rights in the years 1954-60 was the violence of the Ku Klux Klan.'
How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks]
You may use the following in your answer:
You must also use information of your own.
I agree only to a small extent. Klan violence frightened black Southerners, but progress was limited mainly because Southern state governments and a weak federal government blocked change.
Klan violence did hold back progress. The Klan revived after the Brown ruling of 1954, and Klansmen bombed the home of Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham in 1956 and murdered Willie Edwards in Montgomery in 1957. All-white juries rarely convicted such men. This meant that black people who tried to register to vote risked their lives, so many did not try. However, the Klan was small and divided, with perhaps 15,000 members in its largest group, and it failed to stop the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The weakness of Congress mattered more. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first since 1875, but Southern senators removed its power over school segregation and added a jury trial rule that made punishing officials very unlikely. Its Commission on Civil Rights could only report. As a result, fewer than three in ten black adults in the South were registered by 1960. This shows that even when Congress acted, Southern politicians could make sure a law changed little.
The most important reason, from my own knowledge, was the resistance of Southern state governments. In 1956 Alabama banned the NAACP, the organisation that had won the Brown case. At Little Rock in 1957 Governor Faubus of Arkansas used the National Guard to keep nine black students out of Central High, and he later closed the city's high schools for a year. Voters rewarded him by re-electing him in 1958. States could resist like this because President Eisenhower never backed Brown in public and sent troops only when a mob forced him to. As a result, very few black children in the South attended mixed schools by 1960.
Overall, Klan violence was not the main reason. Judged by which factor blocked progress across the whole South, state governments mattered most, because they controlled the schools, the voting registers and the police in every county. The Klan was strongest only where those governments let it act freely, and the 1957 Act was weak because the same Southern politicians had cut it down in Congress.
What lifts this to the top level: it covers three reasons (one not in the bullets), argues both for and against the statement, and reaches a judgement using a stated test, which factor blocked progress across the whole South.
An answer that uses only the two bullets cannot reach the top level. Here, bring in a third reason from earlier in this key topic, such as Governor Faubus at Little Rock or the Southern Manifesto, and use your conclusion to say which reason did most to hold back progress and why.