Primary Sources: The 1950s: Race & Ethnicity

"Alan Paton’s first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), communicated the tragic dimensions of South Africa’s system of apartheid to a world audience. In 1954, Paton was asked by Collier’s magazine to observe and interview Americans about this country’s system of racial segregation. In the first of two articles, Paton interviewed students, government officials, NAACP members, church leaders, and soldiers in Washington, D.C., and in the Deep South around the time that the Supreme Court, in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, ruled segregated “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional. Like earlier visitors from abroad—such as St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Gunnar Myrdal—Paton offered a uniquely comparative perspective as he searched for answers on the current state of segregation and future prospects for the integration of American institutions." GMU History Matters

1950 Superman Poster Urged Kids to Defend All Americans, Regardless of Their Race, Religion or National Origin

“Don’t believe those crackpot lies about people who worship differently, or whose skin is of a different color, or whose parents come from another country. Remember our American heritage of freedom and equality!”

"Fox News and Fox Movietone News camera crews covered the people and events of the country and, indeed, the world. From 1919 to 1963 these journalists aimed their viewfinders at the mundane and the spectacular."

"The story of Mary Alexander, the first African American model to appear in Coca-Cola advertising. Mrs. Alexander is from Ballplay, Alabama and became a model for Coke in 1955, appearing in Ebony magazine."

"This digital collection contains exhibit documents, exhibit images, interview documentation, and oral histories. Not all items are open to the general public. Some audio oral histories have not been transcribed in English and Spanish. If you wish to assist the library with transcribing and/or translating these interviews, please contact Matt Cook. Additional materials are located in the University Archives."

"This series documents efforts to secure quality education for Black students in the Los Angeles area in the years 1950-2000. This includes the issues of integration/desegregation, increasing the numbers of Black teachers and administrators and the struggle against discriminatory hiring practices, securing equitable resources and safe learning environments, and maximizing achievement levels."

"... makes available scores of archival photos, documents and oral histories about the case [Braden sedition] and connects viewers to a trove of resources to contextualize civil rights movement history in Louisville, Kentucky and throughout the U.S.A."

"Although not segregated by law, in the 1950s and 60s whites and African Americans lived separate lives in the city of Yazoo, Mississippi. African American interviewees talk about their living conditions, education, jobs, and time in the military. Other topics include the role of the church in society, resistance to racial integration in public schools, racial discrimination in the workplace and fair employment opportunities, and the African American boycott of Yazoo's downtown shops in 1969. Also discussed in detail is an incident in 1955 where an NAACP petition was submitted to the White Citizens Council of Yazoo City, asking for complete desegregation of public schools."

"This series documents black women’s activism in Los Angeles from 1950 to the present, showing how women’s roles in the professions and in religious, civic, and social organizations translated into community activism to address disparities in education, healthcare, housing and political rights and access."

"The Bracero History Archive collects and makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the states in America."

"From the 1950s through the 1970s, movements for civil and social rights, equality, and justice swept the United States."

"Newspaper clippings, correspondence, and documents highlighting housing development, infrastructure, and integration issues in Dallas in the 1950s and 1960s."

"Alan Paton’s first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), communicated the tragic dimensions of South Africa’s system of apartheid to a world audience. In 1954, Paton was asked by Collier’s magazine to observe and interview Americans about this country’s system of racial segregation. In the first of two articles, Paton reported on race relations in Washington, D.C. and in the Deep South around the time that the Supreme Court declared that segregated “ separate but equal” public schools were unconstitutional in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The following letters to the editor express a range of reactions to the Court’ s decision and to Paton’ s undisguised support for the ongoing “ war against segregation.” " GMU History Matters

"This multi-media web site brings the vital history of Seattle's civil rights movements to life with scores of video oral histories, hundreds of rare photographs, documents, movement histories, and personal biographies, more than 300 pages in all. Based at the University of Washington, the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is a collaboration between community groups and UW faculty and students."

"The writer Audre Lorde (1934 - 1992) describes her experiences growing up as
a Black lesbian in New York City in the 1950s, touching on subjects such as
frequenting gay and lesbian bars in the Greenwich Village and communal-style
living experiments. She reads excerpts from her book, Zami: A new spelling of
my name: a biomythography (Persephone Press, 1982). Recorded at Hunter
College in New York. Produced by Helene Rosenbluth."

"Voces Oral History Project is the leading Latino oral history archive in the United States. It began in 1999, with a mission of capturing untold stories of Latinos and Latinas who served, in the military or on the home front, during World War II.

Our archive has expanded to include the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and Political and Civic Engagement, focusing on the continuing fight for Latino civil rights.

Our goal is to continue to add collections to fill the gaps in the history of Latinos in America. To that end, we have assisted the National World War II Museum in New Orleans; the StoryCorps Historias collection; numerous PBS documentarians, both local and national, who have used our photographs in their works; the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th Anniversary brochure. We have served as a resource for hundreds of journalists, with contacts, photographs and information. We have also served as a resource for textbook publishers and academics who have sought out our interviews and photos."

"... produced by the Virginia Civil Rights Movement Video Initiative, a non-profit organization incorporated in 2002 to produce videotaped oral histories of leaders of the Civil Rights movement in Virginia. "

"Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1946 that a Virginia statute requiring segregated seating interfered with interstate commerce and was thus invalid, Jim Crow travel laws remained in effect in the South. In the follow 1954 testimony to a House committee hearing on proposed legislation to end segregated travel, an attorney for the National Council of Negro Women argued that discriminatory practices were contrary to foundational American principles and recounted the humiliating arrest of a member of the WACS for disobeying a bus driver’s order to move from her seat. The bills under consideration never made it to the House floor for a vote. In 1956, following a boycott by the black community of Montgomery, Alabama, against the city’s segregated bus system, the Supreme Court ruled segregation on buses unconstitutional." GMU History Matters

"In the following interview, Pete Tijerina, a member of LULAC and the first executive director of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), discussed all-Anglo juries and other discriminatory conditions in Texas society in the 1950s and 1960s. "

"As television spread images of the subsequent mob violence around the world, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the following radio and television address on September 24, 1957, announced his reluctant response. Despite his disapproval of the Brown decision, Eisenhower, couching his address in the language of law and order, Cold War propaganda, and national pride, became the first president since Reconstruction to send Federal troops to protect the rights of African Americans. Although the nine students enrolled, resistance to desegregation continued as Faubus closed Little Rock high schools the following year and the number of desegregated schools in the South dropped precipitously in the ensuing years."

"The following letter submitted to a House committee holding hearings in 1954 on legislation to end segregated travel attested to the substandard condition of railroad cars for blacks. The bills under consideration never made it to the House floor for a vote. In 1956, following a boycott by the black community of Montgomery, Alabama, against the city’s segregated bus system, the Supreme Court ruled segregation on buses unconstitutional." GMU History Matters

"Although the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race, by 1957 only 20 percent of eligible African Americans voted, due in part to intimidation and discriminatory state requirements such as poll taxes and literacy tests. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first such Act since 1875, ostensibly sought to remedy the situation, but in its final weakened form, the legislation served more as a symbol. For example, an amendment allowed officials charged with denying voting rights to be tried by juries, service on which was restricted in the South to whites only. The law, however, also created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent government agency of six commissioners formed to investigate charges of civil rights deprivations, collect information on discrimination, and advise the President and Congress on the topic. In the following 1958 hearing, a taxpaying African American related roadblocks he encountered when trying to register to vote."

"Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1946 that a Virginia statute requiring segregated seating interfered with interstate commerce and was thus invalid, the following testimony in 1954 by former Air Force lieutenant Thomas Williams revealed that Jim Crow travel laws remained in effect in the South and that seats for blacks were unequal to those available to whites. Although Williams stressed the need for federal legislation, the bills under consideration by the committee never made it to the House floor for a vote. In 1956, following a boycott by the black community of Montgomery, Alabama, against the city’s segregated bus system, the Supreme Court ruled segregation on buses unconstitutional."

"Alan Paton’s first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), communicated the tragic dimensions of South Africa’s system of apartheid to a world audience. In 1954, Paton was asked by Collier’s magazine to observe and interview Americans about this country’s system of racial segregation. For this second of two articles, Paton, a co-founder and president of the Liberal Party of South Africa, traveled to urban areas in the West and North in order to relate personal stories behind practices such as the restrictive covenant in housing markets, mob violence against blacks in housing projects, and discrimination in employment. Despite the widespread racial injustice he found, Paton predicted that “segregation is dying” in the U.S. due in large part to the struggles of blacks themselves. He concluded that Americans could find hope in the “advance of the Negro” and the recent Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education." GMU History Matters

"Journalist Theodore H. White received widespread acclaim for his “The Making of the President” series that analyzed election campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. As White points out in the following Collier’s article, African-American migration to Northern cities from the South made the black voter an important player in national politics by the mid-1950s. From 1910 to 1970, more than 6.5 million African Americans came North, with 3 million arriving in cities between 1940 and 1960. During the 1956 presidential campaign, Democratic Party candidate Adlai Stevenson attempted to win this black vote by voicing support for the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing segregated schools, a ruling incumbent President Dwight D. Eisenhower had refused to approve. Stevenson’s appeal to black voters, however, was muted by his opposition to using Federal funds or troops to enforce desegregation, a position he adopted to avoid alienating southern voters. In addition, in the 1952 race, Stevenson had selected as his running mate a segregationist Senator from Alabama, John Sparkman. In October, African-American Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., announced his support of the President, and on election day, more than 60 percent of black voters also chose Eisenhower. This marked a shift in party allegiance by blacks who had voted overwhelmingly Democratic since the 1930s, when many changed from the party of Lincoln to support Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although Eisenhower’s rout of Stevenson was attributed more to foreign affairs than domestic, the black vote continued to be a major factor in national politics. " GMU History Matters

"In 1954, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education dramatically changed American society. The Court reversed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that racially segregated public facilities were not inherently discriminatory. After the 1954 ruling, states could no longer apply “separate but equal” to public schools, in part because of segregation’s psychological effects on children. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the Court’s decision that the separation of Negro children “from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” In 1955, the Court ordained that desegregation of public schools should proceed “with all deliberate speed.” The following investigative report tells the story of one adolescent’s ordeal to persevere in the face of mob rioting as his family was forced to comply with consequences of the Court rulings. "

"In 1954, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education dramatically changed American society. The Court reversed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that racially segregated public facilities were not inherently discriminatory. After the 1954 ruling, states could no longer apply “separate but equal” to public schools, in part because of segregation’s psychological effects on children. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the Court’s decision that the separation of Negro children “from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” In 1955, the Court ordained that desegregation of public schools should proceed “with all deliberate speed.” As the South reacted to these rulings, two Atlanta fathers, both professionals, related for a popular magazine their experiences discussing race relations with their young sons. " GMU History Matters