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

By Willie Jackson

About the Book
The Fight for Equal Opportunity: Blacks in America chronicles African American leadership in modern times, focusing on two of the most magnetic and essential figures in the struggle for racial equality: General Benjamin O. Davis Jr. and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Beginning with slavery, this book recounts the history of civil rights legislation throughout the twentieth century and sheds light on the arduous and valiant strides African American leaders made so that one day they could see one of their own become president of the country that enslaved them.

About the Author
Willie Jackson is a veteran of the United States Air Force, having served for thirty years. He retired from Tuskegee University after twenty-seven years of service, and served one year on the faculty at the Air Force University located on Maxwell Air Force Base. Jackson currently resides in Montgomery, Alabama.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886838329

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PROLOGUE

Blacks were enslaved in North America during the first half of the 1600s, freed in 1863, and during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War enjoyed, at least on paper, all the civil rights of any American citizen. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court nullified those civil rights near the end of the nineteenth century, and Blacks entered the twentieth century as second-class citizens. Still, Blacks and Whites worked together during Reconstruction and enacted the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendments into law. These amendments were instrumental in the fight for equality during the twentieth century

Despite the Supreme Court’s regressive decision, events occurred that aided Blacks in their fight for equality. During World War I, Blacks fought with the French in France. After that experience they began to fight back against racial attacks in America. Also, federal programs created to ease the effects of the Great Depression of 1929 helped Blacks. The Defense industry, in its preparation for World War II, created jobs. During World War II, the Army Air Corps set up an all-Black pursuit squadron. Although Blacks were initially against the segregated project, the school produced some of the best pilots in the Air Force. One of those pilots was Benjamin O. Davis Jr. The unit he led played a major role in prompting integration of the armed services, an important victory in Blacks’ fight for equal opportunity and the civil rights movement.

In 1936, after graduating thirty-fifth in a West Point class of 276 and becoming the twentieth century’s first Black West Point graduate, Davis attempted to join the Army Air Corps. Because he was Black, he was rejected. Subsequently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the first Black Flying Squadron. Davis became the commander. Under Davis’s leadership, the 99th Fighter Squadron and later the 332nd Fighter Group performed outstandingly. The exceptional performance of the Black pilots, who became known as the Tuskegee Airmen, and Davis’s stellar leadership, were the catalysts for racial integration in the United States military and later America as a whole.

Military integration was only applicable on military installations. Once Black servicemen left the base, they were mistreated and discriminated against, the same as other Blacks. In 1954 the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools, eliminating the 1896 Separate but Equal Doctrine that had effectively made discrimination legal. The Supreme Court decision applied to a specific area, however: public schools. Blacks could still be denied hotel and restaurant accommodations, and were discriminated against in myriad other ways. The full experience of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness was not available to Blacks, mostly in southern states but also in some northern states.

Despite these limitations, after the military services were integrated, many Black veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and some from World War I used the G.I. Bill to advance their education and become middle class citizens. Black veterans worked with Martin Luther King Jr., the recognized leader of the civil rights movement, to get the U.S. Congress to enact the 1964 Public Accommodations Bill, the 1965 Voting Rights Bill, and the 1968 Housing Bill. These signature bills became law and played a significant part in increasing the opportunities for Blacks and others to experience the Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness shared by the majority of Americans.

This book tells how a people enslaved for over 240 years progressed to a point where one of their own could become president of the country that enslaved them, and the leader of the free world.

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 exists.

As we can see, the legislative branch of the government was active in the fight for civil rights. It passed two Civil Rights Acts, neither of which was enforced by the executive branch; and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was overturned by the judicial branch. In short, thus far only one branch of government was active in securing equality of opportunity for African-Americans.

Nevertheless, in 1896, the fight for civil rights went back to the judicial branch in the Plessy versus Ferguson case.

Plessy Versus Ferguson

Homer Plessy, a thirty-year-old shoemaker who was one-eighth Black, unlawfully sat in the White car of an East Louisiana Railroad and was arrested. He went to court, claiming that the Separate Car Act violated his constitutional rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Plessy went first to the state court, which ruled against him, and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court, which also ruled against him, declaring that separate but equal accommodations for Whites and Blacks was acceptable.

The 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court case was, to say the least, interesting. Homer Plessy was seven-eighths White and White in appearance. The train official had to be told that there was a Black sitting in the train car reserved for Whites; otherwise the official would not have known that Plessy was Black. Since appearance seems to have been what really mattered, there must have been many other Blacks sitting in the same section where Plessy was sitting.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling was an eight-person majority decision; again, the Court consisted mostly of Southerners. The decision seems to have been based on social thinking concerning the inferiority of Blacks to Whites, rather than on the U.S. Constitution or rights of all U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court’s majority seemed not to want socially advanced Whites to associate with the less advanced Blacks. Justice Henry Brown, writing for the majority, wrote the following:

That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery..., is too clear for argument... A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races—a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color—has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races... The object of the [Fourteenth] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. ⁶

Justice John Harlan, the lone dissenter, wrote the following:

Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law... In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case... The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution.⁷

Over the years, Justice Harlan’s comments proved to be extremely insightful.

Separate but equal

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling was a serious setback to the effort to change hearts and minds to support equality of opportunity for African-Americans. The Separate but Equal doctrine started with train cars, but eventually covered restrooms, bus stations, theaters, public schools, and many other areas. Since Blacks started from where they were, the Separate but Equal doctrine became, in practice, the Separate but Unequal doctrine, effectively relegating African-Americans to second-class citizenship and institutionalizing racialism: It became lawful to discriminate against Blacks. There was no such law for other minorities, just Blacks.

For over fifty years after the Separate but Equal decision, nothing was heard from the judicial branch of the government. However, the executive branch made two positive contributions to the fight for equality of opportunity for African-Americans. In 1941, under pressure from civil rights groups and the urgent need for more federal workers to support the war effort, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued executive order 8802, prohibiting discriminatory employment practices in war-related work. Seven years later, in 1948, President Harry S. Truman made a somewhat more significant contribution to equality of opportunity for Blacks, though still war- or military-related. President Truman issued executive order 9981, which effectively racially integrated the military. Although under pressure from civil rights groups and sensitive to the need to improve American’s image across the world, it is also said that President Truman acted because he was dissatisfied with the treatment Black solders received after World War II.

Brown Versus Board of Education

Despite the advances of the 1940s, the 1896 Supreme Court’s Separate but Equal doctrine stood until 1954, when the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation in the Brown versus Board of Education case. By 1954, some minds and hearts had been changed: The 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision was unanimous. The change is particularly welcome when we must consider that the Court included two former Ku Klux Klan members: Hugo Black, an Associate Justice, and Earl Warren, the Chief Justice who led the 1954 Supreme Court to its unanimous decision.

Three years later—after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a White man, after Martin Luther King became the leader of the civil rights movement, after the U.S Supreme Court ruled against legalized segregation in public transportation, and after the lynching of a fourteen-year-old African-American boy named Emmett Till—President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, introduced the 1957 Civil Rights Bill.⁸ Eisenhower supported and pushed the bill through.

The 1957 Civil Rights Bill started the Civil Rights program, which included the 1964 Voting Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The 1957 Civil Rights Bill was designed primarily to address voting rights for African-Americans. At the time, however, not enough minds and hearts had been changed to allow a voting rights bill to pass intact. This was best represented by the fact that Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina senator, set a filibuster record by talking for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an attempt to keep the 1957 Civil Rights Bill from passing. Just two hours or less after Senator Thurmond set his filibuster record, a watered-down, ineffective 1957 Civil Rights Bill Passed, 65-15.

By 1960, the number of Blacks voting in the South had not increased; in fact, there was a slight decrease. However, knowingly or unknowingly, the 1957 Civil Rights Bill paved the way for more effective legislation for securing and protecting voting rights and for ending legal segregation. It created a position of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, a presidential appointee. Also, a Civil Rights Division was established, to be commanded by the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was amended in April of 1960, perhaps due to the decrease in Black voters between 1957 and 1960. A voting-referee system was established: Federal district judges were instructed to appoint referees to enroll voters in areas where local authorities had denied voting rights. Other changes included a requirement for local authorities to maintain voting records for twenty-two months, which allowed federal authorities to determine if any law had been broken. Another April 1960 amendment made it illegal to use threats or force to interfere with or stop federal court orders, curbing mob violence. Additionally, the Civil Rights Commission was established to address concerns regarding race relations.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act

On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation, introducing a Civil Rights Bill equal to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. His bill banned discrimination in public accommodations and provided more protection for the right to vote. Unlike the Civil Rights Bill of 1875, President Kennedy’s Civil Rights Bill was introduced into an environment that contained significant enforcement mechanisms, such as those enacted in 1960.

By 1963, all three branches of the government—executive, legislative, and judicial—seemed to be working together regarding civil rights for Blacks. This is a dramatic contrast to the previous century, when, in the 1870s and 1880s, the executive branch of the federal government was absent (no enforcement), and the judicial branch was working against the legislative branch, rescinding the 1875 Civil Rights Act and declaring that Separate but Equal was acceptable.

Nonetheless, the 1960s were turbulent. One of many terrorist acts during the Civil Rights movement occurred on Sunday, September 15, 1963, when the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed, killing four little Black girls. This despicable act may have caused a few more progressive Whites to support the civil rights movement.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. However, the Civil Rights Bill that he initiated was signed into law on July 15, 1964 by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the vice president who ascended to the presidency after Kennedy’s death. The Bill became known as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The formal title was as follows:

An Act to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.⁹

The 1964 Civil Rights Bill precisely covered Whites and protected women. The bill included a prohibition on sex discrimination. However, the bill did not include protection against police brutality or a way to stop discrimination in private employment, and it did not allow the Justice Department to initiate desegregation or job discrimination lawsuits. The 1964 Civil Rights bill also did not eliminate literacy tests, a primary method used by Southerners to exclude Black voters. Blacks who were attempting to vote were said to often have been asked questions such as, How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?

The 1965 Civil Rights Act

Perhaps in part because of the remaining inequities, in 1965 only a small measure of success had been made in the area of enforcing voting rights for Blacks. Some areas saw no success at all; enforcement mechanisms were completely ineffective. Terrorism was still rearing its ugly head; two voting rights activists were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. On March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers staged an unprovoked attack on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on their way to the state capital in Montgomery. These occurrences provided impetus to the president and Congress in their efforts to overcome Southern lawmakers’ resistance to voting rights. President Lyndon Baines Johnson called for and got a stronger Voting Rights Law.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed the use of literacy tests to deny or abridge the right to vote. Among other provisions, the Act allowed the U.S. Attorney General to determine if changes to existing voting procedures or new procedures are discriminatory. The Act also provides for federally supervised elections.

Soon after the 1965 Voting Rights Act became law, Blacks’ voter registration increased sharply. For example, in the State of Mississippi, Blacks’ voter registration went from 7% to 74%. Other Southern states showed similar increases.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act has been amended several times, but it is still the law in the year 2018. President George W. Bush signed into law the Voting Rights Act (VRA) Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006, in effect extending the 1965 Voting Rights Act for twenty-five years.

Current Status of Civil Rights

In terms of equal rights or equality of opportunity for Blacks in America, what is the status today? The VRA has been extended for twenty-five years, and America has elected its first Black president. While