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Flashcards in African Americans - Key people Deck (53)
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0
Q

Andrew Johnson 1808–75

A

Was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1856, where he opposed antislavery legislation. When Tennessee seceded from the union in 1862, he refused to join the Confederacy and supported Lincoln throughout the war. Chosen by Lincoln to run as his vice president in the election of 1864 because he was from the south, proslavery and yet supported the Union. However, once he became president on Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, this meant that he had no political allies. He also lacked the personal qualities to make a success of the job, especially in the area of diplomatic skills.

1
Q

Abraham Lincoln 1809–65

A

Born in Kentucky in modest circumstances he joined the Republican party in 1856. Opposing the spread of slavery but not calling for its outright abolition he was elected as president at the end of 1860. President throughout the civil war he insisted at first that the fight was to preserve the union but changed his emphasis in 1863 when he issued the Emancipation proclamation

2
Q

Thaddeus Stevens 1792–1868

A

Elected to the house of representatives in 1848, he was the most determined supporter of radical re-construction. He took a hard line against the southern states regarding them as conquered provinces

3
Q

Radical Republicans

A

The Republican party was formed in 1854 as an antislavery party and supported its leader, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation proclamation in 1863. After the war (and Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865) Republicans differed in opinion as to how harshly the defeated south should be treated and how far the status of the African – American people should be raised. The radical Republicans were for the harsher treatment of the South and keener on giving rights the newly liberated slaves than other members of the Republican Party

4
Q

Blanche K Bruce 1841–98

A

Born into slavery in Virginia he moved to Mississippi in 1869, becoming a landowner and local politician and obtaining the support of a number of leading white Republicans in the state government. He served on a number of important government committees and in 1888 he gained some support for his nomination to run for the vice president.

5
Q

Frederick Douglass 1817 - 95

A

Was the leading black opponent of slavery in the years immediately before the Civil War. An escaped slave, he became active in the anti-slavery society and set up his own anti-slavery newspaper. After emancipation he refused the offer of running the Freedman’s bureau, disapproving of the policies of President Johnson. Instead he took part in many speaking tours arguing the case for black rights, actively protesting about the growing discriminatory practices.

6
Q

Self-help groups

A

These self help groups were comprised of freedmen who joined together their meagre earnings to buy land and disused buildings in order to provide schools and to employ teachers who came mainly from the north. This compensated for the failure of the impoverished postwar southern state governments to provide education for all but especially for black, school aged children.

7
Q

General Oliver Howard 1832 - 1909

A

Played a distinguished military role in the civil war, much of it after losing an arm. He was made head of the Freedman’s bureau in May 1865 and was noted for his lack of corruption and genuine interest in the welfare of the emancipated slaves. One of his enduring achievements was to support newly established colleges for African American education such as Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as setting up his own University in Washington.

8
Q

Ulysses S Grant

A

A leading northern general in the American Civil War becoming commander-in-chief of the Union forces in 1864. Turning to politics he was elected as Republican president in 1868. He broadly accepted the early reconstruction policy and when re-elected in 1872 he promised to do his best to see former slaves achieve the equal civil rights he felt they deserved but still did not possess. However, his second term in office dog by financial scandals which undermined his authority.

9
Q

Theodore Roosevelt 1858 to 1919

A

Elected vice president in 1900, he became president the following year after the assassination of President McKinley. He supported the Progressive movement but did not really address the question of Black civil rights. Despite this, he was criticised by white supremacists holding official meetings with Booker T Washington, of whose work he clearly approved

10
Q

William Howard Taft 1857 to 1930

A

Succeeded Roosevelt as President but his style seemed dull and he lacked Roosevelt’s political skill. Taft took little interest in Black civil rights, regarding it (like most Presidents of the time) as a question of States’ rights.

11
Q

Thomas Woodrow Wilson 1856 to 1924

A

Was elected president in 1912 and re-elected in 1916. He held typical racist views prevalent in the South at the time. This meant he did not appoint (indeed he dismissed) African Americans or associate with their leaders. He appointed segregationist southerners to his administration, who proceeded to segregate employees by race in the growing number of government agencies.

12
Q

Ida B Wells. 1862 to 1931

A

She was born of slave parents in Mississippi. Her Campaign against discrimination began in 1884 when she refused to give up her seat on a train to a white man. She was forcibly removed but subsequently sued the railroad Company. Her personal courage is particularly highlighted by her public opposition to lynching after some friends who owned a successful grocery store were lynched for ‘rape’, led by white owners of a rival store. She was a staunch advocate of women’s rights and of the vote for women

13
Q

T Thomas Fortune 1856 to 1928

A

Born into slavery in Florida, from 1883 to 1907 he was editor of the New York Age, protesting against the treatment of African Americans. He formed the Afro American league at the start of 1890 to defend Black civil rights, arguing it was “time to call a halt” to accommodation. But it collapsed in 1893 through lack of funds. It was later revived as the Afro American Council in 1898 with Fortune as president. Later he became a supporter of Marcus Garvey, edited the Negro World from 1923 to 1928. He coined the term Afro-American.

14
Q

Brooker T Washington 1856 to 1915

A

Born into slavery in Virginia and of mixed race parentage, Washington was part of the first generation of children who benefited from the new educational opportunities available after emancipation in 1865. The penniless Washington was so grateful for the opportunity which he received at Hampton that he determined to dedicate his life to ensure that as many members of his race as possible received the same chance. He ran the Tuskegee Institute from 1881 until his sudden death

15
Q

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois 1868 to 1963

A

Born in Massachusetts, the son of a free black parents, he acquired a PhD from Harvard University, the first African-American to do so, in 1895. A prolific writer on the black condition and an early sociologist, he helped to found the Niagara movement in 1905 and National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People in 1909. He then moved away from the NAACP’s approach. In the McCarthyism era after 1945, he was persecuted as a suspected Communist: this experience actually made him into one and his views had completely changed from his younger days. He emigrated to Ghana in 1961.

16
Q

William Monroe Trotter 1872 to 1934

A

Born in Ohio to well off black parents he achieved academic success at Harvard and planned a career in international banking only to abandon it because of the prejudice he was subject to. From 1901 he edited a weekly newspaper on race relations, the Boston Guardian. Arrested after heckling a Booker T Washington speech in 1903, he argued that more vigorous protests were required.

17
Q

Leading African-American civil rights campaigners

A

These include to whites, Mary Ovington 1865 to 1951 Executive Director of the NAACP from 1910 to 1917.
Osward Garrison Villard 1872 to 1949 served as one of the first treasures.

18
Q

Marcus Garvey 1887–1940

A

Born in Jamaica, originally worked as a printer leading a strike in 1908/9. He arrived in the US in March 1916 and decided to stay, founding the first American branch of his organisation UNIA in 1917 becoming quickly an important figure in the discussion over how Black civil rights could best be achieved. He was imprisoned in 1925 and deported from the US in 1927. He continued his journalistic work in exile in the 1930s.

19
Q

Walter White

1893–1955

A

Secretary of the NAACP 1930-55. Having organisational and personal skills had good relations with many influential white political figures.

20
Q

Oscar De Priest

1871–1951

A

Was elected as a Republican to represent Chicago’s South side from 1929 to 1935. He was criticised for not supporting many aspects of New Deal legislation which was seen as potentially helpful to blacks. However, he did win the admiration for his stand against segregation in Washington and for being prepared to accept, despite death threats, speaking engagements in the south.

21
Q

William Simmons

1880–1945

A

Simmons came from Alabama and refounded the Klan in 1915. Simmons looks into the precepts of the old Klan carefully in order to revive it but did introduce one new feature feature, the leaving of a burning cross as a sign of clan activity.

22
Q

Hiran Evans

1881–1966

A

Hiran was also from Alabama and ousted Simmons from the head position of Imperial Wizard of the KKK. Under his leadership the target of hate was widened to include a variety of racial and religious groups that were not WASPS (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants)

23
Q

Theodore Bilbo

1877 to 1947

A

Theodore was born into a poor Mississippi family. He became Mississippi Governor 1916–20 and 1928–32 and a senator from 1934 until his death. In crude language he violently opposed any votes for black people hinting at what should be ‘done’ to them if they tried. Dubbed “america’s most notorious merchant of hatred”.

24
Q

Eugene Talmadge

1884–1946

A

He came from a Georgia farming family and wrote articles for agricultural journals. Governor of Georgia 1932–36, 1940–42 and re-elected again in 1946 but he died at the end of the year before assuming office. A controversial figure, with similar racist views to Bilbo, his own son claims that “one third of Georgians would follow them into hell when another third wanted him in hell”.

25
Q

Calvin Coolidge

1872–1933

A

Early on in his presidency he declared that the rights of 12 million blacks were as ‘sacred’ as everyone else. However, he took a passive view of the presidency (i.e. he let Congress take the initiative).

26
Q

Herbert Hoover

18 74–19 64

A

It was his attempts to appoint a racist Supreme Court judge that the N a ACP successfully opposed in 1930. He had resorted to the race card to win over Democrats to his Republican party, a move as unedifying as it was unsuccessful.

27
Q

Franklin D Roosevelt

1882–1945

A

Came from a wealthy New York family and was distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. Senator (Democrat) 1910: unsuccessful vice presidential candidate 1920. In 1921 he contracted polio after which he was unable to stand unaided. Governor of New York 1928–32 when he was elected president. Although personally sympathetic to the plight of African Americans, he did little directly to help them, partly because he was dependent on southern Democrats passing legislation. Re-elected (uniquely) three times in 1936, 1940 and 1944.

28
Q

Eleanor Roosevelt

1884–1962

A

Was the Niece of Theodore and cousin of her eventual husband, Franklin. She became more acutely aware of racism after becoming the president’s wife in 1933 and travelling around the nation. She publicly supported the NAACP’s alliance Anti-Lynching bill in the 1930s to the embarrassment of her husband.

29
Q
James Cleveland (Jesse) Owens
1913–80
A

Jesse was born in Alabama. After winning his medals he received no advertising endorsement deals like the white athletes. Awarded the American medal of freedom by President Ford in 1976.

30
Q

Adam Clayton Powell

1908–72

A

Elected member of the House of Representatives in the north-east of the US, for New York 1945–67. He regularly challenged ‘de facto’ segregation arrangements in the city and organised a “don’t by where you can’t work campaign”. However, he tended to be alone fighter rather than the natural leader of a large movement.

31
Q

Thurgood Marshall

1908–93

A

Was a Black lawyer who took cases regarding segregation to the Supreme Court on behalf of the NAACP and won nearly all of them (for example Smith v Albright and Brown v Board of Education, Tokeka). In 1967, he was appointed by President Johnson is the first black Justice of the Supreme Court.

32
Q

Earl Warren

1891–1974

A

Was a lawyer and Republican politician. As Attorney General of California between 1939 and 1943, he was active in the decision to arrest over 100,000 Japanese Americans when war broke out in 1941. He was governor of California from 1943 to 1953, and in that year was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower. He had played a part in helping Eisenhower get elected. Eisenhower was surprised by Warren’s liberal judgements on the race question which include Brown v the Board of Education, Topeka. He later headed a commission that investigated the assassination of President Kennedy.

33
Q

Dwight D Eisenhower

1890–1969

A

Was the supreme commander of the Allied forces in the Second World War. He served two terms as Republican president of the USA, 1953–61. Ike was a popular figure because of his successful military past. He did not have strong party views. His conception of the presidency was passive rather than active: he did not favour aggressive action except as a last resort. His failure to take the presidential initiative after the “Brown” case is now seen as one of the weaker points of his presidency.

34
Q

Rosa Parks

1914–2005

A

Rosa was a Methodist and a member of the NAACP, who was highly regarded in the local community. Others had been arrested for similar reasons, but campaigners wanted to pick a person of impeccable character and morals, to whom breaking the law would normally be unthinkable. After The boycott, harassment by angry whites in Montgomery forced the Parks family to move to Detroit in 1957. She later set up the Rosa and Raymond Parkes Institute for self-development, giving career training to black youths. She was awarded the presidential medal of freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold award in 1999.

35
Q

Martin Luther King

1929–68

A

Born in Atlanta, Georgia. He was brought up in a well-off family but, like all black families, suffered from the inequality and hurt of segregation. He was forced to go north to Boston to study for a PhD. He was a Baptist minister in Montgomery 1954–60 after which he return to Atlanta and, while assisting at his father’s church, became a full-time leader of the Civil Rights movement. He was assassinated in 1968.

36
Q

Ralph Abernathy

1926–90

A

Minister of the First Baptist Church, Montgomery. A loyal follower of King, he was deputy in the SCLC and took over the leadership of the organisation after King’s assassination. A good speaker in his own right, but he lacked King’s charisma and authority. The livelier Jesse Jackson eclipsed him in the 1970s.

37
Q

Roy Wilkins

1910–81

A

Leader of the NAACP from 1955 until his death. Wilkins continued the moderate policies of Water White and felt uneasy with a more confrontational policies being developed by other civil rights groups during the 1960s.

38
Q

Ella Baker

1903–86

A

Ran a black voters registration campaign as early as the 1930s, and was active in the NAACP during the 1940s. She moved to Atlanta in 1957 to assist King and the SCLC. However, she disliked King’s leadership style, saying strong people don’t need strong leaders. She was active in the student non-violent coordinating committee in the 1960s.

39
Q

Robert Kennedy

1925–68

A

Was Attorney General from 1961–64, forcefully implementing favourable Supreme Court decisions on civil rights. Senator from New York from 1964, he played a leading role in getting civil rights legislation passed. He fell out with Lyndon Johnson, especially over Vietnam. He could well have won the Democratic nomination for the presidency that was assassinated in June 1968 when campaigning.

40
Q

Fred Shuttlesworth

1922 –

A

A Baptist minister who formed the Alabama Christian movement for human rights in 1956. He invited King and the SCLC to Birmingham in spring 1963 for a major campaign. A strong believer in non-violent direct action, he is one of the most courageous figures in the Civil Rights movement. In 1963 he confronted the police dogs and firehoses in the Birmingham demonstration head on - The force sent him flying into the air and then to hospital for a few days. From the 1980s is housing foundation has aided many poor people. He finally retired in 2006.

41
Q

Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor

1897–1973

A

Was Birmingham Commissioner of public safety, in 1973–53 and 1957–63. He became known for his determination to keep segregation at all costs, and was re-elected five times.

42
Q

Lyndon B. Johnson

1908–73

A

President 1963–69, having been re-elected in 1964 with a landslide victory. Though not always entirely consistent, he was one of the few Southern senators to give general support to civil rights in the 1950s.

43
Q

Malcom X

1925–65

A

Born as Malcolm Little into a poor black family in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1931 his father, a Garvey supporter, was found murdered. In 1937 his mother committed to a mental institution. He Was unable to obtain good educational opportunities, despite showing ability in his early school days: then he mixed with criminal company in New York, turn into a life of crime and drugs. In jail between 1946 and 1952, he underwent conversion to the Nation of Islam that completely transformed his life. He dropped the name Little and became Malcolm X, believing Little to be the name of the slave people who owned his family, not his real name. In 1950s he was a minister in a number of Nation of Islam temples and in 1962 became national spokesman for the organisation.

44
Q

Elijah Mohammed

1897–1975

A

Was born in Elijah Poole. As a young man he became a Muslim, and became the leader of the nation of Islam in 1934. He was jailed for avoiding war service (draft) between 1942 and 1946. He called for separate homeland for black Americans, but avoided making directly political pronouncements. He was greatly revered by Malcolm X, until the latter discovered that Elijah did not personally keep the strict moral standards demanded of his followers.

45
Q

Stokely Carmichael

1941–98

A

Was born in Trinidad but spent the years 1952–69 in the USA. He was an organiser for the SNCC between 1964 and 1966, when he became chair of the organisation. In 1967, he co-wrote Black Power, outlining his vision of the roles for blacks in the USA. Some of the language in his speeches was extreme such as ‘smashing everything that white civilisation has created’. He left SNCC to join the black panthers in 1967 and the USA in 1969 to live in Guinea, changing his name to Kwame Ture.

46
Q

Huey Newton 1942-89

Bobby Seale 1936

A

Newton had a little formal education and was self-taught: Seale was in the US Air Force. They met at San Francisco School of Law and formed the black panther Oakland, California, in 1966. In 1967, Newton was shot, arrested and convicted of violent offences. Seale had a murder charge dropped in 1971. Both moved away from their violent past in the early 1970s. Newton fled to Cuba in 1974, returning in 1977. He was shot dead in a street in Oakland in 1989. Seale ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973 and finished second. In 1981, he wrote “Seize the Time” a History of the Black Panther movement. He then worked to improve the social and economic conditions of a number of black neighbourhoods.

47
Q

Richard Nixon

1913–94

A

Nixon was Eisenhower’s running mate in 1952 and became vice president, taking a strong stand against Communism. In the 1950s in the Senate he tended to take a moderately liberal line on civil rights. In 1960, he was the Republican presidential candidate, but was defeated by Kennedy. In 1968 he was elected president. Though he said he opposed new initiatives on civil rights, affirmative action and bussing were largely developed under his presidency. His first administration was occupied mainly with foreign affairs. Re-elected in 1972, the second term was overshadowed by the Watergate scandal (a break-in to the Democratic party headquarters).

48
Q

Gerald Ford

1913–2006

A

Born in Omaha, Nebraska. He was selected by President Nixon to replace Nixon’s existing vice president, Spiro Agnew, who had to resign after charges of corruption. He voted for the main civil rights bills in the 1960s. However, he was sceptical of too much federal power in this area, sometimes supporting attempts to amend the legislation in favour of greater state discretion in its implementation.

49
Q

Jimmy Carter

Born in 1924

A

Rather inactive on civil rights when a young Democrat in Georgia, he took a more positive line on black equality as governor. In 1976, he defeated Gerald Ford in the presidential election. He was a strong supporter of Black civil rights while president.

50
Q

Ronald Reagan

1911 to 2004

A

A Hollywood actor, born in Illinois. He lost his early liberal views after he became president of the Screen Actors’ Guild. Elected governor of California in 1966 and 1970 where he dealt forcefully with student rioting. He opposed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 as ‘humiliating’ to the south. As president, he tended to oppose welfare and employment programs that particularly benefited African Americans. Elected president of the US in 1979 and re-elected 1983. Following Conservative economic and social policies, his folksy style proved popular with the American electorate. Even though he was a firm anti-Communist, he was president at a time when the relationship with the Soviet Union thawed considerably.

51
Q

George H W Bush

Born 1924

A

Born into a politically active family, he was decorated for bravery in the Second World War. Represented Texas in the House of Representatives 1966–70 and was US ambassador to the United Nations 1971–74. He was selected as a vice presidential running late to Ronald Reagan in 1979 after his own unsuccessful presidential campaign. On Civil Rights issues he came to the presidency with a liberal record, instant voting for the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He was less keen on what he saw as ‘artificial’ civil rights such as bussing and affirmative action. He vetoed the Civil Rights Bill of 1990 seeing it as “a quota Bill”, that is a purely statistical exercise to increase employment opportunities of African-Americans by affirmative action.

52
Q

Jesse Jackson

Born in 1941

A

Emerged as a prominent SCLC official as a young man. Studying theology in Chicago in 1966, his knowledge of conditions of blacks in the north was used by King in his campaign. Jackson had organised Operation Breadbasket. In 1971 he founded his own organisation PUSH (people united to serve humanity) and was again successful in getting thousands of new jobs for African Americans making use of affirmative action regulations. Twice campaigned for the Democratic party nomination for the presidency.