Starting in the 1940s, small articles like the one here began appearing in magazines and newspapers across the nation - snippets indicating that the American people (ie. whites) were slowly catching on to the system of racial injustice they had inherited - and wondering aloud as to the tyranny of it all:
"To 13 co-eds at Uppsala College, East Orange, N.J., democracy is something more than a worn text-book theory. It is a living, though thorny, reality. Shortly before school's end, they formed one of the nation's first interracial, interfaith college social sororities."
Another article about segregation's end can be read here.
With the passing of the Ives-Quinn Bill in 1945, the state of New York was empowered to bring the full weight of the law down upon all employers who practiced any sort of discrimination in the workplace:
"During the first eight months of the law's operation, the Commission received 240 formal complaints charging some form of discrimination in employment... The charges varied greatly. Fifty-nine complained because of alleged prejudice against their religion. Another 113 charged color bias: 105 Negroes and eight Whites. Still another 48 charged prejudice against their race or national origin: 8 Germans, 5 Spaniards..."
A similar article from 1941 can be read here... On January 29, 1947, the Georgia House of Representatives approved the Democratic white primary law - which was intended to exclude any African American in that state from voting in state primary elections. This article chronicles the poor health that had been a constant companion within the African-American communities and how it differed from their white counterparts.
"To the men who count the living and the dead - the statisticians, discrimination against the Negroes carves a picture in their death charts as clear as an inscription on a new tombstone, as pathetic as a dead child's forgotten doll... There is no question in any public health expert's mind that to get a real improvement in the death rate picture among Negroes, they must be able to improve their diet, housing, education, and living standards, including medical care. And that can only come about, it seems, by removal of all the discriminatory barriers on the economic and social level."
The first three paragraphs of this article explain the 19th Century origins of a moniker that represents the most hideous institution born on American shores. The term in question is "Jim Crow" - a sobriquet that came into use decades before the American Civil War but was refashioned into a synonym that meant institutional racism. The article goes on to recall one African-American Congressman and his fruitless efforts to "clean up Jim Crow". "President Truman was re-elected in 1948 by a slender margin of 52,000 votes in the circulation area of The Chicago Defender, which almost alone of all the newspapers of all kinds in that area, supported Truman. After the election it published a boastful full-page advertisement - "
"What is the Negro press? Primarily it is a protest press demanding the correction of injustice to colored people. 'We are organs of protest,' explains Thomas W. Young, publisher of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, 'born more than a hundred years ago in righteous indignation over the institution of slavery.'"
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