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1. Answer the questions.. Chapter II. Years of Growth
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1. Answer the questions.
1. What was the situation with Indians and black slaves in the USA after the Revolution?
2. Were Indians and Blacks granted Civil rights?
3. Why did the abolition issue become particularly stressful in the 1850?
4. How did the southerners regard slavery?
5. How did the secession process develop?
6. What was Abraham Lincoln attitude to slavery?
7. How did the Civil War actually start?
8. How long did the war last?
9. Were the black slaves liberated immediately after the Civil War? What instruments were designed by Southern whites to terrorize blacks?
10. What were the activities of the K. K. K.?
11. Why did black Americans fail to achieve real equality during the term of reconstruction?
2. Render the texts in English:
A). Завоевание независимости было лишь первым шагом, облегчавшим путь к модернизации. Прошло лишь несколько десятилетий после американской революции, как появилась новая проблема, грозившая стране разрушением государственного единства или отходом от завоеваний демократии. Эту проблему создавало растущее противоречие между городским, индустриальным, демократическим Севером и Югом, который по-прежнему оставался рабовладельческим и сельскохозяйственным. После революции многие политические деятели, в том числе и Дж. Вашингтон, думали, что рабство, запрещенное в северных штатах, постепенно, само собой будет исчезать и на Юге. Однако ход событий был совсем иным.
Выращивание хлопка, сахарного тростника и табака на рынок требовали организованного труда большого количества людей. По мере того, как США расширяли свои границы, присоединяя или осваивая новые территории, Юг поднимал вопрос о распространении рабства на вновь образовавшиеся штаты. Между Севером и Югом вспыхивали острые конфликты из-за штатов Миссури, Канзас, Нью-Мексико. Постепенно все более реальной становилась возможность политического отделения южных штатов. В апреле 1861 г. южные рабовладельческие штаты подняли мятеж (апрель 1861 г. ) с целью сохранения рабства и распространения его по всей стране.
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В) Приход к власти А. Линкольна – непримиримого противника рабства и тем более его распространения на новые территории – ознаменовал начало давно назревавшей гражданской войны. Военные действия длились с 1861 по 1865 г. и нанесли стране огромный урон. Помимо людских потерь были и потери экономические. Некоторые города (Колумбия, Ричмонд, Атланта) были сожжены до основания, многие заводы и железные дороги разрушены. На первом этапе (1861-1862 гг. ) война со стороны Севера велась нерешительно, “по конституционному”, что привело к ряду военных поражений северян. Второй этап характеризуется революционными методами ведения войны с участием широких народных масс. В 1864-1865 гг. были разгромлены основные силы южан и в апреле 1865 г. взят город Ричмонд – столица рабовладельческих штатов. Победа Севера сохранила страну как единое государство. Она уничтожила господство плантаторов и рабство (официально отменено 1 января 1863 г. ) и создала условия для капиталистической индустриализации и освоения западных земель. На большой части территории США победил фермерский (так называемый американский) путь развития капитализма в сельском хозяйстве. Однако взаимная ненависть на долгие годы разъединяла южан и северян. Гражданская война не принесла действительной свободы черным рабам, освобожденным без земли. По стране бродили тысячи бывших невольников, потерявших хозяев и привычное место работы.
В) Индейцы в Америке. В течение двух веков американское правительство вело настоящую войну против “краснокожих”, виноватых только в том, что они занимали прекрасные плодородные земли. Это была долгая кровопролитная война, исход которой был предрешен. Силой и обманом индейцев заставляли подписывать договоры о капитуляции и под вооруженным конвоем отправляли в резервации, на самые бесплодные, не пригодные для жизни человека территории. Это было сознательная политика “расчистки” нового континента от его хозяев.
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3. Discussion Points:
I. The main reasons of the Civil War.
2. The abolition of slavery.
3. Abraham Lincoln and his Contribution to American history.
Chapter II. Years of Growth
H 1896 Ford Quadricycle
Read and translate the words and word combinations:
backwater slums
A slaughter house to streamline
obliterate installment plan
to be plagued thugs
to succumb(syn. submit, relent) military conscription act
to work at full swing to clang (clangorous)
to pay the way desegregation
unscrupulous incipient
to put down the riot a dismal failure
to pave the way relocation policy
After the end of the Civil War the United States continued the acquisition of the new territories. The United States acted like an imperial nation, gathering and settling new territories, pushing aside those who stood in its path. In 1867 the United States bought Alaska from Russia, later Spain gave most of its oversea empire to the USA – Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and a small Pacific island Guam. At the same time the USA also annexed Hawaii - a group of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Having started as a colonial country, the USA quickly became a colonial power herself.
In the early 1900s the American government wanted to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama to join North and South America and separates the Caribbean Sea from the Pacific Ocean. As the Columbian government was slow to give the Americans permission to build the canal, in 1903 president Theodore Roosevelt sent warships to Panama. The warships helped a small group of Panamanian businessmen to rebel against the Columbian government and to give the Americans Control over a ten-and-a-half-mile wide strip of land called the Canal Zone.
Parallel to the acquisition of the oversea lands the USA continued the settlements of North American territories. After the “Gold Rush» in California gold and silver were also discovered in Colorado, Nevada and Arizona, Wyoming and Dakota. Some former mining settlements grew into permanent communities. New towns sprang up throughout the gold and silver regions.
Within twenty-five years after the end of the Civil War the Great Plains were divided into States and territories of the USA. Ranchers were feeding large herds of cattle on the “sea of grass”; farmers were using the latest harvesting technology on the large irrigated fields of “Great American Desert” to grow wheat. By 1890 the separate areas of settlement on the Pacific Coast and along the Mississippi River had moved together and the wilderness had been largely conquered.
In the 1880s great Mesabi deposits of iron were found near lake Superior. Soon the Mesabi became one of the largest producers of iron ore in the world. Besides iron at that time a great amount of coal was being extracted in the USA. Iron and coal were used to make steel for the railroads, locomotive, freight wagons and passenger cars. The first railroad finished in 1869 and was quickly joined by others. By 1884 four more major transcontinental lines had crossed the continent to link the Atlantic with the Pacific Coasts. New towns appeared along the railroads. By 1890 the industries of USA were earning the country more than its farmlands. Within a few decades after the civil war the USA transformed from an undeveloped backwater into a primary world power..
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By 1913 more than one third of the whole world’s industrial production had been originated from the mines and factories of the USA. The growth of American industry was organized and controlled by the number of powerful businessmen like Andrew Carnegie, the owner of the giant Carneqie steel corporation and D. Rockfeller, the “king” of the growing oil industry. As the corporations grew bigger and more powerful, they often became “trusts”. By the early 20-century the trusts had controlled large parts of American industry. The biggest trusts were richer than most other nations. By their wealth and power - and especially their power to decide wages and prices - they controlled the lives of millions of people.
The United States was created as a land of equal opportunities to everyone. Yet half the American people had hardly enough finance to buy sufficient food and clothing. In the industrial cities of the North, such as Chicago and Pittsburgh, immigrant workers still labored long hours for low wages in steel mills, factories and slaughter houses. The workers’ homes were over-crowded slums. In the South thousands of poor farmers, both black and white, worked from sunrise to sunset to earn barely enough to live on.
The handful of rich and powerful men bribed politicians to pass laws, which favored them. Others hired private armies to crush any attempts by their workers to obtain better conditions. Their attitude to the rights of other people was summed up in a famous remark of the railroad “king” William H. Vanderbilt. When he was asked whether he thought that railroads should be run in the public interest, “The public be damned” he replied.
Progressive Americans were alarmed by the power of the trusts and the contemptuous way in which leaders of industry like Vanderbilt rejected the criticism. In the early years of the twentieth century a stream of books and magazine articles drew people’s attention to a large
number of national problems. Novelists like Mark Twain and Henry James analyzed the impact of wealth and ambition on social life. Herbert G. Wells in his novel “The War in the Air”(1908) sharply criticized “ the unprecedental multitudousness of the thing, the inhuman force of it all…” He wrote: “I see it, the vast rich various continent, the gigantic process of development, the acquisitive successes, the striving failures, the multitudes of those rising and falling who come between, all set in a texture of spacious countryside, of clangorous towns that bristle to the skies, of great exploitation, of district and crowded factories, of wide deserts and mine-torn mountains, and huge half-tamed rivers”.
The Progressive movement found a leader in the Republican Theodore Roosevelt T. Roosevelt who became president in 1901 got particularly concerned about the power of the trusts. His idea was to give the USA the best of both worlds. He wanted to allow the businessmen enough freedom of action to make their firms efficient and prosperous, but at the same time to prevent them from taking unfair advantage of other people (the policy of so-called “square deal». However the “square deal” of Roosevelt’s administration (1901-1909) failed to bring the trusts under control.
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President Woodrow Wilson who won the presidential elections in 1912 started his policy “The New Freedom». One of Wilson’s first steps was to reduce the powers of the trusts, give more rights to labor unions and make it easier for farmers to borrow money from the federal government to work their land.
The Progressive movement changed and improved American life in many ways, but did not help unemployed or unprivileged very much. The ideals of equal opportunity, proclaimed in the USA, were often denied to Americans who were non-white. Millions of the Blacks still lived in great poverty. Most of them still lived in Southern farms. In cities they lived in so-called “black ghettos”, because many whites resented their moving into white neighborhoods.
The First World War and the Roaring Twenties.
The World War 1 contributed to the USA to become even more powerful. While the war started on the continent of Europe, brought death and sufferings to millions of European people, the USA, physically untouched by combat and greatly enriched by wartime profits, quickly became the main supplier of weapon and capital to the countries of the Anti-German allies. The entire railroad system came under government supervision, the demand for industrial production grew fast. Guns, ships, shells, and other essential goods were made for the war.
When in May 1919 the Versailles Peace Treaty was signed in Europe, the USA met it as the country with a primary world economy, with enormous productive capacity and extensive markets for manufactured goods. Having less than 10% of the world’s population, the USA produced about 25% of the world’s goods and more than 40% of the world manufacture. Business boomed. Automobiles and trucks transformed the life of the nation. Airplanes, used during the war, were now geared to peacetime purposes. Chemical and electrical processes, together with light machinery made of alloyed metals, were changing the character of factories. Mass production proved itself in building ships and airplane motors. Electricity also speeded the revolution in production: in 1914 some 30% of manufacturing was electrified, in 1929 70% of all factories benefited from the power sources. In the field of finance, New York began to replace London as the hub of the world’s finance market.
Businessmen became popular heroes in the 1920s. There were widespread beliefs in the USA that individuals were responsible for their own life success, and that unemployment or poverty were the result of personal failings. The newspaper and magazine writers maintained that although not all Americans could become rich, at least middle-class Americans ought to be rich.
Journalist L. Allen wrote that at that time “business had become almost the national religion of America”. Men like automobile-maker Henry Ford, steel industry owner Andrew Carnegie, oil and finance tycoon Rockefeller, George Pullman, W. Colgate, Procter and Gamble and others were widely admired as the creators of nation’s prosperity, the models of so-called “American Dream. ” In 1913 Ford began using interchangeable parts and assembly-line method in his plant. By 1920 the half of the cars produced in the world were his cars, by 1930 there were over 26. 7 million cars, registered in the USA. Cars in America became the “family horses, used for more than commuting to work or driving for leisure. The automobile revolution started the consumer revolution. Appliances-radios, telephones, electric refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners led the parade. The consumer boom stimulated advertising. Americans had to be convinced to spend their money, to buy all-electric kitchen, “to keep up with the Joneses” (to live better than the neighbors). “Live now, pay tomorrow” was the general motto. Incredible number of Americans began to buy goods on the installment plan (monthly payments). Thousands of Americans invested money in successful firms so that they could share their profits. There was also an orgy of speculation in real estate and stocks, buying and selling shares - “playing the market” became a national hobby and a sort of fever. Many Americans borrowed the large sums of money from the banks to buy shares on credit and to get “easy money” on selling them later “on the margin” (a higher price).
The first two decades of the 20PthP century came into American history not only as the years of industrial and manufacturing boom. On the surface it seemed that prosperity would continue forever but below the surface there were already a lot of troubles. Bank debts were mounting. Low wages of most workers led to underconsumption. Excessive industrial profits and low industrial wages distributed one third of all personal income to only 5% of the population. The agricultural sector was also plagued with overproduction.
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One of the serious problems of the 20s was the terrible growth of crime. “The Roaring Twenties” was the general name which many historians called that time. After adoption of the 18PthP Amendment to the USA Constitution, prohibiting selling of alcoholic drinks, so-called “speakeasies” (illegal bars) were opened in basements and backrooms all over the country. The drinks were obtained from criminals, united in gangs or mobs, called “bootleggers”. One of the best-known mobs worked in Chicago. It was led by the gangster “Scarface” Al Capone, who turned into the great celebrities of the 1920s. His income was over 100 million dollars a year. He had a private army of nearly a thousand thugs and was the real ruler of Chicago. Competition between rival mobs sometimes caused bloody street wars, fought out with armored cars and machine guns. The winners of the gangster wars became so powerful that they bribed police and other public officers. Organized crime opened the way for the new kind of American business. And American newspaper headlines and crime stories bespeak America’s fascination with these new celebrities. , Americans loved energetic people who got ah
Depression and the Policy of New Deal
In October 1924 stock prices dropped dramatically. The nation succumbed to panic. The money crash unlashed a devastating depression. Between 1929 and 1933 the shock of the depression was felt in all areas of American life. Distress influenced such industries like coal, railroads, construction and textiles. By the end of 1931 nearly eight million Americans were out of work, but unlike unemployed British or German workers in Europe they received no government unemployment pay. Millions spent hours shuffling slowly forward in “breadlines» where they received free pieces of bread or bowls of soup, paid for by the money collected from those who could afford charity.
By 1932 the situation became still harder. Thousand of banks and over 100000 businesses had closed down. Industrial production had fallen down by half and wage payments by 60%. Twelve million people, one out of every four of the country’s workers, were unemployed. The factories were silent, shops and banks closed. With the number of people out of work rising day by day, farmers could not sell their produce. In despair some of them banded together. Some paraded together with the workers in angry demonstrations, demanding that President Hoover (1929-33) take strong action against depression. Hoover who strongly believed in market economy said that he could do two things to end the Depression: to balance the budget and to restore businessmen’s confidence in the future. Time and time again in the early 1930s Hoover told people that recovery from the Depression was “just around the corner”. But the factories remained closed and the breadlines grew longer.
A change took place with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president in1933. Although Roosevelt was crippled by polio he was energetic and determined to care for the welfare of ordinary people. Roosevelt’s main idea was that the federal government should take the lead in the fight against the Depression. His program, which he called The New Deal 15 major, consisted of a number of legislative measures. At first Roosevelt took active steps to stabilize banking. He also put right agricultural production by paying subsidies to farmers and introduced a system of regulated prices for corn, cotton, wheat, rice and diary products. Believing that his most urgent task was to give employment to the American people, he proposed a plan for public works and relief payments to the needed citizens. Roosevelt was especially anxious about the young people. The Civilian Conservation Corps found work for many young people. Part-time employment was provided for students who were invited to build roads and construct hospitals and schools. Roosevelt’s New deal program financed the painting of murals and the staging of plays. Writers were paid to write guidebooks and regional ethnic. In 1935 the Act was passed that granted workers the right to unionize and bargain collectively. New trade unions were organized.
During his first term Franklin Roosevelt did not manage to fight unemployment and solve some other tasks completely As a result of all his measures unemployment dropped from 13 million people in 1933 to 9 million in 1936, but there were still over four million jobless people in the country and there was no real increase in the life of Afro-Americans, Indians and other minorities. The nation was still plagued by under consumption.
Ultimately it was the Second World War that put the American people back to work.
The Second World War and the USA
When the Second World War broke out in 1939 F. Roosevelt, who had been reelected for the second term, persuaded the USA Congress to approve the first peacetime military conscription act in the USA history and later to accept his Lend Lease Plan. The USA quickly became the main supplier of weapons and other goods to the countries fighting Hitler Germany. American factories began working at full swing again. The unemployment practically ended.
In 1941 after Japanese warplanes bombed, sank and badly damaged 8 American battleships in American base Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), killing over 2000 men, the USA declared war against Germany and Japan. They joined the countries of anti-Hitler coalition (The Soviet Union and Britain).
The USA government organized the whole American economy towards winning the war. “Old Dr. New Deal has to be replaced by Dr. Win-the-War”, said. Roosevelt. Controls on wages and prices were placed, and high income taxes were introduced. Gasoline and some foods were rationed. Factories stopped producing consumer goods such as cars and washing machines, and started making tanks, bombers and other war supplies. The USA war production became six times greater than the military output before the war. The overall effect of the war was a positive one for the economy in general and the business community in particular.
In November 1942 Combined British and American forces landed in North Africa, defeating the German general Rommel’s Africa Corps. 1943 they invaded Sicily, the mainland of Italy and months of bitter fighting freed Rome from German control.
At Tehran conference (Iran, 1943) Stalin met Roosevelt and Churchill to coordinate their military plans with the Allied cross-channel invasion. In 1944 the Allied troops opened so-called The Second Front in Europe and after hard fighting occupied France and liberated Paris. In September Allied forces crossed Germany western border. On the 25Pth Pof April the remarkable event took place – British and American soldiers met advancing Soviet troops on the banks of the River Elbe in the middle of Germany. In five days Hitler committed a suicide. German soldiers everywhere laid down their weapons and on the 5PthP of May 1945, Germany surrendered.
The final details of the war and plans for the postwar world were hammered out at the Yalta Conference in the Crimea in 1945. Russia was to become the guardian of the nations of Eastern Europe. Defeated Germany was to be divided into four zones of military occupation, and a conference was to be convened in San Francisco on April 25 to create the United Nations Organization and formulate its Charter.
Roosevelt left Yalta physically weak but pleased that he had brought Allied unity. Nine weeks after Yalta conference he had a stroke and died. His Vice President Harry Truman came into office. Truman participated with Stalin and Churchill in the final meeting at Potsdam, from which two declarations were issued. One of them confirmed the occupation zones in Germany and settled the reparation issue.
The second was an unconditional surrender ultimatum to Japan. In 1945 American bombers made devastating raids on Japanese cities. In June the island of Okinawa fell to the Americans. On August 6 an American bomber dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A few days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Both cities were devastated and nearly 2000000 civilians were killed. Even the scientists who had been working on the bomb were shocked by the result. On August 14 the Japanese government surrendered. The Second World War was over.
The Cold War and the McCarthy Witch Hunts
The Cold War was an ideological struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States over control of the world. Americans was the only nation in the world that the Second World War had made better off. Their homes had not been bombed or their land fought over like the homes and land of the Russian people. Busy wartime factories had given them good wages. Americans became the most prosperous people in the world. But despite economic prosperity during the years under president Truman (1945-53) and then president Eisenhower (1953-61) there was a constant anxiety in America and fear of the Russian influence on the afterward world. After two unpleasant surprises – the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb and the creation of communist China – a wave of panic swept across the USA. Due to the terrible propaganda some Americans started to see communist plots everywhere. When in 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea their fears became even stronger. An ambitious and unscrupulous politician McCarthy tried to use these fears to win fame and power for himself. He started the campaign that came into American history with the name a “Witch Hunt” – a search for people he could blame for supposed threats to the United States. For over five years, from early 1950s till the mid 50s McCarthy launched the serial of “hearings”, accusing a lot of people – government officials, scientists, and famous entertainers – of secretly working for the Soviet Union. He never gave proofs, but Americans were so much frightened by the threat of communism that many believed his accusations. They were afraid to give jobs or even to show friendship to anyone “suspected” in “Soviet sympathy”. In 1957 McCarthy died, but so-called McCarthyism did serious damage to the relations between the countries.
In 1961 a new President John F. Kennedy (1961-3) was elected, the most progressive president since A. Lincoln and F. Roosevelt. He was young, had a good education, energy and keen, quick wit. The unfulfilled promise of Kennedy’s thousand days in office is nearly impossible to measure. He told American people that they were facing a “new frontier” with both opportunities and problems. He announced policy of fighting poverty and giving civil rights to black people. He streamlined and pushed through the space program and new laws for pollution treatment, but his main merit was his foreign policy.
When J. Kennedy came to the office, foreign problems were numerous. Soviet Union power was growing and relations between two superpowers were as cold as ever. The incipient nations of Africa were rebellious. Fidel Castro had taken control of Cuba. Unrest was evident in all Latin America. Kennedy’s first two innovations – the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress – captured the imagination of much of the world. The Peace Corps sent thousands of young Americans abroad to assist underdeveloped countries. The Alliance for Progress was designed as a broad assault upon the economic and social problems of Latin America.
In June 1961 a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles supported by the CIA attempted an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Although the attempt was a dismal failure, the Soviet Union tried to install Soviet mediation-range ballistic missiles and bombers in Cuba. Kennedy met the Soviet Union challenge and displayed great mind in dealing with what was probably the most serious confrontation of the Cold War era. He gave the promise not to invade Cuba. The leader of the Soviet Union Nikita. Khrushchev also promised to recall the weapons from Cuba. The two leaders succeeded in setting up a “Hot Line” to facilitate a quick exchange of views in case of major crises, and in signing a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that halted surface atmospheric and outer space testing. While Kennedy was president he frequently said: “All I want them to say about me is what they said about John Adams, “He kept the peace”. In the speech he had intended to give in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the day of his assassination, Kennedy declared: “We ask…that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of ”peace on earth, goodwill toward men”. Kennedy’s sensible policy not only reduced the tension between the two but also started the policy of so-called “dé tente”.
Even the long and bloody war in Vietnam (1965-73), finished by the victory of the latter, was not allowed to interfere into it. In May 1972 President Nixon flew to Moscow to sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) with the Soviet Union. The idea of SALT was to slow down the arms race as well as to make war between them less likely. When the Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan in 1979 American Congress refused to renew the SALT agreement. Both the United States and the Soviet Union continued to develop new, more deadly nuclear missiles and in the early 1980s dé tente looked dead. In the middle of the 1980s American military strength was increased so much that president Reagan realized the necessity to slow down the race M. Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985 in the USSR, also believed that the huge cost of the arms race was crippling the Soviet Union economy. In 1987 Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) treaty. According to the treaty both countries agreed to destroy all their land-based medium and shorter-range nuclear missiles within 3 years. A hope was born that a new time of peaceful cooperation between the SU and the USA might be possible now. “I believe that future generations will look back to this time and see it as a turning point in world history. We are not in a cod war now” the British prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in 1988.
Afro-Americans after the World War II
World War II paved the way for change in the he area of civil rights. In 1946 president Truman created a President’s Committee to investigate the status of civil rights in America and recommend their improvements. In 1947 the committee called for changes in lynch laws, voting laws, for elimination of discrimination in the armed forces and in the federal civil service through the creation of the Fair Employment board. A lot of cases were passed to the Supreme Court. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of children in public schools on the basis of race as unconstitutional. After the decision had been given, the question appeared how the nation, and particularly the Southern population, would respond to it
Under President D. Eisenhower desegregation made progress. But in the Deep South resistance to it began even to harden. White Citizen’s groups were created, and the Ku Klux Klan was revived. In 1956 nineteen Southern senators issued a “Manifesto” against “forced integration”. Economic reprisals were taken against blacks and the progressive organizations were under constant fire. The first open official resistance occurred in Little Rock (Arkansas), when the school board approved of a plan to admit a few black students to central High all-white school. The night before the opening of the school the governor of Arkansas appeared on television to announce that he was strongly against the plan. In 1963 President Kennedy had to dispatch regular army troops to Oxford, Mississippi, to put down a riot when black James Meredith tried to be enrolled as a university student. “ It ought to be possible for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed by troops”, - the president commented.. By 1964 only 1. 17% of all black students were attending schools with white pupils. Schools for black students were usually much inferior to schools in middle-class neighborhoods
On December 1, 1955 black woman Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Alabama and sat down in the free whites-only section, as she was very much tired. Whites and the bus driver began to threaten her, but she did not move. Her arrest proved to be the catalyst for a new black protest movement. Under the leadership of Baptist clergyman Martin Luther King, Montgomery blacks formed the Improvement Association, boycotted the bus lines, and referred their case to the state court and then to the Supreme Court. Seventy-five percent of the black population walked to work. Both the District court and Supreme Court ruled that segregated busing was unconstitutional. The movement propelled King into a position of national prominence and led to the organization of a regional group called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or SCLC, a group of one hundred southern clergymen of the beliefs that churches and church leaders must assume civil rights. From the beginning its emphasis was on nonviolence, and its guiding light was Dr. Martin Luther King. The organization was active in the areas of voter registration, protests, and citizenship. Although SCLC preached nonviolence, blacks were beaten, set upon by police dogs, and hit with water from high-pressure water hoses. Still the brutal treatment of black demonstrators shown by national television little by little stirred the nation’s conscience. More and more whites became convinced that it was time for the blacks to achieve equality.
Martin Luther King was primarily responsible for the March on Washington in 1963 for Jobs and Freedom – the largest civil rights rally in American history. Over 250000 blacks and whites gathered to ask the president for a federal fair employment practice. They also demanded new civil rights legislation. The protests of the 1950s, the March on Washington, Birmingham, and the consciences of white Americans climaxed in a monumental Civil Rights Act in 1964, claiming the discrimination based on race or sex in all public facilities and in all areas of interstate commerce as illegal. The Voting Rights Act abolished the number of discriminating devices and provided protection for persons seeking the right to vote.
From 1965 to 1968 King’s direction was a much more northerly one. He became involved in peace movements against the Vietnamese War and in better housing conditions for blacks in northern ghettos. King’s leadership cannot be overestimated. He was the driving force of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the apostle of nonviolent protest. He viewed the world in terms of a brotherhood of people and accomplished so much more than black leaders before him. King never lived to see whether his “dream” would be realized. . His life was cut short by his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee
Black Americans began to play a much greater role in American society. The black middle class has appeared. The struggle was long and hard, but blacks have gained more positions of power and prestige than ever before in politics, in the media, in police, in justice, in education, in sports and offer a lot of promise. The slogan “black is beautiful” today has taken on a new meaning In Virginia, Douglas Wilder became the nation’s first elected black governor. When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, there were only 300 black elected officials, now there are more than 7000. Emanuel Cleaver was elected mayor of Kansas City – a city where only one of four votes is black. General Colin Powell rose to prominence during the Gulf War and was invited to Bush administration later to the position of State Secretary. He was changed by black woman Conzolesa Right. The climax – the election of the first black President Barack Obama at the end of 1908. Barack Obama’s trip to Moscow in June, 2009 was an impressive diplomatic performance to shift the orientation of U. S. -Russia relations fro the past to the future.
. The American Indian Today
During World War II approximately 25 thousand Indians served in the armed forces, the majority as enlisted men in the army. Many were awarded for bravery. Because of increased contact with the white world, some Indians preferred the white man’s ways and were assimilated. Many others returned to the reservations. Those who remained in white society lived in two worlds with two cultures.
After World War 11 under the Eisenhower administration in 1953 some measures were taken to accelerate assimilation and destroy remaining Indian culture, which provided a real threat to the tribes. So-called “relocation” policy was implemented. Many Indians were screened, and those judged best suited to survive in the cities were chosen in the reservations. ” Relocation Centers” exist in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix, and Minneapolis. Some Indians were successfully relocated and started to live in the white urban world. Others returned to the reservations or remained jobless and homeless in the city.
However, not all postwar policies were so disastrous. In 1946 an Indian Claims Commission was established to make amendments for breaking of some 400 treaties made in colonial days. It gave permission to the Indian, whose number is now about two million, to sue the government for adjusted compensation for lands or other properties taken from them as the result of broken treaties. Under President Kennedy the government perused new programs of education, vocational training, housing, and economic development. The health of the Indian people was taken over by the US Public Health Service.
Under President Johnson the Indian R. Bennett was made Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The anti-poverty program of the Office of Economic Opportunity made it possible for Indians to administer their own programs on a limited basis.
The modern Indians are on the move, and their national conscience has again been aroused. The National Congress of the American Indians and the National Indian Youth Council are trying to head a movement toward Indian nationalist protest. Meanwhile President Reagan and futher administrations attempted to develop a successful business attitude to reservations and at the same time implement welfare and program budget cuts. A plan is being debated to place more self-determine-nation in Indian hands and less reliance on the government.
Some books devoted to Indians’ plight were published. Dee Brown’s book “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” became a bestseller. While the movies such as “Soldier Blue”, “A Man Called Horse” and “Little Big Man” portrayed Indian perspectives sympathetically, the movies “Little Big Man”, “Powwow Highway” and “Dances with Wolves” went a long way toward changing the usual Hollywood stereotypes of Indians
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