Post-War Prosperity and Cold War Fear, 1945–1960

This is Unit Thirteen, part three, on the legal and mass arcs of civil rights, resistance, and two questions of origin. Part two closed with the two arcs laid side by side, and pointed to Sweatt v. Painter. Carry both arcs through this part: the courtroom victories from Sweatt to Brown, and the streets of Montgomery. Then watch resistance meet them at Little Rock. The unit closes on two questions about who started things: the Cold War, and the Red Scare. By the end you will be able to trace the legal arc from Sweatt to Brown two. To explain who organised the Montgomery bus boycott. To explain Eisenhower's position at Little Rock. To weigh who started the Cold War. And to explain whether the Red Scare was McCarthy's.

Six entries on the legal arc, from a Texas law school to the Court's order to desegregate with all deliberate speed.

Sweatt v. Painter.

USH2 1848 Sweatt v. Painter

In nineteen fifty the NAACP took Sweatt v. Painter to the Supreme Court for Heman Marion Sweatt, refused entry to the University of Texas law school, after Texas built a separate law school for Black students to avoid admitting him. The Court rejected it, the anchor says: a separate school lacked the intangibles of a professional education.

A soldier who refused to move.

USH2 1849 Before Rosa Parks

In nineteen fifty-three Sarah Keys, a Women's Army Corps soldier, refused to yield her bus seat to a White passenger and was jailed, the Yawp records, and in nineteen fifty-five the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that separate but equal on interstate buses violated the Constitution's commerce clause. The ruling came six days before Rosa Parks's arrest, the Yawp notes.

The case from Topeka.

USH2 1850 The Case from Topeka

In nineteen fifty Oliver Brown, a railroad worker, sued Topeka's Board of Education; his daughter crossed a switchyard to catch a bus to her segregated school, with an all-white elementary school seven blocks from her home, as Digital History records. The NAACP, the Yawp says, chose cases from varied places to force a ruling on Plessy itself.

The decision.

USH2 1851 Brown v. Board of Education

On May seventeenth, nineteen fifty-four, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education: separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Thurgood Marshall had argued that segregated schools made African American children feel inferior, even where the buildings were equal. Unit five taught Plessy v. Ferguson; Brown made its rule unconstitutional in public education.

Hernandez v. Texas.

USH2 1852 Hernandez v. Texas

In nineteen fifty-four, the year of Brown, the Supreme Court ruled in Hernandez v. Texas that Fourteenth Amendment protections reached all ethnic groups, in the case of Pete Hernandez, a Mexican American labourer tried for murder in Edna, Texas, by an all-Anglo jury, as the Yawp describes. It says the ruling held Mexican Americans a distinct class entitled to equal protection.

Brown two.

USH2 1853 Brown II

On May thirty-first, nineteen fifty-five, the Court's unanimous decision in Brown two instructed the states to begin desegregation plans with all deliberate speed, the National Archives records, and many southern school boards read that phrase as permission to wait. Some districts integrated voluntarily, the anchor says; many resisted.

Five entries on the mass arc: a murder, an arrest, a boycott and who organised it, and the organisation that followed.

Emmett Till.

USH2 1854 Emmett Till

In August nineteen fifty-five fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, visiting Mississippi from Chicago, was abducted and murdered after a remark to a White woman, and his mother insisted on an open casket. An all-white jury acquitted the two men in an hour and seven minutes, Digital History records; months later, the Yawp says, they boasted of the killing in Look magazine.

Rosa Parks.

USH2 1855 Rosa Parks

On December first, nineteen fifty-five, Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, refused to give her bus seat to a White man and was arrested, and fined ten dollars plus four dollars in costs, as Digital History records. The Yawp says she was not the first to protest by staying seated, but the first around whom Montgomery's activists rallied.

Who organised the boycott.

USH2 1856 The Montgomery Bus Boycott

The familiar story credits Martin Luther King Junior and Rosa Parks with starting the Montgomery bus boycott. The anchor says the Women's Political Council, an organisation of Black women activists, organised it, and the Yawp records that its head, Joanne Robinson, worked through the night with a colleague and two students to mimeograph over fifty thousand handbills. Forty thousand African American riders stayed off the buses on the first day. Ministers then formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, choosing as its president a twenty-six-year-old Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Junior. The boycott was organised by women before it had a famous leader, and King emerged from it. Digital History adds that Parks's refusal was her own decision, not an NAACP plan.

How the boycott ended.

USH2 1857 The Boycott Wins

For three hundred eighty-one days Black Montgomery walked, shared rides or took Black-owned taxis rather than ride the buses, the anchor records, until a federal court in June nineteen fifty-six found the segregation ordinance unconstitutional, a ruling the Supreme Court upheld. The Yawp dates the Court's integration order to December twentieth, nineteen fifty-six, and says the boycott established King's leadership.

The organisation that followed.

USH2 1858 The SCLC and the Act of 1957

In nineteen fifty-seven King and fellow ministers, with organisers such as Ella Baker and Septima Clark, created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to coordinate protest across the South, the Yawp records. The Civil Rights Act of nineteen fifty-seven, the first since Reconstruction, created a commission to investigate discrimination, but the Yawp says it was compromised away nearly to nothing.

Three entries on resistance: a manifesto, Little Rock, and schools closed rather than integrated.

The Southern Manifesto.

USH2 1859 The Southern Manifesto

In nineteen fifty-six one hundred one members of Congress signed the Southern Manifesto, accusing the Supreme Court of misusing its power and violating states' rights, and pledging resistance to its ruling. The anchor adds that many White southerners answered the challenge to the social order with violence.

Little Rock.

USH2 1860 Little Rock

In nineteen fifty-seven nine African American students were to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Governor Orval Faubus ordered the state's National Guard to block them. Eisenhower did not agree with the Brown decision, the anchor says; Digital History adds that in nineteen fifty-four he had urged Chief Justice Warren not to antagonise the white South. On September twenty-third, nineteen fifty-seven, Eisenhower signed Executive Order one oh seven thirty, sending federal troops, and soldiers of the hundred and first Airborne escorted the Little Rock Nine. As president, the anchor says, he was responsible for enforcing the ruling whatever his view. He was neither Brown's champion nor its enemy, and he sent the troops anyway.

The closing of the schools.

USH2 1861 Schools Closed

For the nineteen fifty-eight school year Faubus closed Little Rock's public schools, all of them in the anchor's account, its high schools in the Yawp's, and a Yawp photograph shows a student watching lessons on television while the schools stood empty. In nineteen fifty-nine, the anchor records, the Supreme Court ordered the schools reopened and desegregation to proceed.

Two entries to close the unit, each asking who began something: the Cold War, and the Red Scare.

Who started the Cold War.

USH2 1862 Who Started the Cold War

The sources answer with different emphases, and the course states both readings. The anchor's account leads with containment: Kennan's Long Telegram argued that Soviet leaders saw their security in destroying rival nations' influence, and American policy from the Truman Doctrine to NATO answered that threat. Digital History's record supports it: between nineteen forty-six and nineteen forty-eight Communist governments were installed across Eastern Europe, ending with a coup in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviets refused to let Poland and Czechoslovakia join the Marshall Plan. The counter-reading assigns more agency to American policy. The Yawp says aggressive anti-Soviet sentiment seized the American government, and describes the Marshall Plan as designed to open markets and win European support for capitalist democracies; NSC-68 called for rolling Soviet power back, not only containing it. Two misreadings sit on either side: Soviet aggression met by American defence alone, which the Marshall Plan's terms and NSC-68 complicate; and an American invention, which the imposed governments and the coup contradict. The course's position: both powers acted, containment is the frame, and the evidence of American interest belongs inside it.

Whether the Red Scare was McCarthy's.

USH2 1863 McCarthy or McCarthyism

The anchor's own dates answer this. The House Committee on Un-American Activities was established in nineteen thirty-eight, twelve years before McCarthy's speech at Wheeling. Truman's loyalty program began in nineteen forty-seven, and Digital History says executive loyalty inquiries began as early as nineteen forty-one. Chambers accused Hiss in nineteen forty-eight, with Nixon pressing the case, and the blacklist was already destroying careers in the nineteen forties. The politics crossed party lines: Taft-Hartley let union officials purge Communists, and Walter Reuther purged them from the CIO. Murrow said McCarthy did not create the fear; he exploited it. Two misreadings sit on either side. One makes McCarthy the whole story, so that his censure ended the Red Scare; yet the same Congress passed the Communist Control Act in August nineteen fifty-four, which the Yawp says effectively criminalised party membership. The other makes him incidental, which twenty million viewers of his hearings contradict. The course follows the anchor's dates: McCarthy gave a name and a face to a politics older and broader than he was.

Look at what you can now do. You can trace the legal arc: Sweatt, Brown's inherently unequal, Hernandez, and Brown two's all deliberate speed, read by many as permission to wait. You can explain who organised the Montgomery boycott. The Women's Political Council did, before it had a famous leader, and King emerged from it. You can explain Eisenhower at Little Rock: he did not agree with Brown, and he sent the troops anyway. You can weigh who started the Cold War: both powers acted, with containment as the frame and American interest inside it. And you can explain the Red Scare. McCarthy gave a name and a face to a politics older and broader than he was.