Article #13 of Multi-Article Series >>>>> A Short Course in African American History

The Immediate Aftermath of World War II

 

During World War II and its aftermath, the NAACP pressed ahead with its initiatives to open institutions of higher learning, with the ultimate objective of bringing about total desegregation odf all public schools, whether K-12, college, or university.  Court action had successively culminated in the desegregation for Missouri Law School and set a precedent for the integration of other professional schools.

 

Under the sway of enthusiasm for the New Deal and the efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt, African American voters began to vote for most often for Democrats, distancing themselves from a Republican Party that no longer seemed very much like the party of Lincoln.  In 1954, African Americans provided the margin of victory for the candidacies of black politicians running for seats in the United States House of Representatives;  these included Augustus Hawkins of California, William L. Dawson of Illinois, as well as Clayton Powell (who was reelected).

 

And in that very year of 1954, Thurgood Marshall led a team of NAACP lawyers to landmark victory in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, ending desegregations and ushering in the Civil Rights Movement that at long last ended the Period That Never Should Have Been, that stretch of time extending from the Compromise of 1877 until the Brown v. Board decision of 1954.

 

Not until the middle 1970s, though, did various efforts to implement desegregation of the schools and federal programs advancing African American citizenship, terms of employment, and freedom of residence manifest themselves in significant changes in American society.  So we may think of the Period That Never Should Have Been for Extending one hundred years:

 

This should deepen our lament for the brutal experience of African Americans in the history of the United States, raise our respect for African American accomplishment in the midst of terrifying conditions of life, and impel us to address the many concerns that still abide for African Americans living at the urban core throughout the nation.