POSTWAR CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVITIES- AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

The struggle against Hitler's theories of racial supremacy spurred some whites in the United States to accept racial equality. This acceptance was strengthened by the writings of numerous scholars, including the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, author of An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Other scholarly and literary publications increased whites' understanding of the black experience, notably the novel Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright; Black Metropolis (1945), an important sociological study by St. Clair Drake

and Horace Cayton; and From Slavery to Freedom (1947) by historian John Hope Franklin.

Drawing on increasingly liberal racial attitudes, the interracial Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), formed in 1942, conducted nonviolent sit-ins and demonstrations in Chicago, New York, and other Northern cities throughout the 1940s. These sit-ins challenged racial segregation and had some success at integrating public accommodations such as restaurants. Supreme Court rulings in the 1940s struck down many methods of segregation. In 1944 the court outlawed Southern Democrats' white primaries, striking down their argument that the party was a private club and primary elections were open to club members only. In 1946 it ruled that segregation in interstate bus travel was unconstitutional, and in 1947 it disallowed racial discrimination in the federal civil service.

The late 1940s also saw the color barrier fall in many areas of society that had been all white. One of the most dramatic instances occurred in 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black to play major league baseball in the 20th century. In 1949 Wesley A. Brown became the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy.

Following the war, the GI Bill, funded by the government, gave new educational opportunities to veterans and promised greater economic prosperity. Blacks were determined to be included. Thousands of black veterans enrolled in technical training or colleges and universities, financed by government benefits. These black veterans paved the way for ongoing increases in African American college enrollments. The number of African American college students increased from 124,000 in 1947 to 233,000 in 1961.

African Americans continued to migrate from the rural South to the urban North to improve their economic status. From 1948 to 1961, the proportion of blacks with low incomes (earning below $3,000 a year) declined from 78 percent to 47 percent; at the same time the proportion earning over $10,000 a year increased from under 1 percent to 17 percent. Although black income improved, it remained far below that of whites. Black median income in 1961 was still lower than white median income had been in 1948.

Whites reacted violently to the wartime movement of blacks to urban areas in the North and the West. By the late 1940s, as the black percentage of city populations increased, more and more whites moved to the new suburbs that often restricted black residence. Conflicts between black workers and white workers over housing and jobs developed in some cities. In Detroit in 1943, for example, 25 blacks and 9 whites died in a race riot before federal troops restored order.