African American History

XXVI

Affirmative Action

During the 1960s the Kennedy administration devised a strategy to increase employment opportunities for minorities they called affirmative action. Originally affirmative action required contractors doing business with the federal government to take positive steps to insure that employees were not discriminated against because of race, creed, color, or national origin.

Later, President Johnson argued that fairness demanded affirmative action to compensate for past racial injustice and discrimination. His Executive Order 11246 signed in 1965 augmented the Civil Rights Act of 1964, committing the federal government to seek not 'just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.' Two years later, Johnson broadened his order to embrace gender equality as well. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the public and private sectors devised plans to increase the racial and gender diversity in work places and classrooms to bring blacks into jobs and schools where they had previously been denied admission.

By the late 1970s, the concept of affirmative action in higher education was challenged in the Supreme Court by Allan Bakke, a white student who had been denied admission to Davis Medical School at the University of California. Bakke charged that he had been the subject of 'reverse discrimination' because black students with lower academic credentials had been admitted to the school. Advocates of affirmative action pointed to the number of white students with academic records inferior to Bakke's who had been admitted to the school under so-called legacy admissions provided to the children of alumni. They argued that the university often considered factors other than grades in its admissions decisions. The Court ignored these arguments and ordered Bakke admitted. However, the Court upheld the concept of affirmative action, ruling that race could be considered in admissions in the interest of creating a racially diverse student body.

One year later the Court ruled that labor unions and businesses could design special programs aimed at helping blacks get jobs and promotions where it was shown that there had been 'manifest racial imbalance.' In 1980 the Court approved Congress's right to impose goals for minority representation as a means for increasing the number of minority and female contractors doing business with the federal government and to counteract past discrimination.

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In the more conservative political atmosphere of the 1980s, the federal government shifted its stand on affirmative action and the protection of civil rights won in the 1960s. Under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the Justice Department announced in 1981 that it would no longer require federal contractors to maintain affirmative action programs, nor would it enforce busing as a means of correcting discrimination in public education.

The Supreme Court continued to send mixed signals. In 1985 it declared that affirmative action programs designed to bring more minorities and women into state employment were constitutional. But, by the end of the decade, it had ruled against Richmond, Virginia's 'set aside program' designed to reserve 30 percent of the city's public work for minority contractors. It had not, however, specifically outlawed affirmative action programs as a method to redress past racial inequities.

Throughout the 1990s, affirmative action remained one of the nation's most divisive racial issues. Some people continued to see it as reverse discrimination and used the language of the civil rights movement to condemn the use of racial or gender preferences. California voters rejected the affirmative action programs that had helped integrate the state's university system. The state of Washington passed a similar initiative. Affirmative action plans in other states and in private industry were also attacked severely.

In 2003 the administration of President George W. Bush presented arguments before the Supreme Court in support of lawsuits that sought to end affirmative action programs at the University of Michigan. The Court, however, rejected the arguments and reaffirmed the goal of racial diversity in higher education. In its first major decision on affirmative action since the 1978 Bakke decision, the Court upheld an affirmative action program at the University of Michigan Law School, which considered race as one of many factors in selecting applicants. Although the ruling restated the diversity principle, the Court’s majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger also noted that a permanent justification for racial preferences should not be enshrined. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the opinion, called for a reevaluation of the need for affirmative action in 25 years.

XXVII

Political and Social Gains

Despite obstacles, African Americans made political gains. By organizing at the state and local level, African Americans were able to increase black political representation. By 1968 nine African Americans, including the first black woman, Shirley Chisholm, had been elected to Congress, the largest number since 1875. Twelve were elected in 1970, and the following year they formed the Congressional Black Caucus for a stronger voice in federal affairs.

Coalitions of blacks, Hispanics, and whites in the Democratic Party brought an impressive number of African Americans to office in many major cities. In 1970 Kenneth Gibson was elected mayor of Newark; in 1973 Thomas Bradley was elected in Los Angeles, Maynard Jackson was elected in Atlanta, and Coleman Young was elected in Detroit. In 1983 Harold Washington was sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago, and black victories continued in major and minor cities and in statewide elections in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Meanwhile, the number of blacks in Congress also grew. By 1994 the membership of the Congressional Black Caucus stood at 40, including Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, the first black woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1989 General Colin Powell became the first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and L. Douglas Wilder was elected governor of Virginia, the first elected black governor in American history. Powell later became the first black secretary of state in 2001 and was succeeded by another black, Condoleezza Rice. In 2004 African American Barack Obama of Illinois was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 2006 Massachusetts elected its first black governor, Deval Patrick. The same year Minnesota voters sent the first black Muslim, Keith Ellison, to the U.S. House of Representatives.

One of the most hopeful signs of racial progress during the decade was civil rights leader Jesse Jackson's run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. Jackson was the first black man to mount a serious campaign for a major party's presidential nomination. He won Virginia's Democratic primary and 6.6 million primary votes nationally. Jackson did not win the nomination, but he amassed 1,200 delegates at the Democratic convention and was recognized as a major power in the party.

In 1983 Vanessa Williams became the first African American to win the Miss America Contest, and The Color Purple (1982) by black author Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. In 1993 Toni Morrison became the first African American to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Such black performers and sports stars as Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Bill Cosby became national icons.

XXVIII

Race and Class

Developments in the last decades of the 20th century seemed to justify the title of one of the era's most influential books, The Declining Significance of Race (1978), by William Julius Wilson. It argued that economic class was beginning to replace race as the determinant of individual opportunity for African Americans. Falling incomes for many blacks accompanied rising financial and professional opportunities for others. At the same time that inner city residents were facing growing insecurity on the streets and in their homes, blacks were becoming more visible and influential in city halls, state houses, and the halls of Congress.

Yet, public racial intolerance and shocking acts of racial violence offered disturbing signs that race was still very significant. A young black man was killed in 1986 in Howard Beach, a white residential section of New York City. He was attempting to escape a mob that challenged his right to be there. In a similar incident three years later, a black teenager was killed by a white gang in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Another divisive issue in the 1980s was white opposition to legislation making the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a national holiday. Then in 1991, video pictures of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King, a black motorist stopped for a traffic violation, were broadcast on national TV. For many, this was visual proof that police brutality continued against African Americans. The acquittal of the white officers involved by an all-white jury sparked national outrage and a race riot in Los Angeles.

XXIX

Differing Racial Perceptions

During the 1980s and 1990s a number of publications and public debates documented the divergent ways blacks and whites viewed race. They showed that blacks and whites saw the existence of racial bias and the consequences of racial discrimination quite differently: many whites believed that racial discrimination had declined, while many blacks believed that more needed to be done to combat racial discrimination.

The extent of conflicting racial views was revealed by the differing reactions to the murder trial of black sports commentator and former football star O.J. Simpson in 1995. Simpson was accused of murdering his estranged wife and her companion, and his lawyers presented a defense that charged the Los Angeles police with racial bias. The televised trial became a public spectacle dramatizing opposing perceptions of the legal system. The jury’s not guilty verdict outraged most whites who saw it as a miscarriage of justice and satisfied many African Americans who considered it a justifiable indictment of police racism. Television recorded these contrasting reactions to the verdict: a white crowd stunned, a black group elated.

The racial divide in America remained a critical issue in the late 1990s. In 1995 Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, perceived by many whites and some blacks to be a purveyor of anti-Semitism, organized the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Although many condemned Farrakhan as a black racist, the Million Man March brought hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington to show black pride and solidarity. Participants pledged themselves to work for positive change in their communities. Two years later, a call for a Million Woman March brought tens of thousands of black women to Philadelphia in a similar show of concern.

Race remained one of America's most contentious issues. In 1997 President Bill Clinton asked Americans to come together in frank discussions of race and led some of the conversations personally. Suggestions that the president apologize for slavery received little public support. Congress refused to support proposals for an African American Museum on the Mall, in Washington, D.C. Arson claimed hundreds of black churches in 1996 and 1997, but white churches and businesses provided aid for their reconstruction. Such conflicting signs provided evidence that race was still America's unresolved dilemma.

Some attempts to atone for America’s racist past were made as the 21st century began. In 2001 and 2002 two men were convicted on state charges for the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls attending Sunday school. Previously, no state charges had been filed in the case. In 2005 the United States Senate formally apologized to lynching victims and their descendants, most of whom were African American, acknowledging the Senate’s failure to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. The same year a jury in Philadelphia, Mississippi, convicted Edgar Ray Killen, a former Ku Klux Klan member, of manslaughter in the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Previously, the men responsible for the murders had only faced charges of violating federal civil rights laws. Killen’s trial represented the first time anyone involved in the abduction and murders of the three civil rights activists had faced state murder and manslaughter charges.