The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980

The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980

The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980. Harvard Sitkoff. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981).

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted to "assure that the right of citizens of the United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of race or color...in any Federal, State, or local election." This Act, which through renewals and amendments has been in effect for some eighteen years, had certain important provisions which were scheduled to expire on August 6, 1982.

While the 97th Congress was deciding whether this controversial piece of legislation should be renewed, amended, or permitted to expire, it became important to reflect upon the history of the Civil Rights Movement, which led to the enactment of this law. A useful tool which can be utilized in this process of recollection is Harvard Sitkoff's recently published work, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980.

Sitkoff commences his work with a discussion of the effects upon blacks of the renewed power of white racists after Reconstruction and the complicity of Congress and the United States Supreme Court in restoring antebellum white prerogatives. White supremacy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries returned black citizens to a state of peonage and disenfranchisement.

In the first half of the twentieth century the seeds were planted for the legislative and judicial revolutions of the 1960s. The intellectual roots lie in the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Renaissance and the New Negro Movement. Economically, the door was cracked by Executive Order 8802, issued by Franklin Roosevelt, which established the Fair Employment Practices Committee and prohibited discriminatory employment practices by unions and companies with government contracts. Politically, the Congress of Racial Equality and the Fellowship of Reconciliation began to challenge segregation in interstate travel. Legally, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began litigation and lobbying efforts which resulted in the turning point of 1954, the unanimous declaration by the United States Supreme Court that "separate but equal was inherently unequal."

In December of 1955, the modern Civil Rights Movement was inaugurated by its first significant act of civil disobedience. Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a standing white man Sitkoff describes the...