Critical too were the efforts of the Communist Party and of left wing unions that had the requisite influence with legislators.
It was a very important victory. Not only did it defeat a vicious discriminatory measure, it signaled the start of a civil rights alliance that would win other victories over the next decade and a half, including the struggle to win jobs in Boeing and other defense industries during World War II, the fight to force stores, restaurants, and hotels to serve people of color, and the campaign against racial housing covenants that kept Blacks, Asians, and Jews from living in many neighborhoods and some entire communities.
There is more about the long history of racial segregation and civil rights campaigns on The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project as well as in the essays below. Next: University of Washington. Click on the links below to read illustrated research reports on civil rights issues, movements, and cases during Washington State's Great Depression:.
However, this stance bled into anti-Japanese sentiment that would culminate in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Litchman was one of Washington's most ardent legal defenders of labor radicals and civil rights advocates. Throughout his long career he defended IWWs and other radicals while fighting for Socialism and civil rights.
Two anti-miscegenation bills proposed during the s were successfully blocked by protest and political activism among the Northwest's communities of color, including Filipino Americans.
During the Depression, many Japanese Americans in the Northwest began to embrace both Japanese and American cultures, nurtured cross-cultural social life, carved out economic sectors for themselves, and created political organizations with active participation in local cities and towns. How did Jewish women in Seattle negotiate the Great Depression? An investigation of the Seattle Jewish Transcript offers some indications. The newspaper reinforced traditional understandings of women as wives and mothers while also stressing the importance of education, up to a point.
Two anti-miscegenation bills proposed during the s were blocked by an activist coalition of African Americans, Filipino Americans, and progressives.
Seattle's Jewish community sought out several strategies for responding to Anti-Semitism during the Great Depression through their newspaper. The second generation of Japanese immigrants, the Japanese American Nisei, used civic organizations and Seattle's ethnic newspapers to create a fully American identity for themselves in response to anti-Asian sentiment.
Female students in the s challenged accepted ideas of women's education, participation in college athletics, and domestic and social responsibilities. Depression-era labor policies did not allow married women to hold jobs, favoring a husband's work. Lea Miller at the UW was fired, and sparked a national protest over the policy.
Read the history of the first Filipino-led labor union in the United States, based in Seattle. Conte Biancamano. Thomas and Sengstacke spent the majority of their year in Germany with relatives.
According to the duo, the Germans they encountered were both well-informed on and appalled by the treatment of African Americans in the United States. And were they angry! She was the talk of the town. Later, during a separate trip to Paris, Thomas and Sengstacke attended yet another Baker show. Then have students read Lester B.
Have them imagine they are black workers in the s. Be certain to let students know that historically craft unions skilled workers have been more hostile to African American workers than industrial unions unskilled workers have been. Explain that skilled workers, through apprenticeships, have always tried to maintain a scarcity of labor as a way of keeping wages high, and that this also led them to exclude women workers and immigrants from their ranks.
Their strength lay in having relatively few workers whose skills could not be acquired in a relatively short time. Unskilled workers on the other hand, realizing that they were easily replaceable in case of a strike, have stressed the need to organize everyone in a given industry, including blacks and women. Their power is in their numbers. Evaluation: Have the students write a short story in which the two main characters are black workers living during the Great Depression.
One is opposed, stating that the company has been nice to him. Among other things, it hired him when other companies discriminated against him, and it has contributed funds to his church.
The other worker, while not denying the company has been nice, argues that all of this can easily be taken away, that without a union there is no job protection. It can be obtained from Knowledge Unlimited, P.
Box 52, Madison, Wisconsin ; Show students the film The Jesse Owens Story , which, in the form of a docudrama, lays out the life of Jesse Owens, the great track star who won four gold medals at the Olympics minutes.
Box 52, Madison, Wiconsin ; He gets the gun and accidentally shoots a mule, opening himself anew to ridicule. To pay for the mule he must work for twenty-five months. He chooses instead to hop a freight train, gun in pocket, in search of power and dignity.
Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. One of the most celebrated legal cases of the s involved nine black youths falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama. Harris, William H. Webster, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Harris explores the origins and development of this important black labor union, which became the training ground for black labor leaders and civil rights leaders.
Kirby, John. An excellent account of the racial accomplishments and limitations of liberalism under the New Deal. Martin, Charles H. The case of a black Georgia Communist whose labor activisim incurred the wrath of Georgia authorities and illuminated the undemocratic features of the American South in the s.
Naison, Mark. Communists in Harlem During the Depression. Painter, Nell. Painter tells the fascinating story of a man who dared to be black and Red in the American South when either could be dangerous. Explore newspaper articles, editorial cartoons, and Klan advertisements from the late 19th and early 20th century.
In Birmingham in , it was illegal for a black and a white person to play cards or checkers together. In Nebraska in , it was illegal for a white person to marry someone who was at least one-eighth African or Chinese. In Missouri in , it was illegal for black children to attend white schools or for white children to attend black schools. African-Americans had separate waiting rooms, train cars, neighborhoods, and swimming pools.
Political events and movements in Virginia involving the suffrage of African Americans from to are described on this site. Discover why African Americans had to fight for the right to vote even after law granted it to them. Understand the meaning of disfranchisement. This site offers a timeline of political developments in Virginia, and profiles of African Americans involved in politics. Transcripts of suffrage legislation are available to study, as well as newspaper articles relating to African Americans and political activity.
Skip to Main Content. Harper Lee b.
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