Southern History Series: The Second Reconstruction

Many years ago, I spent a considerable amount of time studying this subject while putting together the American Racial History Timeline. I started but never finished that project when I first launched this website. Lately, I have turned my attention back to more recent history.

There are deeper causes to the South’s current predicament. The United States fought the Second World War in the name of liberal democracy and the Cold War in the name of free-market capitalism. The origins of both lie much further back in American history. The mass immigration of Jews and Catholics to the United States goes back to the late 19th century. The development of mass media technologies began in the early 20th century. We can trace these threads back further in American history.

As far as the South is concerned, you don’t have to dig past the top soil in our history as a people to find the real South. The changes that we have experienced are very recent and a product of the last two generations. They were also imposed on the South from the top down by the federal government between 1938 and 1974. The people here hated the Second Reconstruction and resisted it with all their power, but they lost that war because the South was a minority section within the Union. The South had been a deviant section within the Union since the War Between the States with its own laws and customs and this era is best seen as bringing it to heel and remaking it in the image of the North and West.

The Second Reconstruction began in the late 1930s in the context of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and the ideological challenge that fascism posed to liberal democracy. World War II was a war between fascism and liberal democracy that dramatically changed White racial attitudes in the North and West. It was during the years from 1938 to 1945 that “racism” became stigmatized.

After World War II, Northern Democrats demanded that civil rights reform be placed at the top of the national agenda, which ultimately destroyed the New Deal coalition. The Cold War began with the Soviet Union and segregation became an embarrassment and liability for the American political class. It was a foreign policy albatross for “the leader of the free world.” Cold War presidents from Truman through LBJ along with the Supreme Court and lopsided majorities in Congress in the North and West pushed through the civil rights revolution. The Civil Rights Movement was a grassroots movement that responded to these incentives to rebel against segregation which were coming from the top down.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the urban riots in the North and West, the growth of the counterculture, the peace movement during the Vietnam War, a series of bombings by leftwing terrorists, civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. turning their attention to Northern cities and poverty and wealth redistribution, Southerners cynically supporting national civil rights legislation and the riots over forced busing brought the Second Reconstruction to an end in the backlash that gave rise to the Nixon presidency. It was launched by Northern liberals and only came to an end when a critical mass of Whites in the North and West began to oppose the resulting crime and cultural disorder.

Here are the key moments of the Second Reconstruction:

1938

The American Anthropological Association unanimously passes a resolution condemning racism.

The Carnegie Corporation commissions Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to write a comprehensive study of American race relations.

Gunnar Myrdal arrives in the U.S.

First use of “racist” as an adjective in the English language.

1939

Television is introduced to the American public at the New York World’s Fair.

1941 – 1945

The United States joins the Allies and wages war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy in World War II. Negro activists call for a Double V campaign, the defeat of enemies abroad and racism in America. White racial attitudes change dramatically in the North and West.

A. Philip Randolph threatens a March on Washington. President Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802 banning racial discrimination in hiring of government of defense industry during World War II. 

1942

Ashley Montagu publishes Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race.

James Farmer founds the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

1943

The Magnuson Act repeals the Chinese Exclusion Act and permits Chinese nationals in the U.S. to become naturalized citizens.

1944

Gunnar Myrdal publishes his study of American racial relations, An American Dilemma, which becomes the cornerstone of the later Brown v. Board of Education ruling that forced integration of public schools.

Smith v. Allwright, Supreme Court abolishes the white primary. 

Harry McAlpin becomes the first negro admitted to a White House press conference.

1945

End of World War II.

American racial attitudes change dramatically between 1938 and 1945 as “racism” is stigmatized due to wartime propaganda. A majority of White Americans, particularly upper middle class liberals in the North and West, come to believe in racial equality for the first time in American history.

1946

Secretary of State Dean Acheson issues a study of the damage domestic racism had on American diplomacy.

The Luce-Celler Act of 1946 grants naturalization rights to Indians and Filipinos and reestablishes immigration from India and the Philippines.

Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Supreme Court forbids racial segregation of bus passengers engaged in interstate travel.

President Truman issues Executive Order 9808 which establishes the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. In light of changing racial attitudes among Northern Democrats, civil rights reform moves to the top of the national agenda during the Truman presidency.

National Football League welcomes its first negro players, integrating professional football.

1947

Cold War, 1947-1991.

The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union begins when Trump administration commits to the containment policy.

President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights issues its 178-page report, “To Secure These Rights.” The report calls for laws requiring states to end discrimination in education, mandating a ban against discrimination in the armed services, laws to guarantee fair employment practices for blacks, federal prohibition of lynching, repeal of poll taxes and other discriminatory voting restrictions, denial of federal grants when discrimination in evidence, an expanded civil rights division at the Justice Department, creation of permanent civil rights commissions at the federal and state levels, specific federal ban on police brutality, and enforcement of a Supreme Court decision against restrictive real estate covenants.

A poll shows 82% of the American people are reportedly opposed to President Truman’s civil rights program.

President Truman speaks at the annual meeting of the NAACP, the first chief executive to ever do so. 

William and Alfred Levitt, both Jews, pioneer the mass production of suburban housing (Levittowns) where White Americans would later move after taking out federally subsidized housing loans and where their children would become deracinated.

Patton v. Mississippi, Supreme Court rules all-white juries unconstitutional.

Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first negro player in Major League Baseball since 1887, breaking the color line in baseball.

1948

President Truman sends a special message to Congress proposing a ten-point civil rights program, including an anti-lynching measure, abolition of the poll tax, a permanent fair employment practices committee, a Justice Department civil rights bureau, and the abolition of segregation in interstate commerce.

President Truman introduces civil rights legislation and issues Executive Orders concerning fair treatment in federal employment and desegregation of the military.

President Truman orders the desegregation of the U.S. military with Executive Order 9981.

Democratic Party splits after the adoption of a strong civil rights plank at its national convention.

The Dixiecrat Revolt – a group of Southern Democrats form the States Rights Democratic Party to oppose the reelection of Harry Truman because of his proposed civil rights program.

Perez v. Sharp, California Supreme Court strikes down California’s anti-miscegenation law.

Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, Supreme Court orders OU to provide negro students with the same legal education it provided for white students.

Shelley v. Kraemer, Supreme Court strikes down de jure racial segregation, restricted covenants, in housing. 

Larry Doby integrates the American League in Major League Baseball, playing for the Cleveland Indians. 

1949

1n 1949, at least 17 states – Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia – and the District of Columbia had enacted laws requiring racial segregation of public school children. Four other states – Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming – provided for a local option in determining whether to segregate public education. Wyoming was the only state that did not exercise this option.

NATO is founded.

A federal court orders the University of Kentucky to admit negroes to its engineering, graduate, law, and pharmacy schools.

NBA welcomes three negroes players, integration of professional basketball.

1950

Sweatt v. Painter, Supreme Court rules that when considering segregated graduate education, “intangibles” must be considered part of “substantive equality.”

McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, Supreme Court rules that an institution of higher education could not provide different treatment to a student on the basis of race.

Henderson v. United States, Supreme Court abolishes racial segregation in railroad dining cars.

Integration of the NBA.

Althea Gibson breaks the color line in tennis.

1951

NBC institutes a code of standards and practices that required that all groups represented on the radio be treated with dignity and respect.

USIA creates a pamphlet for American ambassadors designed to help them depict American race relations in a positive manner, The Negro in American Life.

Brown reaches the Supreme Court.

1952

NBC implements a policy of “integration without identification, allowing the negro to appear on the radio without explicit reference to race.

The McCarran-Walter Act lifts the ban on Asian immigration established by the Asian Exclusion Act.

Supreme Court hears arguments in the Brown case.

1953

CBS pulls Amos ‘n’ Andy from the air after negro protests.

Earl Warren becomes chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Desegregation of public schools in Washington, D.C.

The Baton Rouge bus boycott is the first of its kind in the American South that attempted to end segregation on city buses.

1954

The Supreme Court decides for the plantiffs in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education. The ruling makes illegal segregation and discrimination in the nation’s public schools.

Bolling v. Sharpe, Supreme Court outlaws racial segregation in Washington, D.C. public schools.

Hernandez v. Texas, Supreme Court rules that the Fourteenth Amendment extends beyond whites and negroes and covers individuals of Mexican ancestry.

Founding of the Citizens’ Councils in Mississippi.

1955

Brown II, Supreme Court renders its decision on the implementation of the Brown decision.

Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black native of Chicago, is kidnapped and murdered while visiting family in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. Two men are arrested for his murder, but are later acquitted, sparking a national controversy and widespread coverage by the white Northern press.

Massive resistance, a segregationist strategy to reduce integration, is outlined on the editorial pages of the Richmond News Leader on November 21, 1955.

NAACP activist Rosa Park is arrested in Montgomery, AL for violating a city ordinance and Alabama state law by refusing to give up her seat on a municipal bus to a white man. Her decision inspired the later Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted for 381 days.

1956

Gayle v. Browder, Supreme Court outlaws segregation in all public transportation.

Autherine Lucy attempts to integrate the University of Alabama but fails when students riot.

Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott begun in 1955 ends after 381 days, drawing national and international attention, and propels Martin Luther King, Jr., to the forefront of the civil rights crusade.

Supreme Court rules that the racial segregation of Montgomery buses is unconstitutional.

Integration of the University of North Carolina.

NAACP barred from the State of Alabama.

1957

Founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Clash in Little Rock, Arkansas, over the desegregation of Central High School. President Eisenhower dispatches federal troops to keep order and enforce desegregation.

Eisenhower sends in the U.S. Army’s 1,200-man 327th Battle Group of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to take control of Central High School. At the same time, he federally mobilized the entire Arkansas National Guard, about 10,000 Guardsmen, mainly to prevent Governor Orval Faubus from attempting to use the Guard to oppose the federal soldiers. With this overwhelming show of disciplined soldiers, the threat from the mobs abated, although the shouting continued. The Little Rock Nine were able to enter Central High and begin attending classes on September 25.

The Civil Rights Act of 1957 pledges the federal government to prosecute abuses of negro civil rights.

With the support of the governor and the state legislature, the school board closed all public high schools in Little Rock after the end of the 1957-1958 year. The schools remain closed for one year.

1958

Cooper v. Aaron, Supreme Court rules unanimously for integration to proceed immediately at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas.

Little Rock reopens and integrates its public schools.

1959

Commander George Lincoln Rockwell founds the American Nazi Party.

1960s

Negroes begin to appear on television as professionals and social equals.

1960

Boynton v. Virginia, Supreme Court outlaws segregated facilities in interstate travel.

Greensboro Four in North Carolina, students at North Carolina A&T, start the sit-in movement at a segregated lunch counter at Woolworth’s, which quickly spreads all through the South.

James Lawson and associates launch a sit-in at downtown Nashville lunch counters.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina and Marion Barry, the future mayor of Washington, D.C., is elected first SNCC national director.

President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law.

Limited integration in downtown Nashville stores.

John F. Kennedy is elected president with large support from negro voters.

1961

A negro Air Force veteran, James Meredith, completes his first application for admission to the all-white University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), at Oxford.

James Farmer is elected national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

JFK issues Executive Order 10925, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and beginning affirmative action.

The first Freedom Rides which last for four weeks begins in Washington, D.C., sparking violent white resistance in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. President Kennedy sends federal marshals to protect demonstrators.

1962

JFK signs an executive order that curbs discrimination in federally associated housing and loans.

Meredith’s admission to Ole Miss causes a riot, in which two people are killed.

Attorney General RFK and the Interstate Commerce Commission order the desegregation of bus terminals.

JFK issues Executive Order 11063, beginning federal oversight of racial discrimination in housing.

MLK arrives in Albany, GA to lead a local civil rights movement known as the Albany movement. It ends in failure.

1963

Screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Martin Luther King Jr. leads his first march in Birmingham, Alabama which is a stronghold of segregation.

MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is published in the Birmingham News.

A Baltimore postal worker, William Moore, is assassinated in Alabama as he makes his solo Chattanooga Freedom March.

MLK and Birmingham civil rights leaders being using children in marches. This comes to be called the Children’s Crusade.

The first serious riots in Birmingham over civil rights marches and Ku Klux Klan bombings.

JFK announces his plans to send a major new civil rights bill to Congress.

Black students attempt to enroll at the University of Alabama. Governor Wallace engages in symbolic defiance, standing “in the schoolhouse door.”

Medgar Evers, field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP, is assassinated at his home, in Jackson.

President Kennedy meets with negro leaders in the White House to discuss his civil rights bill and their proposed March on Washington.

Kennedy issues Executive Order 11114, extending affirmative action requirements to federally funded construction projects.

MLK and other negro leaders meet in New York City to finalize their plans for a March on Washington.

Meredith graduates from Ole Miss.

The March on Washington, at which MLK makes his “I Have a Dream” speech, takes place.

Birmingham schools begin desegregation.

KKK bombs the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four children.

JFK is assassinated in Dallas and Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) is sworn in as president.

Maryland passes a law desegregating public accommodations.

Black protests against racial discrimination begin in Cambridge, Maryland.

The first Cambridge riot breaks out over civil rights demonstrations.

1964

Supreme Court rules in Griffin v. Prince Edward County that local authorities have to fund public education.

LBJ makes his first State of the Union Address, promising to support civil rights reforms.

Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The legislation outlaws segregation in all public transportation, public accommodations, employment, and education. It also prohibited government financial support of any institution or agency practicing Jim Crow.

FBI begins probing the murders near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

LBJ signs the Equal Opportunity Act, creating the Jobs Corps and Vista (Volunteers in Service to America).

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is held at Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party stirs controversy there.

LBJ is elected president after defeating Barry Goldwater who carries several Deep South states.

Martin Luther King receives Nobel Peace Prize.

Malcolm X makes his pilgrimage to Mecca. Upon his return, he forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, Supreme Court upholds the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Twenty Fourth Amendment, which eliminates the use of the poll tax in federal elections, is ratified.

1965

Sidney Poitier stars in A Patch of Blue, which deals with interracial romance.

MLK begins the Selma campaign in Alabama.

The negro civil rights worker Jimmie Lee Jackson is killed during the Selma campaign.

The negro Muslim leader Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City by fellow negro Muslims.

Hosea Williams leads a failed march from Selma to Montgomery, resulting in the beating of marchers by Alabama authorities at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

MLK leads a march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, kneels in prayer, and returns to Selma.

A white northern preacher, James Reeb, is killed during the Selma campaign.

LBJ meets with Governor George Wallace of Alabama in the White House and warns him to end the violence against demonstrators.

LBJ sends his negro voting rights bill to Congress.

MLK leads the Selma-to-Montgomery march.

Viola Liuzzo, a white woman from Detroit, is killed during the Selma campaign.

LBJ signs the Voting Rights Act into law, guaranteeing negroes the right to vote by providing strict federal enforcement and harsh penalties for racial discrimination in voting and registering voters.

The Watts riot in Los Angeles erupts, becoming the most deadly race riot since 1943.

The white northern Unitarian Universalist preacher Jonathan Daniels is killed while participating in ongoing Alabama civil rights activity.

LBJ issues Executive Order 11246, increasing affirmative action requirements in federally funded construction projects.

LBJ signs the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of October 3, 1965 (Immigration Act of 1965) into law. The Act abolishes race, ancestry, and national origins as factors in the selection of immigrants, increases immigration from 155,000 per year to 290,000 per year, and makes family relations the primary factor in the selection of immigrants.

The last legal vestiges of Jim Crow are removed. The Voting Rights Act abolishes all forms of legal disenfranchisement and pledged to prosecute illegal disenfranchisement.

1966

Whites expelled from SNCC. Shift to Black Power begins.

MLK announces his plan for a Northern Freedom Movement.

MLK takes up residence in a Chicago slum to kick off his Chicago campaign.

MLK leads his first march in Chicago.

Meredith is shot in north Mississippi while attempting his solo March against Fear from Memphis to Jackson.

Stokely Carmichael, national director of SNCC, begins using the “Black Power” slogan in defiance of MLK’s nonviolent strategy.

July 10 – MLK starts his better housing campaign in Chicago.

Major rioting erupts in Chicago, but it is not directly related to MLK’s activity.

More civil rights marches lead to white backlash riot in Chicago.

Another march in Chicago leads to a counterdemonstration by the American Nazi Party.

Founding of the Black Panther Party.

1967

Sidney Poitier stars in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.

Loving v. Virginia, Supreme Court of the United States strikes down the Virginia Racial Integrity Act and the anti-miscegenation laws of sixteen states.

MLK leads and delivers an antiwar speech at Central Park in New York City.

LBJ appoints Thurgood Marshall to become the first negro on the U.S. Supreme Court.

A riot breaks out in Newark, New Jersey, resulting in more than twenty deaths.

Detroit riots break out, topping the 1965 Watts riot as the most devastating of the 1960s.

A Black Power conference is held in Newark, stoking the fires of black anger already burning in America.

H. Rap Brown, national director of SNCC, encourages negroes to burn down the town of Cambridge, Maryland, sparking yet another riot there.

George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party is assassinated by a disgruntled Greek member.

Thurgood Marshall is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a Justice of the Supreme Court.

LBJ begins his Model Cities program.

Carl Stokes elected mayor of Cleveland, first black mayor of a major city.

1968

Jones v. Mayer, Supreme Court outlaws discrimination in the rental and sale of property.

Shirley Chisholm becomes the first negro woman elected to Congress.

22 states have “fair housing” laws, none Southern, by 1968.

Green v. New Kent County Board of Education, Supreme Court rules that freedom of choice plans were not adequate to desegregate schools.

A massacre at Orangeburg, South Carolina, results in many negro college students being killed or wounded by authorities.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders issues its “Kerner Report” releases its report on the 1967 riots, identifying deeply embedded “racism” as main cause.

Kentucky becomes the first state to enact a statewide anti-housing discrimination law.

MLK leads a poor people’s march in Memphis, resulting in rioting by negro youth.

MLK delivers his last public address, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” at a church in Memphis.

Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis.

MLK’s murder sparks riots throughout the nation, one of the worst being in Washington, D.C.

MLK’s funeral in Atlanta becomes the largest ever held for a private American citizen.

LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law, prohibiting discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

Coretta Scott King and Ralph Abernathy open Resurrection City in Washington, D.C., as part of MLK’s posthumous Poor People’s Campaign.

RFK is assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning for president.

Coretta King and Abernathy lead Solidarity Day demonstration in Washington to close Resurrection City.

Rioting erupts in Cleveland.

The Republican National Convention meets in Miami, resulting in rioting and two deaths.

The Democratic National Convention meets in Chicago, resulting in rioting and the media-circus trial of the “Chicago Eight” over the next two years.

Poor People’s March on Washington.

Richard Nixon elected president, defeating Hubert Humphrey.

1969

President Richard Nixon creates the Office of Minority Business Enterprise.

The National Black Economic Development Conference meets in New York; James Forman formulates the “Black Manifesto” there.

Forman disrupts a church service in New York City to present his Black Manifesto demands.

Nixon signs Executive Order 11478, extending affirmative action to all federal government agencies and jobs.

The Woodstock music festival is held in upstate New York.

The Black Panther Bobby Seale is first bound and gagged in court in the Chicago Eight trial.

Seale’s case is separated from that of the remaining “Chicago Seven.”

Alexander v. Holmes County effectively desegregates the public schools of Mississippi.

1970

Sixteen Black Panthers are put on trial in New York City for plotting to bomb public buildings.

Whites in Lamar, South Carolina, attack busloads of negro schoolchildren on their way to their newly integrated school.

Nearly 1,000 youths at Yale University stage a demonstration in support of Black Panthers on trial in New Haven, Connecticut.

Two negro students are killed at Jackson State University, Mississippi, by state troopers.

Ralph Abernathy, the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, heads a “march against repression” that ends in the state capitol in Atlanta with 10,000 participants.

The murder conviction of the Black Panther leader Huey Newton is overturned by an appeals court.

Black Panthers, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., announce plans for a “Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention.”

The IRS revokes the tax exemptions of all racially segregated private schools in the United States.

The Black Panther leader Huey Newton is released from prison, ending the “Free Huey!” campaign successfully.

Jonathan Jackson leads a holdup and attempted kidnapping in San Rafael, California, courtroom in order to free a negro defendant; the attempt results in a deadly shootout and the prosecution of the Black Panther activist Angela Davis as an accomplice.

Philadelphia police raid Black Panther offices and make highly publicized arrests of members.

Black Panthers hold constitutional convention in Philadelphia and draft a communist constitution for the United States.

The negro entertainer Flip Wilson debuts his Flip Wilson Show on NBC television.

Angela Davis is captured by authorities in New York City.

Black Panthers scheduled constitutional ratification convention in Washington, D.C., fails to materialize.

Extension of the Voting Rights Act.

1971

Angela Davis is arraigned on charges of conspiracy in the Jonathan Jackson case.

The 13 members of the Congressional Black Caucus from the House of Representatives boycott President Nixon’s State of the Union message.

The Black Panther leaders Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver disagree in a television debate on the direction of the party, effectively destroying the party.

President Nixon meets with the Congressional Black Caucus and listens to their grievances.

U.S. Supreme Court rules in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, that forced busing of students from one school district to another to achieve rational balance is acceptable.

President Nixon issues a statement rejecting most of the proposals of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturns the conviction of the negro boxer Muhammad Ali for draft evasion in 1967.

The Black Panther and Soledad Brother George Jackson kills five people in an attempt to escape from prison before being gunned down himself.

Ten school buses are bombed in Pontiac, Michigan, by whites protesting cross-town busing order of federal courts.

“Angela Davis Day” is held in New York City as part of the “Free Angela!” campaign.

1972

Angela Davis is released on bail.

Angela Davis’s trial begins.

Congress gives the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the power to force compliance with all civil rights hiring laws.

The first National Black Political Convention is held in Gary, Indiana, resulting in the creation of the National Black Assembly.

President Nixon makes an address calling on federal courts to halt cross-town busing.

Benjamin L. Hooks becomes the first negro appointee to the Federal Communications Commission.

The NAACP withdraws from the National Black Assembly, citing its separatist agenda.

Angela Davis is acquitted by an all-white jury in California.

1973

Tom Bradley elected the first negro mayor of Los Angeles. (Adams, 109)

The National Black Network begins operations with 38 radio stations nationwide.

Keyes v. Denver, opens the way for court-ordered busing in the North.

Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion

1974

Milliken v. Bradley, Supreme Court rules that schools were local for the purpose of Brown, and further decreed that the liberal judicial test of evidence usually granted in cases involving racial discrimination could not be invoked because suburban schools were not involved. The test of evidence, strict scrutiny, required the defendant school district to carry the burden of proof of nonracial discrimination and not the plaintiff.

The second Black National Political Convention is held, in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Federal court orders the city of Boston to begin integrating its public schools.

A negro inmate, Joan Little, kills her white jailer in North Carolina and escapes.

School starts in Boston, causing a racial uproar as integration begins.

Rioting occurs in Boston because of integation problems at Hyde Park High School.

Rioting occurs again in Boston over school integration problems.

President Gerald R. Ford publicly declaims the federal court rulings requiring cross-town busing.

Rioting occurs in Boston yet again over integration problems.