PSC 101 Civil Rights African Americans

Summary

In a riveting lecture, Michael Hart delves into the complex history of slavery and civil rights in America. He examines how slavery, initially a near-universal institution, became uniquely race-based in the United States. The transition from indentured servitude to African slavery after Bacon's Rebellion is explored, as are the impacts of legislative decisions like the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott case. Hart traces the evolution of the anti-slavery movement, the rise of the Republican party, and the pivotal elections of figures like Lincoln. The lecture highlights critical Supreme Court cases like Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education, which underscore the long fight for civil rights that culminated in the transformative events of the civil rights movement from 1955-1968.

Highlights

• Slavery, once referenced in Romans as shocking due to the lack of it in Germanic tribes, was uniquely race-based in the U.S. 🌍.
• Initially, reluctance towards African slaves existed, favoring indentured servitude, but economic factors led to a shift 💼.
• Legislation like the Three-Fifths Compromise in the Constitution highlighted the struggle to reckon with slavery while framing new states 📜.
• Critical SCOTUS rulings, from Plessy vs. Ferguson endorsing segregation to Brown vs. Board of Education overturning it, were landmark decisions ⚖️.
• The Civil Rights Movement symbolized a pivotal push for legislative and societal changes regarding race relations in American history 🇺🇸.

Key Takeaways

• Slavery in the U.S. shifted from an indentured servitude model to a race-based system after Bacon's Rebellion ⚖️.
• The infamous Three-Fifths Compromise demonstrated early legislative attempts to navigate the contentious issue of slavery in new states 🌐.
• Important Supreme Court cases such as Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education marked significant milestones in civil rights history 🏛️.
• The Civil Rights Movement from 1955-1968 focused on ending legal segregation and securing voting rights for African Americans ✊.
• Despite its formal end, the Civil Rights Movement set the stage for ongoing discussions about race and equality in the U.S. nations 🗣️.

Overview

Michael Hart delves deep into the peculiar history of race and slavery in the U.S., spotlighting how America diverged from ancient slavery norms by making it race-based. This unique angle paved the way for deep societal implications, especially in the southern states, which were heavily reliant on this institution for economic viability.

The transition from voluntary indentured servitude to compulsory African slavery dramatically shifted labor dynamics post-Bacon's Rebellion. Key legislative compromises like the Three-Fifths Compromise attempted to stitch the growing divide between free and slave states but often resulted in further entrenching sectional tensions, leading to major national conflicts.

Significant Supreme Court decisions such as Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education marked turning points in the fight for civil rights. These decisions, along with the Civil Rights Movement spanning 1955-1968, laid a critical foundation for challenging and ultimately dismantling institutionalized racism, though debates around race continue to echo today.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction to Civil Rights and Race-Based Slavery This chapter introduces the concept of civil rights in the context of African Americans, focusing on the peculiar nature of race-based slavery in the United States. It highlights how, historically, slavery was a nearly universal institution but notes the uniqueness of race-based slavery in America. The chapter sets the stage for a deeper exploration of the implications and history of civil rights relative to African American experiences.
• 03:00 - 07:00: The Transition from Indentured Servitude to African Slavery The chapter discusses the historical prevalence and acceptance of slavery in ancient civilizations. It highlights that no prominent philosophers, politicians, or ordinary citizens condemned slavery in the ancient world, indicating the normalized perception of the institution. When the Romans encountered the Germanic tribe called the Theolans, they were shocked to find that they had no practice of slavery, underscoring how pervasive slavery was worldwide at that time.
• 07:00 - 15:00: Legal and Social Challenges to Slavery and its Expansion The chapter discusses the unique characteristics of race-based slavery, emphasizing its emergence in a period when European colonizing countries such as Spain, Portugal, England, and France had no slavery within their own borders, despite their active participation in the transatlantic slave trade.
• 15:00 - 23:00: Segregation and Legal Cases Challenging It The chapter discusses the early history of slavery in America, specifically the arrival of African slaves in the colonies in 1619 on a Dutch ship to Virginia. Initially, there was hesitation in purchasing African slaves due to language and cultural barriers. Plantation owners preferred indentured servants, who were typically convicts from Great Britain sent to work on the plantations.
• 23:00 - 29:00: The Civil Rights Movement and Its Achievements The chapter delves into the American colonial period, highlighting the practice of indentured servitude. It mentions that some people, looking for new opportunities, willingly sold themselves into servitude in exchange for passage to North America. These individuals, often from poor backgrounds, would commit to working off their passage after arriving in the colonies.
• 29:00 - 34:30: The Legacy and Transformation of the Civil Rights Movement The chapter titled 'The Legacy and Transformation of the Civil Rights Movement' discusses the historical context of servitude in early 17th century. It explains the concept of indentured servitude, where individuals were bound to work for a period of approximately seven years, after which they would be granted freedom. The chapter highlights that during this period, it was not uncommon for African slaves to also be freed upon completing a certain number of years of service. As they aged and could no longer perform the laborious duties, they would be replaced and subsequently freed. This was a prevalent practice for both African slaves and indentured servants, which significantly influenced the social and economic dynamics of the time.

PSC 101 Civil Rights African Americans Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in this video lecture i'm discussing civil rights and african americans one of the strange things about history of the united states is its race-based institution of slavery now the reason why this is a little bit strange in the historic larger historical context is because slavery used to be a universal institution or a nearly universal institution in the ancient world we cannot find a single surviving written document
• 00:30 - 01:00 that condemns slavery not a philosopher not a politician not an ordinary citizen is on record in the ancient world condemning slavery and in fact the institution was so widespread that when the romans came into contact with the germanic tribe called the alliance and discovered that theolans had no slavery the romans were shocked so it this institution was virtually ubiquitous in the olden days but the united states
• 01:00 - 01:30 is different in that slavery was race-based and that it arose at the time when it did not exist in the colonizing countries that is to say in the countries of europe themselves in spain portugal england france there was no slavery yet these countries participated in the slave trade now the first slaves from africa came to the
• 01:30 - 02:00 colonies in 1619 on the dutch ship they were brought to virginia at first there was some reluctance uh to purchase african slaves because they did not speak english they did not know the culture and uh plantation owners preferred to rely on indentured servants indentured servants were people from great britain who were sent they were convicts who were sent to work the plantations
• 02:00 - 02:30 in the american colonies and it's interesting that some people have actually sold themselves voluntarily into endangered servitude and were not convicts some young men seen no prospects for themselves for new life would sell themselves the captain of the ship they would essentially say i cannot pay fair because i am poor once you deliver me to the colonies in north america you can sell me
• 02:30 - 03:00 and the sale would be generally for the period of seven years and after that the indentured servant would be freed we also have to note that early in the 17th century it was also very common to free african slaves the idea was once they have worked for a number of years they got older they got tired they would be replaced so a common practice would be to free slaves and an even more common practice would be to free indeed indentured servants this created an
• 03:00 - 03:30 unexpected problem for uh societies for the colonies particularly southern colonies because even though slavery was legal in all 13 colonies well over 90 percent of slaves were brought to southern colonies because that's where the large plantations were and that's where the most productive agriculture was in the north slavery existed but on a very very very small scale
• 03:30 - 04:00 very few families owned slaves and those rare families that did own slaves typically owned between one and four in southern states this or colonies the situation was completely different because of large-scale agriculture but already by the end of the 17th century this presented a problem because freed endangered servants and freed slaves
• 04:00 - 04:30 would move west in order to settle what they believed were uninhabited and unowned lands and they would clash with native americans who saw that land as their land so in order to protect them from the indians indention servants asked the government of virginia at the time led by governor berkeley to protect them from the indians and the governor refused because he did not want the war with the
• 04:30 - 05:00 indians because the upper classes of virginia did not want to tangle with the indians for for a war which they might not win and they they didn't feel that they had their own particular interest in that war so uh in order to fix the situation so to speak uh the freed endangered servants and the freed slaves who sought protection from the indians found an un uh unlikely leader for for their
• 05:00 - 05:30 anger that leader was nathan bacon he himself was an immigrant from england and an aristocrat neither an indentured servant nor a slave but rather the represented a representative of the upper crust of the british society he immigrated to america and he resented the so-called new aristocracy of virginia who were rich and often self-made and made their wealth in commercial activities
• 05:30 - 06:00 and they can disdain them because in his eyes they were not true aristocrats and it was very kind of interesting was bizarre that this group of indi white indentured servants and black african former african slaves were led by this british aristocrat against in a rebellion against the government of virginia bacon's rebellion of 1776 and 1777 was so violent that it nearly destroyed
• 06:00 - 06:30 virginia and after this rebellion the ruling classes of virginia and in fact of the entire colonial world saw that there was a problem and the problem was labor what is going to happen in the future if we have this issue now it's only going to get worse in the future so the solution to this labor problem was to create the kind of labor that would never become free and
• 06:30 - 07:00 this is when after 1677 the reliance on african slavery begins in earnest endangered servants are phased out and they're replaced by african slaves and it becomes almost impossible to free a slave it becomes legally very difficult and it becomes financially very difficult very unprofitable to do so so this is where reliance on slavery begins
• 07:00 - 07:30 importations importation of slaves escalates and by the time we get to the constitutional convention of 1787 we have slavery that's legal in all 13 states but once again it's mostly concentrated in southern states now how did the constitution deal with this issue first the constitution said that importation of slaves
• 07:30 - 08:00 cannot be prohibited until 1808 okay so they basically gave themselves 30 years to protect importation of slaves second for the purpose of both representation and taxation they decided to count slaves as three-fifths of a person this was because southern states wanted to count slaves as one whole person and northern states that had almost no
• 08:00 - 08:30 slaves wanted to count them as zero southerners were very afraid of being greatly outnumbered in the house of representatives for this reason they wanted to count each slave as one person the northerners wanted to count slaves as zero but the compromise was three-fifths so so this is what can be said about an initial effort to deal with with the issue of slavery they understood that they couldn't accomplish more
• 08:30 - 09:00 they couldn't insist on the abolition of slavery because if they did then southern states and border states would never have agreed to ratify the constitution the next stage of the problem arose as a result of territorial expansion after the louisiana purchase in 1803 the size of the american territory almost doubled and it was only a matter of time before
• 09:00 - 09:30 those territories would be parceled out into states and the states admitted into the union so the question was if you admit these states into the union are they going to be free free states or slave states and in 1820 we had an answer that answer was the missouri compromise the missouri compromise said that there will be no slavery in this in the states that are located
• 09:30 - 10:00 north of the southern border of missouri except for missouri there is once again no slavery north of the southern border of missouri except for missouri that would be the last one and everything that's up north will have no slaves that was the missouri compromise however as you might imagine this compromise would not last after the mexican-american war and the trip treaty of guadalupe hidalgo in 1848 mexico was forced to sell vast tracts of
• 10:00 - 10:30 new land to the united states and it was acquisition of these new territories that once again brought up this question what is going to happen when these territories are parceled out into the states and the states enters the union are they going to enter as free states or slave states and it was in fact the entrance of california into the union as a free state in 1850 that broke the parity in the senate prior to that there was uh
• 10:30 - 11:00 even number of free states and slave states and so there was a exact balance in the senate between free state senators and slave state senators the entrance of california into the union in 1850 broke that balance and heated up the disagreement in the country of the issue of slavery southern interests became gradually more paranoid i also should note that even at the height of slavery now in the 19th century we are talking about
• 11:00 - 11:30 even in the south the vast majority of the families did not own slaves only approximately 20 maybe 25 percent did and among those who did only a small percentage maybe five percent were plantation slavers were uh slave aristocracy uh like slave or aristocracy like uh thomas jefferson or james madison so these people literally owned hundreds of slaves but uh most people
• 11:30 - 12:00 who who did own slaves and they were as i said a small percentage of the population they owned a very small number of states of slaves so uh tension heated up and it particularly became prominent when a new political party was formed in the early 1850s and that was the republican party the reason why was because the republican
• 12:00 - 12:30 party was openly anti-slavery in its sentiments its first candidate for president john c fremont lost to james buchanan in 1856 and so it seemed like maybe for a while nothing major would happen but the problem was that by then all the northern states had abolished slavery slavery remained only in southern states and in the four so-called border states i.e
• 12:30 - 13:00 missouri kentucky delaware and maryland so having abolished slavery that were not two distinct types of states those that had it and those who didn't have it and had significant moral hostility to it so in 1860 during the election of 1860 the issue of slavery became the key issue really and now the republican candidate was abraham lincoln lincoln made his
• 13:00 - 13:30 position clear he said i want to protect slavery where it already exists in fact he even proposed a constitutional amendment that would protect slavery where it already existed but no slavery in uh new new states and territories this was completely unacceptable to southern states because they were afraid that they would be geographically economically and culturally isolated and they would not be able to maintain their system
• 13:30 - 14:00 if this were the case so the problem was the election of 1860 led to an internal split in the democratic party the party that opposed lincoln it was split three ways uh the main opponent of lincoln's uh was john c breckenridge a 39 year old uh former vice president who actually uh was very obviously pro-slavery
• 14:00 - 14:30 and very obviously represented southern interests and then there were two other candidates john bell and stephen douglas both of those emphasized the importance of maintaining the union and not uh putting issue of slavery in the forefront so because of the split because of this three-way split within the democratic party between douglas bell and breckenridge
• 14:30 - 15:00 lincoln was able to win the election with only 40 percent of the popular vote but that didn't matter because he had more than enough he had 60 percent of the electoral college vote so lincoln was elected president and almost as soon as he was elected southern states began to leave the union south carolina left in december of 1860 and then six more states left in february of 1861 and then
• 15:00 - 15:30 in march they created the confederate states of america out of seven southern states and then later four more states namely arkansas tennessee north carolina and virginia would also join them bringing the total number of southern states to 11. i have to point out that some states that had slavery remained loyal to the union which states well i'm talking about the four
• 15:30 - 16:00 border states kentucky missouri delaware and maryland even though the men from those states some of them volunteered for the confederacy and sound volunteered for the union but technically all those four states remained in the union during the civil war so it was the civil war that actually ended slavery and for practical purposes and also the 13th amendment which was ratified in
• 16:00 - 16:30 1865 and that ended that institution so the question for southerners who wanted to redefine now this relationship that they had how do you redefine the relationship that you had if you had a race-based slavery the answer that they came up with was to import a system that already existed in northern states and that was the system of segregation so segregation
• 16:30 - 17:00 and slavery are completely incompatible the essence of slavery is access you can always access your property so you can imagine that slaves and slave owners lived nearby the system of segregation which southerners had actually copied from northern states presumes exactly the opposite that there is a strict separation in in this case between people of different races and how was it actually implemented the
• 17:00 - 17:30 answer is on a state by state basis each state passed its own segregation law and each law segregated a particular activity a particular area of business segregation would of course be legally challenged and the case that challenged it was plessy versus ferguson it was decided in 1896 and the homer place he was a french-speaking creole from new orleans
• 17:30 - 18:00 who looked white but he was 1 8 black and as such he could not sit in a train car with white people when he was asked to leave he refused he was taken before a judge the judge's name was ferguson hence you have a case called plessy versus ferguson this case would go all the way to the supreme court and the supreme court had to answer the question is legal segregation of
• 18:00 - 18:30 races constitutional well let's ask ourselves this why would it not be in the constitutional where in the constitution might we find a provision that we can argue rejects segregation the answer was the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment that says that no state shall deny any of its citizens equal protection of the laws and the
• 18:30 - 19:00 question was what does this exactly mean does it imply that segregation is not allowed the supreme court answered well it does not imply the segregation isn't allowed this segregation is perfectly fine separate but equal in these lectures we already met this way of interpreting the constitution it's called doctrinalism when we talked about the doctrine of innocent purchaser in uh fletcher vs spec
• 19:00 - 19:30 or when we talked about everson versus board of education and a wall of separation that's a doctrine too here we see a different doctrine which is separate but equal what is it it's a constitutional doctrine what is it meant to interpret the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment that is why the doctrine is called separate but equal and not something else like separate but fair separate but strange separate but what can we do let's put up with it
• 19:30 - 20:00 no it's called separate but equal because it refers specifically to the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and the court said if facilities if the facilities for different races are more or less equal then segregation by race is constitutional so uh homoplasty lost this case the system of segregation was preserved there was only one dissenting opinion
• 20:00 - 20:30 in this case written by justice john marshall harlan who said this is a shameful decision and it will go down in history and as such just as dred scott versus sanford did well what was that dred scott versus sanford decision to which justice harlan referred that was the decision that the supreme court made much earlier in 1857 in that particular decision
• 20:30 - 21:00 justice roger tony speaking for the court wrote that people of african descent are not and can never become citizens of the united states now that particular decision divided the country even more than the country was already divided and helped to usher in a crisis that led to the civil war and here john marshall harlan was saying well things are going to get as bad
• 21:00 - 21:30 as the threat scott vs sanford this decision is morally shameful and marked by words in fullness of time it will prove unworkable the constitution he said is colorblind and that was a pretty remarkable opinion we have to keep in mind that uh harlan himself was a former slave owner but he insisted that the constitution recognizes no race in the eyes of the constitution all people are equal and no one is
• 21:30 - 22:00 inferior or superior in the eyes of constitutional law you can have any opinion that you want about race but the constitution does not recognize superiority and inferiority of races okay so uh the decision was made in uh plessy versus ferguson the the segregation system would be in place for many decades this because of the separate but equal
• 22:00 - 22:30 doctrine in brown versus board of education a case that most of you are aware of which was decided unanimously by the supreme court in 1954 segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional based on the premise the children who were subjected to a segregated system of education experienced psychological pressure that marked them with a badge of inferiority so if you're say if you're forced to separate by race then uh that's inherently unequal
• 22:30 - 23:00 and it would not matter even if the facilities are technically equal even though of course in most cases they were not really equal but the court said even if they are equal it still it doesn't matter it still is unconstitutional to separate by race so why do i say this decision even though obviously it was an important decision
• 23:00 - 23:30 and the court deserves a lot of credit for issuing a unanimous one because if the court were divided like 63 or 5 to 4 then i think more legal battles would be ahead because uh the forces of segregation would say c the court is very narrowly divided it might might overrule itself in a few years but the nine to nothing decision signaled to the country that this is going to be a permanent change
• 23:30 - 24:00 and that it is almost certainly not going to happen that the court would eventually overturn its own decision why do i say the decision was somewhat limited in application well because it pertained only to public schools what about other areas of human activity what about theaters restaurants hotels motels etc well the answer is they remained segregated because they were not public schools and it would not be
• 24:00 - 24:30 until the 1964 civil rights act and then as you might remember heart of atlanta hotel versus united states that we discussed previously it would not be until 1964 that the law would also desegregate uh facilities that served the public but were owned privately but the decision in brown was still extremely important because it helped to usher in the civil rights movement which
• 24:30 - 25:00 lasted from 1955 beginning with the montgomery bus boycott and ending in 1968 was the assassination of martin luther king in april of that year what was at the heart of the civil rights movement well first of all we would be wise to define a social movement because the civil rights movement was a variation of a social movement what is a social movement it's a movement that had that
• 25:00 - 25:30 includes in itself millions of participants from many different walks of life so movement by definition has mass character it is not limited to professional activists or to journalists or to judges it really has a mass character lots and lots of ordinary citizens from many different walks of life participating to make a change and
• 25:30 - 26:00 the montgomery bus boycott that was successful and subsequent supreme court decisions and also we should note congressional laws we talked about the 1964 civil rights act also the 1965 voting rights act was very important prior to the late 1960s african americans could not vote because of various very because of various barriers to voting like literacy tests poll taxes
• 26:00 - 26:30 uh intimidation but all of this would end with the 22nd amendment to the constitution and with the voting rights act of 1965. the civil rights movement employed a variety of techniques like sit-ins protests marches and freedom rides in order to effect a change so freedom rights for example would involve people of
• 26:30 - 27:00 different races riding interstate buses from a state in which segregation didn't exist into the state where it did in order to highlight the unfairness of uh and and ludicrous character of segregation marches like the cell by series of syllable marches were marches in order to demand uh the right to to vote protests and sit-ins people for example of different races would go into a segregated diner
• 27:00 - 27:30 so they would have lunch together and then segregationists would pour ketchup on their heads would throw coca-cola in their faces and they would not move they were trying to show that they're just peaceful resistors that they want positive change that the other side with the monstrous the other side was intolerant and it's the other side that was against justice they were four justices so this is what you have and why do we cut the line well i did and
• 27:30 - 28:00 many others do why don't we say that the civil rights movement certainly continued after 1968 and some say well continues today because uh look what's happening let's say with minorities in the police particularly a number of incidents involving police shooting unarmed african americans what about that well one of the things about the civil rights movement is it has a narrow
• 28:00 - 28:30 range of goals in fact it had two specific goals to end legal segregation that was one and then to allow african americans to vote so the original civil rights had these two specific goals but also it had a specific method and that method was civil disobedience after martin luther king jr was assassinated in 1968 a hundred or so cities and towns
• 28:30 - 29:00 erupted in uh riots so the peaceful character of the movement ended that's number two first there were two very specific goals both of which were accomplished second the non-violence of the movement ended in a lot of violence and third now there were new goals some people tried to posit new goals like affirmative action and that was much more controversial to this to be so widely supported on issues like
• 29:00 - 29:30 affirmative action the country was and still is roughly evenly split so there wasn't as much of an agreement uh on that so that that's why some people like myself got the line and say well the original civil rights movement was 1955 1968 thank you