Question

How had the political climate changed in the south during world war ii in the early cold war years?

Answer 1

Despite being freed from slavery about 80 years before the end of World War II, African-Americans were still treated - often at best - as second class citizens in the southern states and discrimination was common in varying forms almost everywhere in the south (and, to a measure, in the northern states as well). While social change for African-Americans and other minorities came along rather slowly, it did eventually come (at least in part). President Truman famously - and quite forcefully and progressively for the time in the late 1940s - noted that "if the United States were to offer the peoples of the world a choice of freedom or enslavement it must correct the remaining imperfections in our practice of democracy." Beginning in the early 1950s states in both the north and the south established fair employment commissions, passed laws banning discrimination, and minority voter registrations began to rise throughout the country. In 1954, the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education paved the way for desegregation in all public schools. In the mid 1960s, President Johnson not only disliked injustice, he understood the international repercussions that came along with America’s perceived hypocrisy. In turn, he helped to pass The Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned all forms of discrimination in public and a majority of private accommodations.