Civil Rights & Conservatism

In this Unit you will learn about changed in Texas politics in the 20th century, the Civil Rights Movement and its impact on Texas culture, and the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union.

How do people act effectively to address intolerable conditions in society?

Post-War Prosperity & Politics

The Texas economy kept growing after World War II. New industries brought more people to the state’s cities.

By 1950, more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas. Many of them were moving to suburbs – communities that lie outside a city. People liked the fact that the suburbs were often newer, quieter, and safer than cities.

Cars made living in the suburbs easier. In these years, more and more people came to own cars.

Examples of Post-War Prosperity & Suburbia

Post-War Factories

The larger number of factories led to growth in labor unions.
These are groups formed by workers to push for their interests. Many workers in the petroleum and chemical industries joined unions. These groups were less strong in other fields.

This video was made in 1946, one in a series intended to provoke debate about current topics in Post-WWII America. In this case, the controversial issue of whether women should continue to work outside the home after their valiant efforts during World War II is tackled head on.

Changing Politics

Politics in Texas began to change as well. The state wanted to keep control of the “Tidelands” – areas off the coast that were thought to contain oil.

In 1952, the Republican candidate for U.S. President – Dwight Eisenhower – supported the state’s claim to this area, while his Democratic opponent did not. As a result, many Texans chose to vote for Eisenhower. When he became president, he gave the tidelands area back to the state.

After 1952, Republicans began to gain power in Texas politics as a direct result of this “Tidelands Controversy”. This began a new wave of Conservatism in Texas politics.

Texans In The White House

In 1960, Lyndon B. Johnson, a senator from Texas, was elected Vice President. Three years later, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while traveling in Dallas. Lyndon B. Johnson took over as President after JFK’s assassination.

Under Johnson’s leadership, many new laws passed to end discrimination, improve education, and to help the elderly and the poor. He also sent many soldiers to fight a war in Vietnam to combat the spread of communism.

Communism is an economic system in which the state owns the land and the means of production and people have no say in public affairs.

Fighting Communism

The Soviet Union supported communism. The U.S. opposed it, and promoted democracy and free enterprise instead. [Free enterprise is an economic system where private individuals own business property and the means of production.]

The conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for global influence/to be the world superpower was known as the “Cold War”. The war was unpopular and began to overshadow the good works President Johnson was doing at home.

In 1968, Johnson decided not to run for a second term as President. He ended his 40-year career of public service and retired to his ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

The Space Race

During World War II, Texas was a center for building aircraft and training pilots. After the war, the government wanted to build rockets and missiles. Once again, Texas played an important role in this work. Companies in the state made some of the parts that went into rockets and missiles.

The government wanted to explore space. In part, this urge came from curiosity. It also grew out of a conflict with the Soviet Union...

During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were competing to see who could first get into space, commonly called “The Space Race”. They tried to see which side could be the first to have successes in space.

In 1957, the Soviet Union sent the first satellite into space. It was called Sputnik. A satellite is a human-made object that orbits Earth.

That Soviet Union was also the first to send a person into space, a cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin. In response, President John F. Kennedy set a new goal for the U.S. He wanted to be the first country to land a person on the moon.

Yuri Gagarin: First Man In Space

When Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, the reaction was, if anything, more electric than when Sputnik launched.

Until Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's flight on April 12, 1961, dogs and astrochimps were the typical vanguard space travelers. Sending a human into space — and bringing him back alive — was one of the greatest scientific and engineering achievements to date.

Back on earth, the reaction was, if anything, more charged with excitement than when Sputnik launched. Gagarin's flight was a huge propaganda opportunity for the Soviet Union. Two days after Gagarin's return, Kennedy called a meeting in the cabinet room – what can the US space program do? Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and his team began working on the Saturn rockets with the goal: land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

NASA

In the Mid-20th Century the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] worked to put America on the moon before the Soviet Union. It opened a new building near Houston, Texas. Astronauts – the people who went into space – trained there.

During the 1960s, NASA had many spaceflights. On July 20, 1969, one of them reached Kennedy’s goal. On that day, Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon.

In the 1970s, NASA’s center in Houston was named the Johnson Space Center. People there worked on making a new kind of spacecraft – the space shuttle. It orbited Earth and could also return to the earth. That way, the same craft could be used many times.

Space Program Today

At present, the U.S. is working with other countries in space. They are building the International Space Station. This is a flying laboratory. Texas is helping in this effort as well. Since the 1970s, the Johnson Space Center has been the control center for the International Space Station [ISS]. The Johnson Space Center is likely to play a large role in future NASA missions.

The Space program has also led to technological innovations that help other industries. For instance, plastics that were developed for astronauts’ face shields are now used to make scratch-resistant lenses found in eyeglasses.

The Civil Rights Movement In Texas

The years after World War II brought rapid social and political change to Texas, as they did across the United States.
Rural areas lost hundreds of thousands of residents to growing cities, as suburbs boomed and Texas shifted from a majority rural to a majority urban state.
Access to higher education expanded for many Texans, aided by the GI Bill’s promise to pay.
Industries that developed here during the war provided jobs to returning veterans and new college graduates.
And for those left out of the opportunity that followed the war’s end, the Civil Rights movement in Texas fought for greater equality – for African Americans and Latinos.

The town of Lexington, Virginia, played a major role in the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 2017, residents marched in the city's first Martin Luther King Jr. parade. Down the road, others saluted the Confederacy.

The Civil Rights Movement Begins

The first large population of African Americans in Texas arrived as slaves when Texas was part of Mexico. Until the end of the Civil War, their fight had been for freedom. When the Civil War ended, their fight for true equality began.
In Texas, as in many southern states, new laws limited African Americans’ access to education, voting and other central aspects of public life. Those laws enforced widespread segregation, perpetuated high rates of poverty and created major obstacles to building better lives.
As World War II ended, many of the state’s Jim Crow laws remained in force, and new ones were passed. Across the state, segregation was the norm – in education, neighborhoods and places of worship; in public areas like stores, theaters and parks; and even in hospitals and cemeteries.
In the years following the war, the battle for equal rights gained support and power – fueled, in part, by returning veterans.

African-American Struggles

Even before World War II, a few African Americans began to push for their Civil Rights. These are the rights all American citizens have under the U.S. Constitution. After the war, African American leaders brought their fight to U.S. Supreme Court.

Two court cases from Texas helped them. Since the late 1800s, Texas Democrats had prevented African Americans and Mexican Americans from voting in primary elections. These are the elections in which voters from each party choose who will run for an office. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that these all-white primaries were unconstitutional.

African American Successes

Another ruling, Sweatt v. Painter in 1950, said that the state could not keep African Americans out of state-run graduate schools, such as law school.

Then, in 1954, the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in all public schools in Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1966, two African American men [Joe Lockridge and Curtis Graves] were elected to the state legislature.

Then, in 1967, Texas elected Barbara Jordan to the state senate. She was the first African American woman ever elected to the state legislature.

Barbara Jordan

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.
His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States.
King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

“I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.

Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.

Dr. Hector P. Garcia

Mexican Americans Fight

Mexican Americans also fought for their rights. A court ruled that it was illegal to give low-quality schools to Hispanic students.

In the 1960s, many schools in the state moved to bilingual education. That is, they taught Spanish-speaking students in both Spanish and English.

Hispanic Americans began to organize. Political groups such as the League of United Latin American Citizens [LULAC] formed to help Hispanics gain more economic, social, and political power.
Dr. Hector P. Garcia, [1914-1996] was a veteran of World War II, a physician, and a surgeon. He was also a Civil Rights advocate who created the G.I. Forum [supporting Mexican-American vets].

Civil Rights Spread

The Civil Rights Movement spread across Texas and the U.S. in the 1960s. Many Texans participated in the 1963 March on Washington. Others protested outside the state’s capitol.

James Farmer, a Texas native, founded the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE]. This group sponsored “freedom rides” throughout the South to end segregation of public places.

Two key events during this time were the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These acts helped to end segregation and discrimination and to protect minority groups’ right to vote.

In addition, Texas passed an Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, guaranteeing women equal rights under the law.

LBJ Signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination and segregation regardless of race or color. It was originally introduced in congress by President John F. Kennedy before he was assassinated in 1963.

Among those present at the signing were:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy

Sen. Everett Dirksen

Sen. Hubert Humphrey

F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover