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SLAVERY  AND  ITS  LEGACIES

 

Systems of slave labor and other forms of unfree labor (e.g., indentured servitude, contract labor) in Native Americans societies, the Atlantic World, and the American South and West. The economics of slavery and its racial dimensions. Patterns of resistance and the long-term economical, political, and social effects of slavery.  

 

Mike M., Nick A., Sean P., Max M.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 25: WORLD WAR II

 

 

 

 

 

When you hear the word slavery, what do you think of? What comes to mind first? To be honest, many of our thoughts will lead straight to the Civil War--a war, among many reasons, can be linked to slavery. This Era, mid to late 1800s, is the time period in American history where slavery was at its peak. African Americans were treated more as property than as people. Ideas such as triangular trade may come to mind, which involved the transportation of black slaves from continent to continent, among other things. Not many of us, though, will send our attention to slavery during other time periods. The enslavement of African Americans in the United States ended in 1865 when the 13th amendment was ratified. However, in other countries worldwide taking part in World War II, slavery was clearly present, whether it be in the form of unfree labor, such as indentured servitudes and contract laborers, or whether it be in the cruel dehumanization of a people, who sit extremely low as almost worthless people compared to a higher authority under force. There were accounts of slavery around the world during the 1930s and 1940s: World War II era, that remains unknown to some.

 

Slavery: a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others.

 

European Campaign

 

Something to keep in mind ** Even before the war, Nazi Germany maintained a supply of slave labor. This practice started from the early days of labor camps of "undesirables", such as the homeless, homosexual, criminals, political dissidents, communists, Jews, and anyone whom the regime wanted out of the way.

 

 

 

Segregation & Discrimination

·         Blacks who joined military were in segregated units & assigned menial jobs

·         Some found it ironic that the United States fought Hitler & his racist policies while still being discriminatory to blacks in America

·         Most realized the paradox of fighting for freedom when they had little freedom back home.

·         The Crisis, the journal of the NAACP, stated, "A Jim Crow army cannot fight for a free world." A. Philip Randolph

o       Was a prominent twentieth-century African-American civil rights leader particularly known for African-American labor organizing. He took action after hearing about the discriminatory things going on to his people...

§         In 1925 Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This was the first serious effort to form a labor institution for the employees of the Pullman Company, which was a major employer of African-Americans

·         The Pullman Company manufactured railroad cars in the mid to late 1800s through the early decades of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. 

·         1941: Randolph proposed a march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries. This march, which would potentially include 100,000 African Americans, was called off

o       "Dear fellow Negro Americans, be not dismayed in these terrible times. You possess power, great power. Our problem is to harness and hitch it up for action on the broadest, daring and most gigantic scale."

o       In return for Randolph calling off the march, FDR issued Executive Order 8802, which stated that it was government policy that there shall be no discrimination in employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race 

§         FEPC --> Fair Employment Practices Commission

 

 

·         Black Americans profited little from the revival or prosperity and the expansion of jobs early in the war

·         Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote, in his opinion towards black in WWII, "Leadership is not embedded in the negro race yet, and to try to make commissioned officers lead men into battle--colored men--is only to work a disaster to both."

·         Race Riots broke in many cities, including Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Mobile, and Beaumont 

·         Because of new economic opportunity in the north, hundreds of thousands of African American headed north in hopes of financial success. These riots broke out because these cities were already overcrowded with many others seeking wartime jobs and financial success

·         Although most minority groups profited during the war because of the increased job opportunities (war-time industry), they faced prejudice as well

o       Mexicans were not allowed to use swimming pools in much of the Southwestern area of the country; primarily California

o       Mexicans and blacks were often excluded from some restaurants

o       Often picked on by police for minor offenses, and jailed on the smallest excuse

·         Blacks who volunteered to join Battle of Bulge fought in segregated platoons commanded by white officers

It can be said that it is pretty ironic about the fact that the United States would reject willing countrymen who were prepared to become servicemen. After all, the war was being fought to end hatred, when we had our own domestic hated problems. Many would also find it ironic that the United States was preparing to fight Hitler & his racist policies while still being discriminatory to blacks in America. This also plays into the discrimination that was happening to almost all minorities during the war. Wouldn't you think that during something as dramatic as a war, nationalism would spread like wildfire and unite the people of a nation rather than tear them apart? America and majority Americans were discriminating what made America in the first place: a diverse people. Riots, cursing, racial slurs, and unfair judgment were almost expect in the average day of a minority, whether is be blacks, Asians, Mexicans, etc. etc. 

 

 

The Japanese Campaign

 

 

·         The Japanese military's use of forced labor, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths.

·         As the Empire of Japan annexed Asian countries, from the late 19th century onwards, archaic institutions including slavery were abolished in those countries. However, during WWII the Japanese military used millions of civilians and prisoners of war as forced labor 

o       Examples of this were projects such as the Burma Railway. (Death Railway)

o       More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma Railway.

·         According to a joint study by historians, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Japanese for forced labor. According to the Japanese military's own record, nearly 25% of 140,000 allied POWs died while interned in Japanese prison camps where they were forced to work.

·         The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million laborers were forced to work by the Japanese military.

·         About 270,000 of these Japanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were sent back to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%. 

 

 

·         Approximately 5,400,000 Koreans were "drafted" into forced labor from 1939 to 1945. 

o       About 670,000 of them were taken to Japan, where about 60,000 died between 1939 and 1945 due mostly to exhaustion or poor working conditions. 

o       As many as 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, were forced into sexual slavery during the war.

Forced labor differed between Germany and Japan in the Second World War as we have learned; the Germans used their captured civilians and POWs for both financial and war reasons. The Japanese brutally used everyone and anyone that they could get their hands on to do their dirty work for them. Case in point: the Death Railway. The building of this railway along the famous Bridge at River Kwai cost over 100,000 lives. Another act which cost many lives during WWII was the Bataan Death March. In fact, the lives of POWs in general across the span of the entire war proved to be extremely at risk. The death toll among POWs in general is estimated at between 6 and 10 million. Prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the Philippines held by the Japanese armed forces were subject to murder, beatings, summary punishment, brutal treatment, forced labor, medical experimentation, starvation rations and poor medical treatment. The Japanese proved to be some of the most brutal people in the world during this time period. 

 

 Slavery in Europe during WWII Prelude

 

• The use of forced labour in Nazi Germany during World War II occurred on a large scale. It was an important part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories and it also contributed to the extermination of populations of German–occupied Europe. The Germans abducted about 12 million people from almost twenty European countries, or about two thirds of whom came from Eastern Europe. Many workers died as a result of their living conditions, mistreatment or were civilian casualties of the war. They received little or no compensation during or after the war.

 

• During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager, or labour camps, for different categories of inmates.
  • These inmates were split up by class as a label.
  • These categories were based on layers of increasingly less privileged workers, starting with well paid workers from Germany's allies or neutral countries at the top, to slave laborers at the very bottom. Like the Feudal System, the most privileged workers represented the smallest number of people, which the slave laborers at the very bottom represented a large majority.
    • Gastarbeitnehmer, or guest workers, were workers from mostly Germanic and Scandinavian countries. However, this group also included workers from Italy or other German allies, such as Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. This was a very small group, which accounted for only about 1% of foreign workers in Germany, and were the most privileged.
    • Zwangsarbeiter, or forced workers, were those under German command that were generally held in concentration camps. As the title suggests, it was an act of slavery; after all it was forced labor. This category was broken down even further
    • Zivilarbeiter were civilian workers, who tended to be primarily Polish prisoners in German camps.
    • Ostarbeiter were Eastern workers. They tended to be most Soviet civil workers primarily from Ukraine. They were marked with a sign "OST," which represented the fact that they were Eastern Europeans. They had to live in camps that were fenced with barbed wire and under guard. They were by far the least privileged of any of the forced laborers. This category represented upwards of 5 million workers alone.  

 

 

 

 

 

                                                     

 

 

Official German records for the late summer of 1944 listed 7.6 million foreign civilian workers and prisoners of war in Nazi Germany, who for the most part had been brought there for employment by force. By 1944, slave labour made up one quarter of Germany's entire work force, and the majority of German factories had a contingent of prisoners. This being said, we can conclude that much of Germany's relative success in the beginning of the war could be linked back to production of materials, and the production of these materials was in thanks to the forced labor which they put upon these peoples. These slaves provided a boost in the economy, because the manufacturing of weapons, tanks, and other war materials kept a constant flow of money. "War is extremely economically efficient."

 

 Nazis and Slavery

 

• Adolf Hitler's policy of Lebensraum strongly emphasized the conquest of new lands in the East, known as Generalplan Ost, and the exploitation of these lands to provide cheap goods and labour to Germany. 
  • Lebensraum, which literally means "living space," served as a major motivation for Nazi Germany's territorial aggression. 
  • It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, Germanize or enslave the Polish, and later also Russian and other Slavic populations, and to repopulate the land with Germanic peoples.
  • In his efforts to expand people and land, Hitler and his desire for "world domination" led to his policy of Lebensraum. Along the way, he captured literally millions of eastern Europeans which would eventually be forced into labor for Nazi Germany
• The largest number of labor camps held civilians forcibly abducted in the occupied countries to provide labor in the German war industry. This included repairing bombed railroads and bridges or working on farms. As the war progressed, the use of slave labor experienced massive growth. The numbers of Prisoners of war and civilian "undesirables" brought in from other territories drastically increased. Millions of Jews,  and other conquered peoples were used as slave laborers by German corporations. Some of these corporations included:Slavs
  • Krupp --> famous for their  production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments.steel
  • IG Farben --> was a German chemical industry conglomerate. It was the fourth largest company in the world, behind GE Electric, US Steel, and Standard Oil
  • Fordwerke --> was a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company

 

• Extreme Cases of Slavery: Extermination Through Labor
  • Millions of Jews were forced laborers in ghettos, before they were shipped off to extermination camps. The Nazis also operated concentration camps, some of which provided free forced labour for industrial and other jobs while others existed purely for the extermination of their inmates. Ironically, at the entrances to a number of camps a German phrase meaning "work brings freedom" (Arbeit Macht Frei) was placed.
  • A notable example of a labor concentration camp is the Mittelbau-Dora labor camp complex that serviced the production of the V-2 rocket. Extermination through labour was a Nazi German World War II principle that regulated the aims and purposes of most of their labour and concentration camps. The rule demanded that the inmates of German WWII camps be forced to work for the German war industry with only basic tools and minimal food rations until totally exhausted.

 

 

 

Many people know the Holocaust as a time when people such as Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and other "undesirable" people were exterminated for reasons which didn't involve them.

 

 Foreign Civilian Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany by Country of Origin    

                                                                            January 1944

Countries	Number	% of total	Transfers per labourer in Reichsmarks (German Currency)
Occupied Eastern Europe	4,183,000	64.8	~15
Czechoslovakia	248,000	5.4
Poland	1,400,000	21.7	33.5
Yugoslavia	270,000	4.2
USSR	2,165,000	33.6	4
Occupied Western Europe	2,175,000	33.7	~700
France (except Alsace-Lorraine)	1,100,000	17.1	487
Norway	2,000	0.0
Denmark	23,000	0.4
Netherlands	350,000	5.4
Belgium	500,000	7.8	913
Greece	20,000	0.3
Italy	180,000	2.8	1,471
German allies and neutral countries	82,000	1.4
Hungary	25,000	0.4
Bulgaria	35,000	0.5
Romania	6,000	0.1
Spain	8,000	0.1
Switzerland	18,000	0.3

 

Vocabulary and Identifications:

 

·         Blitzkrieg - literally translated in German, Blitzkrieg means "lightning war". It is a a headline word applied retrospectively to describe a military doctrine of an all-mechanized force concentrating its attack on a small section of the enemy front then, once the latter is pierced, proceeding without regard to its flank. This tactic was used on Poland by the Germans on September 1, 1939.

 

·         Lebensraum - or literally "living space," served as a major motivation for Nazi Germany's territorial aggression. In his book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler detailed his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum, including land and raw materials, and that it should be taken in the East.

 

·         Gastarbeitnehmer - literally translated to "guest workers," were workers from most Germanic and Scandinavian countries. 

 

·         Zwangsarbeiter - literally translated to "forced workers," were those under German command that were generally held in concentration camps. For most of the war, Germans were forcing them to do labor, in an act of slavery

 

·         Asa Philip Randolph - he was a prominent twentieth-century African-American civil rights leader and the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a landmark for labor and particularly for African-American labor organizing.

 

·         Burma Railway - also known as the Death Railway, the railway runs between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma; which is now Myanmar.  It was built by the Empire of Japan; or rather the Empire of Japan forced civilians and POWs to build it during World War II. It took the lives of over 100,000 people in the building process.

 

·         Executive Order 8802 - also known as the Fair Employment Act, it was signed by FRD on June 25, 1941 to prohibit racial discrimination in the national defense industry. It was the first federal law to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination in the United States.

 

·         Rosie the Riveter - she is a cultural icon of the United States, representing the American women who worked in war factories during World War II. These women did the "unladylike" jobs that men usually do, including making war supplies such as tanks, guns, and ammunition, while men were away at war. She helped prove that women can be part of a war effort too.

 

·         Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters - was a labor union in the United States organized by the predominantly African-American Pullmans Porters. It was, in 1935 the first labor organization led by African-Americans to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor. One of its leaders and founders was Asa Philip Randolph. 

 

 

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CHAPTER 26: POSTWAR GROWTH AND SOCIAL CHANGE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Race is the sharpest and deepest division in American life, and the struggle over racial slavery may be the predominant theme in American history."

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• The end of World War II brought thousands of young servicemen back to America to pick up their lives and start new families in new homes with new jobs. With an energy never before experienced, American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs. Americans began buying goods not available during the war, which created corporate expansion and jobs. Growth everywhere. Jobs everywhere. The baby boom was underway. Popular corporations that we know today such as McDonalds and KFC opened its doors in the 1950s. The mindset on suburban American was altered, led by Levitt and his attempt to mass produce houses. Lots changed in the 1950s, some for the good, and some for the bad. Unfortunately for minorities, mainly blacks, it was the beginning to the "Civil Rights Movement," during an era which was predominately ruled by whites. 

• Since the peak of World War II, blacks and other minorities had been treated unfairly. This is pretty straight forward and obvious. Even during the war, a time when a country should be promoting nationalism and "togetherness," America segregated its own troops along racial lines and did not allow black GIs to fight alongside their white comrades until the late stages of the war. During the post-war 1950s and 1960s, not much changed. What we know as the Civil Rights Movements was prominent during this era. White-only restaurants, white-only water fountains, and white-only bathrooms represent only a small fraction of the ways minorities in America were treated unfairly. Although "slavery" had been dramatically reduced since the Civil War and both World Wars, Civil Rights was just as important and much more present in the 1950s and involved huge controversy.    

 

 

 

The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955 to 1968): the reform movements in the United States aimed at abolishing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring Suffrage in Southern states. 

 

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Hard Times for African Americans

 

• African Americans were among the least prosperous citizens in the nation in the postwar period, suffering long from poverty
• "New Deal" farm legislatures, the popularity of synthetic fabrics, and foreign competition robbed "King Cotton" of world markets
• Mechanized cotton picking (first introduced in 1944) wiped out jobs in the Delta
• Cotton farmers turned to less labor-intensive crops like soybeans and peanuts, which in a domino reaction caused them to oust their tenants; most of them were African Americans

 

As we learned from reading the text, the 1950s was an era of changing patterns. These patterns included social life, work/jobs, etc. etc. It's ironic how the pattern of change has affect African Americans. Slavery was a huge change when you really look at it. A hundred years back, blacks were forced to do all the physically demanding work, such as picking cotton (mentioned in this chapter). Now, instead of slavery, white farmers would simply get rid of black farmers and tenants. Either way, it turned out no good for African Americans, for either century. 

 

• The southern agricultural population declined dramatically, as millions of blacks moved to southern cities, where they found better jobs, schooling, and freedom from landlord control.
• Some blacks even achieved middle-class status, but most did not; remained poor with even less of a support system than they had known before
• Millions of African Americans also headed for northern cities during the 1950s

 

FACT: During the 1950s, African American population increased dramatically in major cities. In Detroit, for example, the black population grew from 16% to 29%. In Chicago, the black population grew from 14% to 23%. At its peak, Chicago's black population grew by as many as 2,200 each week

 

FACT: Although the dramatic increase in black population in major cities, these cities in the 1950s actually lost population because a larger percentage of whites were actually leaving the cities. Why do you think whites were leaving?

 

• The black ghetto that had begun to develop earlier in the twentieth century became a permanent fixture in the post WWII years

 

Why had this ghetto become a permanent fixture? Well, many African Americans who wanted to move elsewhere often found the way blocked. This could be due to a variety of reasons, but was mostly due to lack of money and "white hatred" of blacks, especially when some decided to move into predominately white communities.

 

• A good example of this is a case in 1951: A black couple that was attempted to move out of the city by purchasing a house in Cicero, Illinois was driven away when an angry crowd broke the house's windows, defaced the walls, and shouted vile insults. 
  • This pattern was repeated throughout the postwar era

 

This reminded me of the movie Glory Road, with Josh Lucas. It's a fairly new film, released in 2006. The film is set in 1966 in El Paso, Texas. The El Paso basketball team, comprised of mostly black players, are highly discriminated against. In one scene of the movie, the team returns back to their hotel room which they find trashed by white men. Their belongings are thrown everywhere, and racial slurs are written in blood on the walls. This is similar to the defacing of the walls with the 1951 family above.

 

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• The Fair Housing Act - prohibited discrimination in housing, there were no federal enforcement provisions. The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and as of 1974, sex
• Even the passage of this act failed to end this kind of residential segregation

 .

 

• Looking back, when blacks migrated to cities, they expected a higher quality of life; were shocked when it proved different.
• Author Claude Brown wrote, "Negroes lived in houses with bathrooms, electricity, running water, and indoor toilets. To them, this was the 'promised land' that Mammy had been sining about in the cotton fields for many years."
• Other authors and essayists, such as James Baldwin, wrote about, in detail, slum conditions and their corrosive effect on Americans blacks
• Employment was another problem in the 1950s for blacks. Because work was harder to find for a man than a women, black men especially found difficulty finding a job; these difficulties led to frustration and idless, which in turn had an impact on the stability of African American family life

 

This proved to be another example of changing patterns. Instead of women having more difficulty finding jobs, it was man? Why was this? How could the tide turn so drastically? Did women finally enjoy working for a change, instead of being the stay at home mom to watch the kids? The book doesn't go into much detail about the severity of jobless blacks: How much of an impact did this really have on them?

FACT: By 1983, 50% of all black children under the age of 18 lived in households headed by women, and many of these suffered from oppressive poverty from which there appeared to be no escape.

Keep in mind, though, that there was a certain percentage of blacks that lived middle-class. Some women succeeded both in moving into white collared jobs and increasing their income

 

FACT: After the war, men wanted the jobs that the women had taken over back.  They wanted things at home to go back to normal, that means mean make the money, and women take care of the house a children.  Men succeeded in getting that ideology back in America, however, the percentage of woman working began to increase at a steady rate over the years.

    

• The black church played an important role in sustaining African American life.  

• Blacks moving into the cities retained church-going habits and commitment to religious institutions from their rural days
• Many of these churches provided day care facilities, ran Boy and Girl Scout troops, and sponsored a variety of other social services

 

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Minorities on the Fringe

• Latino immigrants from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Central American were other groups that had similar difficulties in the postwar United States
• Immigrants suffered form some of the same problems: unskilled & illiterate
• “Urban Barrios” were places where cultures were cohesive in poverty stricken times (similar to black ghettos)

•  

• Although they maintained a strong sense of group identity, they still faced the unfortunate problems in the cities as blacks did.
• "Chicanos" -- Mexican Americans. They were the most numerous of the newcomers to America. They faced difficulties and widespread discrimination.
• Braceros, or "helping hands," were brought to America during the wartime era for temporary work. They were expected to return to Mexico at the end of their labor contract, but often didn't. (They joined the millions that entered the country illegally)
• Operation Wetback - during a serious recession in 1953-1954, the government mounted this project to deport illegal entrants, including braceros. 
  • Deportations numbered 1.1 million
  • Chicanos protested, but their attempts were futile
  • Two years after, however, 450,000 braceros crossed the border again to work on American farms

• Native Americans were also outsiders in the postwar years
  • Faced consequences of technological advances with great difficulty because of rapid and sudden changes
  • As power lines reached Indian reserves, they began to purchase televisions, refrigerators, washing mashines, and automobiles
  • Old patterns of the NA's inevitably changed

 

As we can see from the text, a major theme during chapter 26 and the 1950s was change. This change affected EVERYONE. Traditions and cultures began to be taken over by technological advances and a different mindset on society. "Quantity before quality" could be applied to many things during this era. Journalist William Shannon wrote, "It has been the age of the slob." Muckraker and architect Peter Blake wrote his book, "God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape." Again, this can all be linked back to change. Even a 150-year trend of the nation being a goods-producer changed into service providers. Like post-war WWI, post-war WWII brought about new opportunities, new optimism, and therefore, new change. 

   

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The 1950s was also the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, which is not mentioned too much for Chapter 26. Although it didn't have its peak in the 1950s, it certainly was present. Here are four categories that represent the treatment of blacks from whites.  

• Racial segregation: By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains. Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.

• Exploitation: Increased economic oppression of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination. 

• Violence: Individual, police, organizational, and mass racial violence against blacks (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in California). 

 

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Although there were many organizations during this movement, these four are considered to be the most influential and substantial: 

• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination."

 

• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April of 1960.

 

• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE): organization that played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement from its foundation in 1942 to the mid-1960s. Membership in CORE is stated to be open to "anyone who believes that 'all people are created equal' and is willing to work towards the ultimate goal of true equality throughout the world."

 

• The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC): closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement.

 

 

 

Vocabulary and Identifications

 

 

 

 

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 CHAPTER 27: CHILLS AND FEVER DURING THE COLD WAR

 

AND

 

CHAPTER 28: HIGH WATER AND EBB TIDE OF THE LIBERAL STATE

 

 

 

 

• Generally speaking, the amount of slavery or forced labor since the American Civil War has declined. Various laws and a diminishing sense of a need for slavery has caused this decline. Both the first and the second World War in the early to mid 1900s proved that especially forced labor was still heavily present worldwide. As World War II came to a close, the amount of slavery and forced labor declined rapidly. Between the 1940s and the 1990s, the topic of slavery proved to not be as heavily regarded a subject as it has been in the past. Even so, forced labor still existed, although not in the United States. Case in point: both the Korean and the Vietnam War. Don't get me wrong, the stats are barely comparable to that of the Civil War and World War II, but certainly it was still around us.
• Relevant to the topic of slavey and forced labor, war crimes such as mistreatment of prisoners existed as well. Much of this mistreatment is similar to what Japanese did to prisoners of war during the second World War.

 

• When parts of South Korea were under North Korean control, political killings, reportedly into the tens of thousands, took place in the cities and villages. The communists systematically killed former South Korean government officials and others deemed hostile to the communists, and such killing was intensified as North Koreans retreated from the South.

 

• South Korean military, police and paramilitary forces, often with U.S. military knowledge and without trial, executed in turn tens of thousands of leftist inmates and alleged communist sympathizers in the incidents such as the massacre of the political prisoners from the Daejeon Prison and the crackdown on the Cheju Uprising.

 

• United States diplomats put the total figure at 100,000, and the bodies of those killed were often dumped into mass graves.

 

• Korean forces on both sides routinely rounded up and forcibly conscripted both males and females in their area of operations; thousands of them never returned home. It is estimated that the number conscripted neared 400,000.

 

• Before the September 1950 liberation of Seoul by the U.S. forces, an estimated 83,000 citizens of the city were taken away by retreating North Korean forces and disappeared

 

• To this day, North Korea insists the South Koreans defected voluntarily and were not held against their will

 

• For a time, American troops were under orders to consider any Korean civilians on the battlefield approaching their position as hostile, and were instructed to "neutralize" them because of fears of infiltration. This led to the indiscriminate killings of hundreds of South Korean civilians by the U.S. military at places such as No Gun Ri, where many defenseless refugees — most of whom were women, children and old men — were shot at by the U.S. Army

  

•  No Gun Ri: Killing of nearly 300 civilians (actual number is disputed) in South Korea by soldiers of the US 7th Cavarly Regiment. This took place in 1950 between July 26 and July 29.

  

• South Korea massacred civilians who were suspected as members of the Bodo League. The casualties were from 10,000 to 100,000 other estimates say the casualties were 200,000 to 1,200,000.

 

• At least 100,000 people were hastily shot and dumped into makeshift trenches, abandoned mines or the sea after communist North Korea invaded the south in June 1950. Declassified records show U.S. officers were present at one of these sites and that at least one U.S. officer sanctioned another mass political execution if prisoners otherwise would be freed by the North Koreans.

 

Warriors and other powerful military figures from eastern Asia have proved to be extremely cruel in their military tactics over the years. A relatively recent account of this was World War II, where alleged cases of guerilla warfare and countless war crimes were present. (See Chapter 25).  They proved to be cruel twice more; in the Vietnam War and in the Korean War. Mass killings, massacres, forced labor and numerous other war crimes were prevalent during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

 

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• During the Vietnam War labor camps were used extensively by the communist government for its war effort. After the war and reunification in 1975, the victorious North sent thousands of South Vietnamese citizens and military officers into labor camps. 

 

 

• This act served three purposes: (1) To punish the Western collaborators. (2) To help rebuild the nation. (3) To reeducate them with communist ideals.

 

  

 

• Imperial Russia operated a system of remote Siberian forced labor camps as part of its regular judicial system, called katorga.

 

• Soviet Russia took over the already extensive katorga system and expanded it immensely, eventually organizing the Gulag to run the camps.

 

• In 1954, a year after Stalin's death, the new Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev began to release political prisoners and close down the camps. By the end of the 1950s, virtually all "corrective labor camps" were reorganized, mostly into the system of corrective labor colonies.

 

• Officially, the Gulag was terminated by the MVD Order 20 of January 25, 1960.
•         MVD is Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs

 

• Socialist Yugoslavia ran the Goli otok prison camp for political opponents from 1946 to 1956.

 

• During the early 20th century, the Empire of Japan used the forced labor of millions of civilians from conquered countries and prisoners of war, especially during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, on projects such as the Death Railway. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a direct result of the overwork, malnutrition, preventable disease and violence which were commonplace on these projects.

 

 

• The Communist Party of China has operated many labor camps for some types of crimes. Many leaders of China were put into labor camps after purges, including Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi. As a matter of fact, hundreds, if not thousands, of labor camps and forced-labor prisons still exist in modern day China, housing political prisoners and dissidents alongside dangerous criminals.

 

• In Communist Romania, labor camps were operated for projects such as the building of the Danube-Black Sea Canal and the desiccation of the Great Brăila Island, on which "enemies of the people" were "re-educated," as they called it, by forced labor.

 

• Between 1949 and 1953, 40,000 to 60,000 prisoners were held in labor camps along the Canal at any given time. Most of the people that worked on such projects never got out alive

 

• In the former state of North Vietnam, labor camps were widespread. During the Vietnam War labor camps were used extensively by the communist government for its war effort. After the war and reunification in 1975, the victorious North sent thousands of South Vietnamese citizens and military officers into labor camps.

 

• Cuba: Beginning in November 1965, people classified as "against the government" were summoned to work camps referred to as "Military Units to Aid Production" (UMAP).

 

 

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• The Fair Deal
• Truman sought to regain popularity despite a declining and splitting Democratic party   
• The civil rights issue – supported by liberals who proposed a stronger stand on black civil right
• Southern Democrats named J. Storm Thurmond as their Presidential candidate with continued support for racial segregation
• Party nominates Henry A. Wallace
• Moderate position on Soviet-American affairs, promoted desegregation, promised to nationalize railroads and major industries
• Communists among the party quickly lessened support
• Stiff, egocentric, and not charismatic
• Polls still favored a Republican win
• Truman wins as a complete underdog
• Campaigns towards ordinary Americans and speaks out to their needs, winning labor, farm, and black votes
• Truman wins a surprising victory despite poll predictions
• Democrats take both houses of Congress back
• “The Fair Deal”
• Raised minimum wages, expanded social security, included a moderate housing program, and desegregation of the army
• Failed on many accounts: farming program did not pass Congress, civil rights movements faltered almost uniformly, national health insurance was rejected, and federal aid in education also failed to promote its goal
• Legislators accounted for much of the program’s shortcomings  

 

 

• Usama made an interesting statement about the liberties of blacks and other minorities when it comes to different wars; refer to War and Diplomacy: Chapter 29
• Themes in US History - War and Diplomacy

 

 

Vocabulary and Identifications:

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 29: THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL REFORM

 

 

SLAVERY AND ITS LEGACIES

 

 

o       Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 and actually worked to scale back government involvement in civil rights.  He made efforts to reduce appropriations for fair-housing enforcement and tried to block and extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, although that was prevented by Congress.  Nixon face controversy over the issue of desegregation in Mississippi schools and busing students.  The issue was first really addressed in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in North Carolina, where a federal judge ruled that their decision on voluntary transport was not in compliance with recent Supreme Court decisions.

o       Nixon was opposed to the desegregated busing and went so far as to go on television to denounce it.  While Congress did not acquiesce to his request, he let the nation know his position on civil rights.  Issues surrounding integrated busing erupted all over the nation, especially in cities where schools were segregated because of residential patterns.  This kind of segregation was known as de facto as opposed to de jure, or by government mandate.  At the insistence of many people who believed the standard should in the same in the North as in the South, court decisions began ordering northern schools to desegregate.  Boston proved to be one of the most difficult cities to desegregate.

o       The Republicans were successful in their attempt to slow down school desegregation, and Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford displayed similar, although more moderate, approach to desegregation.  Desegregation at the college level showed similar patterns, but on the whole was much less controversial and opposed.  However, in response, some whites claimed that the black’s struggle for equal educational rights actually put whites at a disadvantage and created what they called “reverse discrimination.”

o       The next president Jimmy Carter, was more aggressive in his civil rights approach, bringing a number of qualified blacks into his administration.  Still, Carter lacked support for social programs for the poor and thereby hurt the majority of black citizens, stretching their loyalty to the Democratic party.

The loyalty and endurance of the civil rights movement was strained during this time by the unsympathetic administrations they faced.  Rather than at least having government action on their sides, blacks actually found that the president was just another hurdle to climb.  The issue of desegregation of schools and busing was a huge issue of the civil rights movement, and possibly the hardest to combat.  Not only was desegregation opposed by whites across the country, but also by Presidents Nixon and Ford.

 

Pressure from the Women’s Movement

o       Women who joined the civil rights movement found that among all men they were considered second class citizens, secretaries and so forth.  In addition, women felt sexually exploited by male leaders.  While the civil rights movement helped encourage the women’s movement, the movement was also brought about by increasing numbers of women entering the workforce and attending college in the 1950's and 1960's.

o       Reform legislation played a large part in women’s rights, as legislation was passed to prohibit discrimination based on gender just as with discrimination based on race.  However, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission did not give as much notice to women’s complaints as they did blacks’.

o        Black women were supportive of the movement, but not as aggressive, as most of them saw the struggle for racial equality as more important.  They were oppressed first because of race, and then gender.

The women’s movement for equality came at the same time as the civil rights movement, and it is interesting to note that women of both race faced the same discrimination from men of their race.  Black leader Stokely Carmichael was known to have said that a women’s place in the SNCC was as “a prone.”  This was not unlike the discrimination that white women were facing as well in the professional world.  Women were discriminated against in college, in the work world, and even in their attempts to help others gain their liberties.

 

What is interesting about the women’s rights movement is how much it relates to the civil rights movement.  Women went to similar measures to make their issues known, and often supported the same reform legislation.  Black women faced oppression from two angles; they were discriminated against both for being black and for being women.  In most cases, women chose to lend most of their energy to support the civil rights movement, as the racial discrimination they faced was the worst.

 

• ID’s
  • Jackie Robinson- See Mid-Twentieth Century Roots
  • President Truman- See Mid-Twentieth Century Roots
  • NAACP- See Confrontation Continues
  • Oliver Brown- See Integrating the Schools
  • President Eisenhower- See Integrating the Schools
  • Governor Faubus- See Integrating the Schools
  • Rosa Parks- See Black Gains on Other Fronts
  • Martin Luther King- See Black Gains on Other Fronts
  • Lyndon B. Johnson- See Black Gains on Other Fronts and Legislative Success in Johnson Years, Environmental and Consumer Agitation

 

·           Vocabulary

o     Civil rights- rights to personal liberty established by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and certain Congressional acts, esp. as applied to an individual or a minority group.

o     Desegregation- the elimination of laws, customs, or practices under which different races, groups, etc., are restricted to specific or separate public facilities, neighborhoods, schools, organizations, or the like

o     Discrimination- treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit

o     Equality- the state or quality of being equal; correspondence in quantity, degree, value, rank, or ability

o     Integration- an act or instance of integrating a racial, religious, or ethnic group

o     Protests- express opposition through action or words

o     Segregation- The policy or practice of separating people of different races, classes, or ethnic groups, as in schools, housing, and public or commercial facilities, especially as a form of discrimination.

o     Sit-ins- The act of occupying the seats or an area of a segregated establishment to protest racial discrimination.

 

 

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CHAPTER 30: THE REVIVAL OF CONSERVATISM

 

Mike M., Nick A., Sean P., Max M.

 

 

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

 

Slavery is one of the worst conditions that have existed throughout history, not only in this country but in other places as well. The enslavement of any group of people is dehumanizing and the effects are long lasting. Until we here in America recognize that slavery affected us in the late twentieth century and its legacies are still affecting this country today, we will be forever lost.

 

 The Struggle for Civil Rights

• There was a large backlash against affirmative action and racial advancement during the era of conservative control.
  • Ronald Reagan opposed the desegregation of busing during his presidency.  
  • Reagan attempted to cease banning tax exemptions for private schools that discriminated against blacks, and tried to cripple the Civil Rights Commission by appointing officials who did not support its goals
  •  

In essence, the Presidents of the United States were not too interested in helping out the African Americans of the country. They did not make enough effort to help out the black community. They caused the government to stop pushing for school integration. Nixon, Reagan, Bush and even sometimes Eisenhower show this by their reluctance to allow for equal rights and desegregation.  It is said that Nixon and Reagan were the most blatantly opposed to racial justice.

 

• Supreme Court’s Freeman vs. Pitts decision in 1992 granted an Atlanta school board relief from desegregation order

In 1995, courts ruled that colleges and universities were prohibited from awarding special scholarships to African Americans and other minorities

 

At the same time, the courts upheld that it was not the responsibility of schools to cater to de facto segregation, and that special grants and scholarships could not be awarded to African American students

 

• In 1994 conservatives launched an attack on policy giving preferential treatment to groups that had suffered discrimination in the past

The Conservative mindset and political movement was and continues to be one of the largest stumbling blocks for the equal rights movements. 

 

Even though African Americans made some advances in the local political arena, and took small steps in the national legislatures, ultimately, their advancement was slowed by larger legislative, executive, and judicial resistance.  Despite the progress made by African Americans at this time, whites and blacks remained at odds. Right when it appeared that African Americans were progressing in society, something would happen to shoot them right back down again. Society had shown signs of progress towards racial equality at this point but nothing had truly come of it.

 

 

Other Discrimination Issues

            Latin Americans

• Employment barely increased for Latinos during the 1980's and 1990's
• They were forced to work mediocre jobs due to lack of education
  • School for the Latinos was difficult due to the fact that most could only speak Spanish (many did not graduate high school)
• Many Latinos remained out of work
• When many made efforts to apply for jobs, they were often discriminated against.
• Latinos were often asked for their Alien Cards to make sure that they were not in the country illegally.  This discrimination hampered their efforts to not keep jobs and advance in them but to simply secure a job in the United States.

 

Although the number of Latinos holding office increased, they still faced other discrimination problems. They were not able to work the jobs they preferred because their educational background was not strong enough.

 

      Black Women

• Women in general were gaining more respect, but Black women in particular still were being discriminated
• Black women were being paid less than white women
• Confrontation between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas helped dramatize racial questions

 

It is surprising that so much discrimination against women when it came to Job opportunities, especially to those that were black.

 

Upheaval in Africa

Just like the Middle East and Latin America, The United States wanted to settle relationships in a very unstable Africa

• In South Africa, the United States supported the long and ultimately successful struggle against apartheid
  • Apartheid was a policy integrated in South African law that denied basic human rights to the black majority.
• The USA imposed numerous sanctions to pressure the South African government financially

 

The final blow to apartheid came from the efforts of a black activist named Nelson Mandela.  He had become a symbol of the militant resistant movement during the time he spent in prison and steered his nation through a transformation for the better.

 

 

Nelson Mandela 

 

 

 

• Played a pivotal role in eliminating apartheid
• A black activist, he had become a symbol of the militant resistance during his 27 years in prison.
• In 1990 he was freed and Prime Minister Frederik W. De Klerk succumbed to American pressure and announced plans to gradually overturn apartheid.
• The white government and the African National Congress (headed by Mandela) laid the groundwork for a smooth transition into a biracial democracy

 

Nelson Mandela served as a source of inspiration to black South Africans, as the long struggle against apartheid finally brought that system of rigid segregation to an end and led to the setting up of a biracial democracy with Mandela himself as president.

 

 

 

Terms and I.D.’s

 

• Ronald Reagan- was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975).

 

• Bill Clinton- served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001

 

• Jesse Jackson- Demonstrated that an African American could attract a substantial level of support as he ran for President in 1984 and 1988.

 

• Civil Rights Commission- is a bipartisan, independent, federal commission charged with the responsibility for investigating, reporting on, and making recommendations concerning, the civil rights issues that face the nation

 

• Anita Hill- is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management and a former colleague of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

 

• Clarence Thomas- the second African American to serve on the nation's highest court

 

 

• Nelson Mandela- a prisoner in South Africa for 27 years.  He became the symbol for and a leader of the movement against that South African government to abolish the apartheid.

 

• African National Congress- has been South Africa's governing party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), since the establishment of non-racial democracy in May 1994

 

• Minister Frederik W. De Klerk- was the last State President of apartheid-era South Africa, serving from September 1989 to May 1994

 

• Apartheid-The practice in South Africa of segregating, suppressing and denying basic human rights to the black population

 

• Layoffs- The economic phenomena of people losing their jobs

 

• Automation- The economic phenomena which includes the reduction of the workforce and increasing reliance on computer technology