During the 1940s and for decades before that, blacks in the USA lived in total 2nd class citizenship in most of the USA. They went to seperate, terrible condition schools. The laws in many states made it impossible for them to vote. They could only live in certain, poor condition areas. They faced extreme discrimination in housing, employment, education, loans, etc etc. And the highest court in the USA said this was all legal and acceptable. They faced lynchings and murder, for very simple actions, like looking at a white woman. Yet they were required by the law to pay Federal and State income taxes, regardless of this extreme discrimination. They were drafted into our armed forces, to defend freedom and security for white people. Considering all this, was black revolution in the USA justified, especially during the deepest years of Jim Crow? Would blacks have been morally justified in say declaring an independent free state in South Carolina and using violence to defend such state from Federal attempts to put down their rebellion? I would say that in the absense of Federal and State determination to END the discrimination and persecution that blacks faced at the time, such a revolution would have been morally justified.
did you read the OP? this nation engaged in legalized Apartheid and oppression of black persons until 1968.
A revolution was more justified back then. Society and the country kept swinging and swinging at blacks all that time, and eventually they swung back i.e. the Civil Rights Movement and everything that spawned from it.
imo a black revolution would have been justified. But the conditions imposed upon blacks would have made a revolt very difficult, and probably futile. imo the blacks who endured and survived slavery were selfless in looking many generations ahead. They could have challenged the system and ended their own suffering, but they chose to live and endure for their descendents, the following generations. imo, and I don't have a specific word for it, that is a certain kind of bravery. And deep wisdom. "The struggle for today is not altogether for today." Abraham Lincoln. But those words could be put a couple of centuries further into the past ahead of Lincoln, when the struggle was there, but not yet visible.
yes, back then a black revolution would have been justified as peaceful means of change were not viable.
Anything for you, Ron. Yes, I think a black revolution would have been justified but only succeeded in getting them killed, en masse. It would have "proved" to the majority of Americans (white) that blacks were untrustworthy black savages. The State militias would have had a field day and felt even more justified in lynching or executing black rebel leaders via firing squads. As you know, John Brown tried to start a revolution and it turned out badly. I don't see how a black revolution would have been any more successful in the 1940s In the 1940s, the US was at war through part of the decade and a black rebellion may have ended up with blacks being placed in internment camps along with the Japanese.
So the US Government wasn't on the side of Blacks in the 1940s, however Blacks were treated quite differently in Europe. Jesse Owens was treated as a celebrity in Germany but had to use the freight elevator at American hotels upon his return home "Jesse Owens" https://www.german-way.com/notable-people/featured-bios/jesse-owens/ “Hitler didn’t snub me. It was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” — Jesse Owens, in Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics (Jeremy Schaap, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007) EXCERPT "Which brings us to our first Olympic myth. It is often stated that Jesse Owens’ four gold medals humiliated Hitler by proving to the world that Nazi claims of Aryan superiority were a lie. But Hitler and the Nazis were far from unhappy with the Olympic results. Not only did Germany win far more medals than any other country at the 1936 Olympics, but the Nazis had pulled off the huge public relations coup that Olympic opponents had predicted, casting Germany and the Nazis, falsely, in a positive light. In the long run, Owens’ victories turned out to be only a minor embarrassment for Nazi Germany. But Jesse Owens’ reception by the German public and the spectators in the Olympic stadium was warm. There were German cheers of “Yesseh Oh-vens” or just “Oh-vens” from the crowd. Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, mobbed by autograph seekers to the point that he complained about all the attention. He later claimed that his reception in Berlin was greater than any other he had ever experienced, and he had been quite popular even before the Olympics. Back in the USA With his victories and medals behind him, Owens was looking forward to reaping some rewards. But after being stripped of his amateur status, potential sponsors backed out. That, and the racial discrimination of the day in his native land, prevented him from enjoying anything close to the huge financial benefits that African American athletes can expect today. When Owens came home from his success in Nazi Germany, he faced barriers that he would not have faced today. In fact, Owens had encountered far less discrimination in Germany than he did back in his own country. For a post-Olympic reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, the world-famous black athlete was forced to use the freight elevator! That is just one example of the humiliating discrimination that even a black man as famous as Owens confronted in those days."CONTINUED
I would have had marginalized Americans refuse to do military service or work in the war industries unless they were assured equality with white men this would be blacks, native Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Women. Give the government a choice equality or possibly lose the war and they can only imprison and do other things to people if they are responding without violence that which is oppressive they would have been forced to respond with societal changing laws decades earlier than happened.
i think if blacks in the 1950s decided to declare part of the Carolinas a black homeland, many whites would have supported their cause.
Yes; that would be ideal. Crime follows blacks around the world. Why would whites or anyone else want blacks in societies whites built and run?
The story of Isaac Woodward, a returning Army veteran on the bus in SC going home to NC in 1946, will break all but the stoniest of hearts. He is immortalized in Woody Guthrie's "The Blinding of Isaac Woodward." Haysoos D. Cisco, I hang my head in shame.
African Americans were under white rule in America, which was no different from other colonies within the British Empire. To destroy the system of white rule, it would have required a well-organized military. Black nationalists needed the help of the Japanese military which defeated European troops stationed in Asian colonies that were liberated from European rule in the 1940s. Eventually, African Americans were also freed from Jim Crow in the 1960s because of the passing of white rule in the 1950s worldwide, coinciding with the demise of the British Empire.