Which factor was most important in ending Jim Crow ?

What Factor was most important in ending Jim Crow?

  • Cold War

    Votes: 4 8.9%
  • Invention of the Cotton Picker

    Votes: 2 4.4%
  • TV

    Votes: 26 57.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 13 28.9%

  • Total voters
    45
1.) The Cold War: By engaging in conflict with the SU meant competing for many of the ex-colonies, where segregation was now a huge liability.

2.) The invention of the Cotton Picker: By inventing the Cotton Picker, suddenly the need for a mass of cheap black labour was no longer needed meaning the economic need for Jim Crow was redundant.

3.) The TV becoming a part of every living room: After the spread of the TV meant much of the abuses of Jim Crow was more exposed outside of the South and made the general Public much more hostile towards Jim Crow.

But which do you think was the most critical? Or do you think there was another factor?

Also do you think all of these factors were necessary to end it? Or do you simply think your chosen factor would of been enough to end it?
 
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I agree with TV. The sight of peaceful protesters being beaten and attacked by dogs had a major impact. Also with WWII having ended only 20 years earlier, many people saw parallels with the actions of the Nazis.
 
I think its also relevant to look at the sustainability of the practice in a global context.

Rhodesia shifted to majority rule about a decade after the US Civil Rights movement was successful on a nominal basis. The white Australia policy lasted until 1973. Portugal's colonial war lasted until 1974. South Africa is the outlier having maintained Apartheid until 1991 and didn't transition to majority rule until 1994.

Assuming the US has similar cultural-political shifts as other countries, I think that the US would by the end of the 1970s achieve nominal racial equality like it did OTL by the late 60s.
 
All of these were important things for end of Jim Crow but I would say WW2. It put several black veterans demand their rights.
 
Combination of the first two, though TV helped.

Also, since the Depression the poorer states (which the southern ones were) Had become increasingly dependent on Federal programmes of one sort or another. They weren't in a position to defy Washington to the degree that they might have done pre-1930. They were like a kid trying to defy the parent who gives him his pocket money.
 
Because it was time.

The key event was 1948, when the Democratic Party finally stopped carrying water for the white supremacists in the South.

But the handwriting was already on the wall, for those who had eyes to see. The landmark Brown v Board of Education decision was issued in 1954 - but it was unanimous, and five of the nine Justices had been on the Court since 1941. (This does not mean that an equivalent case would have been decided the same way in 1941, by a 5-4 vote. Two of those five Justices were persuaded by Chief Justice to concur in 1954 to lend force to a controversial ruling and weaken resistance to it, and so maintain the Court's prestige.)

I think the decisive factor was the Great Migration of blacks from the rural south to major cities in the Northeast and Midwest. While segregation was practiced in thse cities, it was far less comprehensive, and blacks could aspire to much greater participation in society. And very importantly, blacks voted there.

As blacks became an important voting bloc outside the South, Democrats outside the South began to respond to black concerns, and lost interest in protecting white supremacy in the South. The national landslides for Democrats in the 1930s also helped, by expanding the non-Southern element of the party. (178 Democrats served in the 71st Congress (1929-1931) as Representatives; 103 were from "Confederate" states, 20 from "Border" states, and only 55 from "Northern" states. by the 73rd Congress, things were very different.)
 
What about WWII? The idea of a master race was discredited, and blacks were among the beneficiaries.

There was also a lot of black WWII veterans who were understandably angry about having to return to America to be second-class citizens. Take the Columbia, Tennessee race riot of 1946, started by black WWII veterans. Thurgood Marshall was among those defending the black men accused in the case, and the NAACP continued to discuss the case for years afterwards.
 
There was also a lot of black WWII veterans who were understandably angry about having to return to America to be second-class citizens. Take the Columbia, Tennessee race riot of 1946, started by black WWII veterans. Thurgood Marshall was among those defending the black men accused in the case, and the NAACP continued to discuss the case for years afterwards.

Iirc Black veterans from the First war felt the same, but made little or no headway.
 
The country was far more xenophobic and authoritarian back then. There was no tolerance for anyone rocking the boat.


Don't know about the "much more". You had Mitchell Palmer after WW1, and Joe McCarthy not long after WW2. There may have been some change, but not enormous.
 
Don't know about the "much more". You had Mitchell Palmer after WW1, and Joe McCarthy not long after WW2. There may have been some change, but not enormous.

McCarthy never jailed any presidential candidates. Palmer legitimately expected a violent revolution, and only his old labor sympathies kept him from becoming even more radical and authoritarian than he actually was during the late Wilson Administration. And honestly, it seems like even those principles were eroding away by 1920. I don't think Joe was in the same league - his paranoia was way more opportunistic.
 
McCarthy never jailed any presidential candidates. Palmer legitimately expected a violent revolution, and only his old labor sympathies kept him from becoming even more radical and authoritarian than he actually was during the late Wilson Administration. And honestly, it seems like even those principles were eroding away by 1920. I don't think Joe was in the same league - his paranoia was way more opportunistic.


But judging from the following Joe got, it is far from clear that the country was noticeably more liberal in his day than a generation earlier.

For my money what did for Jim Crow was

a) The need to appeal to non-white nations for their support in the Cold War - IOW the affairs of the world had broken in on what was previously a purely domestic issue.

b) The mechanisation of cotton-picking meant that an army of stoop labour was no longer needed - the economic rug was pulled out from under the traditional Southern society. As the poet said "It's the economy, stupid".

I wouldn't like to quantify which of the two was more important, but between them they constituted "The year of the jackpot".
 
But judging from the following Joe got, it is far from clear that the country was noticeably more liberal in his day than a generation earlier.

For my money what did for Jim Crow was

a) The need to appeal to non-white nations for their support in the Cold War - IOW the affairs of the world had broken in on what was previously a purely domestic issue.

b) The mechanisation of cotton-picking meant that an army of stoop labour was no longer needed - the economic rug was pulled out from under the traditional Southern society. As the poet said "It's the economy, stupid".

I wouldn't like to quantify which of the two was more important, but between them they constituted "The year of the jackpot".

Well, speaking for myself, I'm open to the idea that the fight for the Third World may have mattered, but it's kind of an intangible, so I'm not sure exactly how weighty it was. Certainly, our willingness to back dictators in the third world suggests that public opinion there only mattered so much for us. And I'm more skeptical of the cotton-picking argument, because if agriculture wound down in the South, they received an additional boon in right-to-work laws after 1947, which seem to have buoyed, or at least kept stable, employment figures in the old Confederacy during the Civil Rights era.

By my reckoning, there are a few factors that I'm confident counted in a meaningful way:

1. Great Migration. Northern Democrats started to become more willing to challenge segregation from 1948 onwards, with Martin Luther King Senior's endorsement of JFK in 1960 being the most dramatic example of the dividends. Democrats saw big gains, and were ready to deliver to black constituents in return.

2. Changes in tactics. From what I've read, the use of boycotts and sit-ins and marches was something that really came into vogue in the 50's. Television may have mattered, but only once activists started to produce spectacles tailored towards TV audiences.

3. WW2. On top of what's been said already, the UNECSO papers that inspired the Brown v. Board Plaintiffs were intended as a repudiation of the Nazis and their race-based ideology. It's a pretty natural step to go from that to believing that whites and blacks should be equal as well.
 
Option two is ironic, given that an earlier cotton-related invention has been credited with prolonging and expanding slavery.
 
The anti-racist American and global consensus coming out of WWII, as well as its effects on black people, such as participation in the military and and uptick in the Great Migration.
 
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