African-American History

Learn about African American history with these old magazine articles. Find information on Black Civil Rights violations in the 1920s.

Confronting the Bigots (The American Magazine, 1946)

With the passing of the Ives-Quinn Bill in 1945, the state of New York was empowered to bring the full weight of the law down upon all employers who practiced any sort of discrimination in the workplace:

During the first eight months of the law’s operation, the Commission received 240 formal complaints charging some form of discrimination in employment… The charges varied greatly. Fifty-nine complained because of alleged prejudice against their religion. Another 113 charged color bias: 105 Negroes and eight Whites. Still another 48 charged prejudice against their race or national origin: 8 Germans, 5 Spaniards…


A similar article from 1941 can be read here…

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Social Differences Among the Lighter Skinned and Darker Skinned Blacks (Literary Digest, 1922)

The varying degrees of color found among American Blacks has been, and still is, a sensitive topic and it was addressed in 1922 with some wit by an African-American journalist whose work is attached. Its a good read and speaks of a social structure that, we like to think, is gone with the wind; words appear in this article that seem queer in our era – there is much talk of


yellow gals
golden-skinned slave girls
tawny-skinned maids
midnight
stove-pipe

-all originating from African-American verse and popular song.


During the Second World War, hair dye was not simply used by women;
click here to read about the men who needed it, too.


Click here to read about black women who pass for white.


Click here to read a history of African-Americans between the years 1619 through 1939.

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Anti-Lynching Legislation Shelved (PM Tabloid, 1942)

Whether it was due to the urgency of the war or whether it was simply business as usual on Capitol hill, who knows – but ever since he came to Washington in 1929 Representative Joseph Gavagan (D., NYC: 1892 – 1968) tried numerous times to get his anti-lynching legislation through Congress. In April of 1937 he succeeded in getting one of his anti-lynching bills passed (277 to 118) – but the Southern Democrats saw to it that he wouldn’t get an encore performance in ’42; this was his last attempt, he retired from the House that same year.

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The KKK Influence on U.S. Politics (The Literary Digest, 1922)

Attached is a 1922 report from THE LITERARY DIGEST regarding how remarkably close two KKK candidates for governor came to winning their respective state primaries. The two political contests in question, Oregon and Texas, caught national attention and became popular subjects for concern across the United States:

The closeness of the vote ought to be a warning…If the Ku Klux Klan insists on entering politics, good citizens must show it the way out.

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The Birth of the KKK (Coronet Magazine, 1946)

A brief account outlining the post-Civil War origins of the KKK:

The original Ku Klux Klan began in 1865 as a social club of young men in Pulaski, Tennessee. Its ghostly uniform and rituals frightened superstitious Negroes; and when Klansmen discovered this fact accidentally, they lost little time in recruiting membership to 55,000.


During the Thirties and early Forties there was a link between the Bund and the KKK: click here to read about him.

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The Red Caps (Ken Magazine, 1938)

The history of the African American baggage handlers called Red Caps is a sad story in American social history. The Red Caps had been around since the 1890s and they were assigned the task of carrying luggage to and from trains and taxis; this article points out that in the Thirties, one of every three of them had a college degree:

Red Caps did not go to college to learn how to be Red Caps. Their problem is a racial one. To the white, a job toting luggage is a poor way to eke out an existence. To the black, red capping is one of the ‘big’ fields open. The white man who works as a porter can do nothing else, as a rule; the Negro almost invariably can do something else but can’t get it to do.


Dorie Miller was an African-American hero during the Second World War, click here if you would like to read about him.

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