Week 10 Post 1

 Week 10 Post 1- Notes

Chapter 10- Suppressed Incomes





  • The explanation most common used for de facto segregation is that black people could not afford the same housing as white people, but we cannot just say this and not look at government policies that intentionally kept black income down in the twentieth century 
    • Income is typically generational, and regardless of race, it is incredibly rare to make more money than your parents 
    • Many cities taxed African Americans higher than whites 
    • Long after slaves were emancipated black people were still barred from the free market economy 
    • Share cropping became a popular way to employ African Americans in the south, as well as indentured servitude. Because these workers were eating and living on white plantations, the white people fifnt actually pay them, in fact sometimes they owed more to their employers than their salary 
    • Sherriffs woyld arrest and assault sharecroppers who tried to leave their farms to keep the system in check 
    • Over 100,000 African Americans were technically enslaved until WWII with arrests for petty crimes like loitering which made them do free labor 
    • In 1951 congress finally started enforcing the thirteenth amendment and outlawed this practice 
    • The first great migration occurred during WWI wjen over 600,000 AAs went north to find work
    • The second great migration was from 1940 to 1970, where 4 million African Americans moved north. Because of this moving they had less time to start capital and don’t have strong financial roots where they live
    • The two fields most dominated by African Americans, agriculture and domestic service, were excluded from social security, wage protection, and recognition of unions under the new deal signed by Roosevelt 
    • The TVA segregated their workers on construction projects, and if they didn’t have enough African Americans to make an entire crew of just them, they were denied work
    • The new deal often refused to permit African Americans for anything but the least skilled jobs, and even there paid them less than poor whites
    • The national recovery industry came out of the new deal, which established minimum wages, maximum hours, and product prices. African Americans were mostly excluded from the benefits the agency offered 
    • Factories in Delaware were classified as “southern” and “northern” so that the black ones could be paid less, being called southern since the cost of living was less in the south 
    • There was a 1933 increase in minimum wage in the textile industry, but majority of African Americans in this industry held jobs like cleaners and yard men, and the wage increase didn’t apply to them
    • The CCC segregated residential camps, and in some states, like Texas and Florida, they were not allowed to work for the organization at all
    • CCC would leave educational positions vacant because they didn’t want black people in any position of leadership 
    • They could rarely be promoted in the jobs 
    • The national labor relations act allowed unions to bargain with management if the union was supported by majority of workers. The original bill was written by Robert Wagner, senator from New York, and had a clause that prevented unions that didn't allow african americans to qualify for this act. But he was petitioned to remove the clause and did
    • The act was now made unconstitutional, because it was legally empowering unions that barred african americans
    • The building service employees union in new york forced businesses to fire AA operators and restuarant workers and give their jobs to whites, and the NLRB did nothing about it
    • federal government fully supported exclusionary unions during WWII that didn't allow black people and kept them in the lowest paid positions
    • Companies in San Franscisco, which was the largest center for military production in WWII, required union referrals to hire, and unions would not refer african americans
    • The Kaiser company in Richmond built a plant meant to employf 115,000 jobs. They eventually were even hiring african american women, even though it was their last resort after exhausting their supply of white men, white women, and black men.
    • Ford finally acknowledged the UAW as its worker's representative and began hiring black workers due to a shortage. They were pushed by Ben Gross to allow them to work in higher paid positions
    • The Boilermakers union was the largest union in the industry, and signed an agreement with Kaiser and other companys saying only their union members could work there, and their union did not allow African Americans
    • The Kaiser company could hire outside the union if they exhausted the union members, but new hires would have to join the union
    • The Boilermakers established additional segregated chapters after not being able to support enough white workers, putting 10,000 African Americans in shipyards in 1943
    • The African American members had to pay dues but did not get to vote in union elections and did not get assistance with improving their jobs and could not be promoted to positions where they were overseeing whites, and were always paid less
    • 29 other national unions excluded African Americans or restricted them to segregated groups
    • Federal agencies recognized segregated unions until 1962
    • The post office union did not allow African Americans until the 1970s, so black postmen were excluded from filing grievances and protesting mistreatments
    • War production and subsequent subsidation were two huge growth periods for pay in the twentieth century- but African americans were excluded from this since they could not be union members in fields like construction
    • Even after 1964 when black people could join many unions, seniority systems made it difficult for them to get to the pay level of whites in the unions
    • A. Philip Randolph planned a march on washington to protest union discrimination, but decided to call it off a week in advance since the president agreed to sign an executive order banning racial discrimination by unions
    • The FEPC was created to enforce this order, but many chapters of it, such as the San Fran FEPC could not get medical cetners to admit african american physicians and didn't make much of an effort to
    • Roosevelt made sure the committee was weak by appointing the first leader as someone who openly supported segregation in his opening address
    • Public outrage forced his resignation, but he remained on the committee and stated that nothing could make the southern culture give up segregation in war industry
    • The FEPC was very unsuccessful
    • San Fransisco streetcar system refused to hire african americans until 1943


    • Maya Angelou was one of the first workers on the streetcar system after lying about her age
    • A large shipyard employed 25,000 african americans during the war, and only two years later that number was cut in half due to the Boilermaker union. The plant was completely shut down a few years later
    • the FEPC was incredibly unsuccesfulk with companies in LA, Seattle, KC, and St. Louis still employing discrimination and not being stopped by them
    • The Roosevelt administration had no real interest in racial equality, and the president was so focused on winning the war that matters of discrimination at home were not the top concern. But there were never reperations paid to the workers undercut by union discrimination.


    • The G.I. bill excluded african american veterans from the mortgages they offered to help white veterans and ristricted education opportunities so they could only have the lowest-level job positions
    • African Americans soldiers recieved a disproportional amount of dishonorable discharges, sometimes for protesting army town segregation, and dishonorable discharge excluded you from the GI bill
    • Jacky Robinson was tried for refusing to sit in the blacks-only section of a segregated army bus, but was not convicted since he was already well known nationally as an athlete, and during his trial the army finally desegregated their buses
    • Michigan did not adopt fair employment practices law until 1955, and their state employment office prior to that had 45 percent of jobs for whites only
    • A 1960s executive order started requiring affirmative action to higher more minorities
    • When the BART was built in San Fran not a single skilled worker AA was hired to work on it
    • Unions were blamed for not letting in black people, and the director of the project said they wanted to hire with equal opportunity, but it would take too long since none of them were union workers
    • New York City sheet metal workers union began in 2015 to pay reparations to black workers who had been barred from better positions before 
    • Assessor undermined tax fairness for African Americans by measuring value differently in different areas, causing African Americans to have less disposable income
    • There was a study in Chicago that determined that this was a race issue, not a social class issue
    • Assesors would place higher property value on houses they wanted to tax higher, meaning that althrough it made the family feel good about their house to have a high value on it, it had no real effect on the market and only made their taxes higher
    • In 1962 in Boston, it was found that black homes were at 68 percent of market values while white families were only 41 percent
    • In Baltimore, the tax burden of a white neighborhood was 1/9th of that of the black neighborhoods
    • Because of the higher taxes, african american neighborhoods began to deteriorate, since families had no money left over to take care of their homes
    • In cities like Baltimore and Cleveland african americans are still more likely to have their home repossessed due to tax-lien.
    • Langston Hughes described in his memoir that his families home in Cleveland could be sold for three times that of a white home since there were so few options for black people to live
    • Landlords would subdivide single families units into five or six units to make as much money as possible
    • In Chicago, landlords subdivided to crazy levels and rented at same price as Gold Coast lake michigan apartments
    • A white family that was paying 15 dollars a month was evicted so a landlord could rent to a black family paying 60 dollars a month




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