William Tyler
An Old War’s Open Wounds Continue to Fester: Civil War and Civil Rights

William Tyler | An Old War’s Open Wounds Continue to Fester Civil War and Civil Rights | 02.12.24

• Thanks very much indeed, and welcome, everyone, who’s joined us today. It’s been a really nice day on the south coast of England, I’ve even got the darn embers of the sun coming through my window, I’ve got the window open. It feels as though winter is on its way out, and that’s great news. From time to time, people say to me, “Why are you buying another history book? Surely you’ve got enough history books already? You don’t need more.” But the answer, of course, is quite simple. Each generation reinterprets the past in the light of new evidence, new insights, and through the lens of their own generation. And so history isn’t something set in stone, it changes. Occasionally, a book is published, an academic history book, that challenges old ways of looking at things. One such recent book, published in the States in 2020, and last year in Britain, in paperback, is by an American historian, Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Heather Cox Richardson. If you are American, you may well have read some of her books. Now, Richardson’s book is called, “How the South Won the Civil War.” This is the Oxford University paperback edition. “How the South Won the Civil War.”

Well, it’s an intriguing title, of course. It isn’t a polemical book, she makes it quite clear that she does not belong to a political party. Now, of course, she writes about politics in this book, and if you are an American, and you read it, you may disagree with things that she says. That’s not important. What is important is her argument, which you can agree or disagree with, but it makes you think, and that’s what adult education is about, whether for tutors, or for those of you who are learners, and I’m a learner in other circumstances, and some of you are tutors in other circumstances, we are learning animals, and if our thoughts and our beliefs are challenged, that’s a positive thing. It’s positive if we are prepared to change our views because they’ve been challenged successfully by someone else, or you can still hold your views and reject what that other person is saying. I think, and I’m not alone in this, she’s being widely acclaimed in the States by other academic historians, as this book is a seminal book. It’s a very unusual and important book to read. Whether you agree in part, or in full, whether you disagree in part or in full, this is a book I think that all of us, American and non-American alike, need to read in the present world of 2024, within Britain, a general election for a prime minister to be elected, and in America, presidential election.

She explains in the book how America has arrived at Trumpism in 2024, and Trump standing as a presidential candidate. Her answer for how America has got there is the paradox, as she argues, at the heart of the American Constitution. The Declaration of Independence, which claims, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” And as Richardson points out, that was clearly incorrect at the time of writing. Why? Because the majority of African Americans were slaves. Additionally, indigenous Americans were regarded as barbarians and uncivilised, and of course, women, who did not have the vote until the 20th century. Next week, I’m going to look at various marginalised groups in America from the 1960s onwards, in America’s cases, the case of Western Europe as well, when we will look at things like indigenous groups, women, and so on. But today, I’m going to look at African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement is usually dated by historians, and of course you can argue massively that the dates are wrong, but the accepted dates of the Civil Rights Movement are between 1954 and 1968. ‘54 and '68.

Now, I cannot talk about the years 1954 - '68, without talking about how America got to 1954. And although I’m not going to say very much today about post 1968, I will come back to that question, I promise, next week when I’m looking at marginalised groups post the Civil Rights Movement. So that everyone is clear, and this is really, I suppose, for non-Americans to be clear, what do we mean by the Civil Rights Movement? What definition can we give? Well, this is a standard sort of definition, which I’ll read. The Civil Rights Movement was a social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish, legalised, legalised racial segregation, Legalised racial segregation. The key word is segregation. It goes on to say, abolish legalised racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout America. We really do all know what civil rights means, but it’s useful just to sort of check with ourselves if you like, to know where I’m going to take you. As I’ve just said, you can’t take things, I’m so worried about history, which takes things out of context.

It seems strange, I don’t know what American, Canadian, and other schools are like, but in Britain, the teaching of history at secondary level seems really quite bizarre. My 11-year-old has done stuff about the Middle Ages, fine, and then he moves on to the second World War. I can’t get my head around history that doesn’t tell a story from beginning to end so that you can see why things happen. One lady on lockdown emailed me after the talk on Vietnam, and said, “I didn’t really understand what the reasons were that war came in Vietnam. I’d never been taught it at school, and I think I now begin to understand it.” Well, that was a lovely email for me to receive, but it’s worrying that we are teaching history in schools, and indeed in universities, in sort of little blocks that bear no relationship to others. So I’m going back to the 1860s and the Civil War. In short, as Richardson claimed in the title of that book, which is, “How the South Won the Civil War,” and subtitled, “Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America.” It’s as I said, an absolutely staggeringly interesting and good book, and plus it’s very readable, and mercifully short. I don’t like these long academic treatises with huge footnotes, I’m sorry, but I think they turn most ordinary folks like me off.

Something like this is great, it’s the right size, you can read it very quickly, and in fact, I had to skim read it, 'cause my copy only arrived yesterday. And I should go back and read it carefully, but it is fascinating. She opens her book. Now remember, we’re talking about 1954 to 1968, and I’ve also raised the issue that we really need to think about starting in 1860s with the American Civil War. She begins her book in 1964, a hundred years after the fighting in the American Civil War. The moment in July, 1964, when Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater took the stage at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco and beamed at the cheering Republicans, who had just nominated him for president, is iconic, but not for the reasons we remember. Goldwater delivered the line that became a rallying cry for a rising generation of conservatives in the Republican party, say, extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. But the moment did much more than galvanise activists, it marked the reservation of an old political movement by a modern political party. In Goldwater’s time, people claimed embattled, sorry.

In Goldwater’s time, people claiming to be embattled holdouts defending American liberty called themselves Movement Conservatives. A century before, their predecessors had called themselves Confederates. So she is making a direct link between what, even at the time, we regarded as extremism in Goldwater, and the events of the Civil War of a hundred years before. She is saying, in the Civil War, such people were called Confederates, and in Goldwater’s time, the phrase that entered the vocabulary was of course a different phrase, the phrase being Movement Conservatives. Interestingly in Britain, we now have a fringe group within our conservative party calling themselves Popular Conservatism. And that phrase, Popular, is a word that’s being used across the western democracies, and indicates a certain clear move to the right. She argues that the move to the right challenges the very concept of American democracy, and I would add, Western liberal democracies. She adds a further piece that I wanted to read a little further on, and she writes this, “How the book 'How the South Won the Civil War’ tells the story of the second rise of American oligarchy, the rule by the few. The largest story behind the South Carolina delegates, putting Western Senator Barry Goldwater over the top to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, and its logical conclusion in the present moment.”

In other words, Trump. It is the story of modern America. Her argument being that there is still an oligarchy, and an oligarchy whose views are, in her estimation, challenging of the democracy of the American Constitution. So, that’s by way of introduction, and I hope I’ve sold the book to you, those of you who haven’t read it. Afterwards, if those of you have read it, and I guess you are probably American, or maybe Canadian, you might like to come on in the question and answer and share your views about how you read the book, and what you got out of it. I’m going to return to a timeline, I said that before, that I think we should need a look at history which follows chronologically. In the book, “20th Century America,” by Carol Jones, I read this, “After the American Civil War in 1865, slavery was abolished, but African Americans did not gain equality with white Americans. The Civil War did not solve the problem. Approximately 90% of America’s 12 million African Americans lived in the South, where they remained second class citizens. The powers given to the states by the Constitution enabled most southern states to pass laws between 1881 and 1915, which discriminated against African Americans, and enforced African Americans and whites to have separate transport, separate theatres, separate churches, separate parks, separate schools, separate restaurants, and separate public toilets.”

And that, of course, goes back to the fundamental problem of a federation, which I’ve spoken about before. The states had the right to impose segregation, whatever the will of the national government, of the federal government. Thus the word, by the first World War, segregation came to lie at the heart of the post second World War civil rights campaign. Segregation. It’s difficult for those of us who are not American to conceive of what that meant. We did not, however racist we may have been, and are, we haven’t had segregation in that way. May I please emphasise this does not mean that we weren’t racist, it just simply means we didn’t have segregation. But segregation came as a legislative thing, it was the law of the state. In 1896, just before the beginning of the 20th century, the case of Plessy against Ferguson reached the Supreme Court in the States. The Supreme Court approved so-called Jim Crow segregation. In other words, they said that what the southern states were doing in passing segregated laws was not against the American constitution. By saying, the Supreme Court said, that separate but equal facilities did not breach the Constitution, separate but equal facilities. But of course the truth is that that was totally missing the point, because separate facilities did not mean equal facilities, it meant second or third rate facilities. And that was the problem that festered into the 20th century and lay a root of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, 1960s.

Carol Jones goes on to say this, “Most African Americans remained second class citizens.” So we’re talking about up to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. “Most African Americans remained second class citizens, with unskilled, poorly paid jobs, and many former slaves were sharecroppers who rented land at a high rent from white landlords, their schools were underfunded, oversubscribed, and in a shabby state. Even their textbooks could not be kept in the same place as white textbooks. And less than 1% of African American children went on to high school. The South also ignored the 15th Amendment, which said the right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude. In order to vote, one needs to register, but the South prevented African Americans from registering in a variety of ways. All those who registered to vote had to pay a poll tax, which prevented African Americans from registering, as they were too poor to pay the tax. Literacy tests, which were often rigged, prevented other African Americans from voting. If all else failed, African Americans might lose their jobs or credit, be beaten, or even killed, to prevent them registering to vote. Only 5% of African Americans eligible to vote actually did so in the south.

Violence against the African American population was endemic, and unlawful lynchings by white supremacist groups, such as the KKK, Ku Klux Klan, were commonplace. In 1919 alone, 70 African American people were lynched. Now, that’s not the way I was taught in Britain about the American Civil War. The north won, we were told, and slavery was abolished, the country came together, and the soft music playing in the background. That’s not true. That isn’t simply true. Now it’s also correct to say that, in America, in the latter part of the 19th century, in the beginning of the 20th, many white Americans buried their heads in the sand in the north. And in the south, many white Americans, politicians in particular, passed these laws of segregation. If you were black, it probably didn’t feel much like freedom, and certainly it did not answer what the Supreme Court had said in 1896 in the case of Plessy and Ferguson, "separate but equal.” It was not separate but equal. It was anything but equal. This so-called segregated era, or era of segregation, really spanned the period from just shortly after the Civil War, right through to the second World War. It was something that was allowed to continue, buried, and black Americans lacked a voice. So, what changed? Well, if we fast forward to the second World War, and the immediate period before the Civil Rights Movement, that is to say something like 1941 through to 1954, we can note two things.

First of all, as Jones has written, and I will read this short piece to you, “The second World War had a galvanising effect on African American communities, and provided African Americans with the ideal opportunity to press for civil rights. In 1941, the government was so alarmed by 100,000 strong protests against exclusion of African Americans from jobs in the defence industry, that they came to an agreement. Roosevelt agreed to ban discrimination in the defence industry, and establish the fair employment practise, and to investigate discrimination in private firms, if they called off the protests. The government found widespread discrimination, and attempted to rectify the situation by refusing to award government contracts to private firms that discriminated, and they did so with some success.” Well, that’s true, but there was the problem of the American Army, and segregation within the military. I read, “In the armed forces, African American soldiers who experienced racism within them found the ill treatment they received in attempting to serve their country deeply disturbing. The Army initially refused to train African American officers. The Air Force would not train them as pilots. And the Navy used them exclusively in the kitchens. And as those black Americans served abroad, in particular serving in Britain, they saw that Britain didn’t have that. They saw black British officers, they saw black British naval personnel. They saw black British pilots.

Now that is not to say that Britain wasn’t racist, it was. But it was not racism approved by legislation. This was a different world that they saw. And now I told some of you this story before, but it is worth sharing again. At weekends when American troops were here based in Britain, many British families invited American lads, GIs, to come and have Sunday lunch with them. And obviously, they accepted, because this was homemade food, and it was like being at home for these young lads. And it was brought to Churchill’s attention that in Norwich, in Norfolk, they were inviting GIs to Sunday lunch, but the population of Norridge would not invite black GIs, they only invited white GIs. And Churchill was furious, and sent a letter to the Lord Mayor of Norridge saying, "This must stop now.” And because it was Churchill, it did stop. And I know today it’s, oh, I don’t know, Churchill can be accused of racism, and it’s so silly in my view. And certainly here is an example of Churchill expressing tolerance. Now a lot of black Americans did, as the war went on, visit white families, did go to cinemas with a white girlfriend, and sit next to a white British soldier. And they couldn’t believe it, they could go to Woolworth’s and sit at lunchtime with a girl, and have a white girl, and have food served to them by a white waitress.

And they went back to America after the war, and they were expected to drop back and live under the segregated legislation in the south. And they said, “Why should we do this? There is another way of living. We really mustn’t allow ourselves to be placed in this situation.” And Richardson has a little piece I wanted to share. “Presidents Truman and Eisner desegregated the military, and contracting, state courts declared racial housing covenants, and then bans on interracial marriage, unconstitutional.” And then, in 1954, came another legal case of great importance. It is stated to be, by historians, the start of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954, there was a case of a black American father, Mr. Brown, taking the board of Education of the town of Topeka, I hope that’s pronounced hopefully correctly, I’m sure it isn’t, in Kansas to court. The issue was, could his daughter, of school age, African American, go to a white school very near where she lived, rather than having to walk 20 blocks to a black school? The Board of Education said, “No, she must attend a black school.” Black children went to black schools, white children to white schools. And that was being challenged in court by Mr. Brown. And this is what Carol Jones writes, “On the 15th of May,” sorry, “On the 19th of May, 1954, Chief Justice Warren announced the court’s decision that the constitution was colorblind.”

Wow. Quite. What an impact that judgement had. Chief Justice Warren announced the court’s decision that the Constitution was colorblind, and he ordered the Board of Education to end segregation in its schools. The court, by ruling in favour of Mr. Brown, had overturned Plessy and Ferguson decision, which we looked at already today, of “separate but equal.” He said, “It must be colorblind.” Now that was a monumental decision. Those of you who are not lawyers, and some of us are, we are always stating how important it is that democracies and democratic leaders adhere to the rule of law. Without that, we are no better than barbarians. And here, Chief Justice Warren said, “The constitution is colorblind.” Well, of course it was, that’s what it said. “It’s self-evidently true,” it said in the Declaration of Rights, in the Declaration of Independence, I mean. Self-evidently true, men are born equal. It’s also true that slavery had been abolished in the defeat of the South in the Civil War. But in 1954, when many of us, I’m thinking non-Americans, when many of us were at school, in Britain with black children in the same classes as white children, we never thought about it. But in America, in the south, black children and white children were segregated.

What does that do to community relations when they become adult, for example, let alone the injustice to the children. What was the figure we were given in 1919, only a tiny percentage of black children ever went to high school. The fight over segregation was now alight, if you like. The fight was real from now on. In 1955, here is an example, the Maryland legislature passed a law that imprisoned any white woman who birthed a mixed-race child. The white woman will be incarcerated up to five years. 1955. I was 10 in 1955, And across the Atlantic, a woman who gave birth to a mixed-race child was locked up for five years. And in 1957, Maryland renewed the legislation. I can’t say I was aware of much of this as a 10-year-old, but in Britain, my parents were well aware, were well aware of what had gone on in Britain, that we were tolerant. My home city of Bristol were now having lots of African Caribbeans arriving from the West Indies. I’m not saying there weren’t race riots, because there were, but they were not approved by the law, they were not approved by the courts. Now, I’ve got a limited amount of time, as you all know, and I want this tell the story without getting into the detail of the many elements of the struggle. If you want to read about the elements of the struggle, there are plenty of books that you can read that tells you blow by blow of the various events that happened across the states. I want to get this general picture across. So, to do that, I’m going to single out two people, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.

On the 1st of December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a young black woman, sat in a seat on a public bus reserved for white people. She did not sit where black people were meant to sit, a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested for such. There was a boycott of Montgomery’s public buses by African Americans, led by a man who’s going to symbolise the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King. Black protestors were attacked by whites, and four black churches were bombed alight. But eventually the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. We’re back to Chief Justice Warren, the Constitution is colorblind. The Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. In other words, both the case of Brown against the Board of Education, and then the case of Rosa Parks, put two big holes in the dam in the south of preventing genuine equality between black and white Americans. And using the analogy of a dam, once there’s a hole in it, there’s little you can do but to stop the water pushing the whole dam over. And that is very much what is to happen in the States between 1954, ‘55, I’m sorry, 1955, '56, Montgomery bus boycott, through to 1968.

In February, 1960, a group of black and white students staged sit-ins at the segregated lunch counter in Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. The protests continued for several months, and were eventually successful. The counter was desegregated in July, 1960. July, 1960, but American GIs had sat at bars in England during the war. Where I used to live was in Essex, in a town outside of London in Essex called Romford, there were stories of how girls from offices would go into Woolworth’s and sit on the stools at the counter at, shall we say, half past 12:00, knowing that American GIs would arrive at one o'clock to get a lunch. And so they sat, sort of displaying themselves, and the American GIs came in. And those GIs were black GIs, and they chatted up the girls, and they took the girls to dances, something they could not have done in Woolworth in Carolina until 1960, 15 years after the end of the second World War. All movements had their heroes, and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King are two of the great heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s strange to me, and maybe I’m quite wrong to be surprised, but in British schools today, in British primary schools, that means children under the age of 11, they are taught about Rosa Parks.

I couldn’t believe it when my grandson at primary school at the time came to tell me what he was doing in history, “I’m learning about Rosa Parks.” They learned about Rosa Parks partly because of the Civil Rights Movement, but also because she was an early feminist. And so they are being taught, at primary school level in Britain, that you must face down, they didn’t use the word segregation, but you must face down anything which says someone of a different colour is less important than you are. And maybe we are right to teach it in our primary schools. We’re certainly right to teach the principle, but they homed in on Rosa Parks. But that is I think part of the feminist movement, rather than the principle itself, they could have chosen somebody who was British, but they didn’t. Rosa Parks was an icon for the British feminist movement, and the British black movement, if you like, in the '60s, oh, well, not only in the '60s, but now in the 21st century, and she’s held up as an icon, this Rosa Parks. I find that absolutely fascinating. Some of you, certainly if you ever did work in technical-educational adult education, would’ve seen a film called “Rosie the Welder,” which introduced us to the concept that women were as good as men at jobs. I don’t think I’m allowed to say then, I used to add a little bit after it, I think it would be non-PC to do that today, so we’ll just leave it, but that also influenced on both sides of the Atlantic.

In our post Victorian society, in our post Victorian society, we like to discover the faults in our heroes, whoever they might be. Robert Baden Powell, the man who founded the Boy Scouts, Gordon of Khartourn, Lord Kitchen, there’s just hoards of them that we had, that we have, Earl Hague, Earl Hague of the first World War. Lots and lots of them, do we have question marks over. And very often, it’s question marks over their personal lives. And Martin Luther King, deified by many Americans of all colours and races, during the course of his civil rights campaigning, enhanced by the fact that he was assassinated, was deified, the great Martin Luther King. But subsequently, people are hacked away at the image. Jeffrey Connor writing in the Washington Times in 2011 said, “In Washington there now stands a new memorial, a 30-foot tall granite statue of Martin Luther King overlooking the tidal basin. For decades, liberals and some conservatives have deified King as the last of the founding fathers, a man whose opposition to the Jim Crow segregated legislation embodied the culmination of the Declaration of Independence promise of individual liberty and equal rights for all Americans, regardless of race. This is only partly true. King helped both to liberate, and further hold back black Americans.”

The article in the newspaper goes on, “There was a dark side to King, and it should not be ignored, its effects continue to plague our society. Contrary to popular myth, the Baptist minister was a hypocrite who consistently failed to hold up his professional Christian standards, his rampant adultery and serial lifelong womanising revolted even some of his closest associates. Large parts of his doctoral dissertation were plagiarised. He had numerous ties with communists and soviet sympathisers.” J. Edgar Hoover, who had his own problems, then the FBI director, considered King a fraud. Well, that has more than some truth in it, I’m afraid. He certainly supported authoritarianism in black Africa, for example, the coming of Kuma of Ghana. And he certainly, during the Vietnam War, posed as a pacifist, although people question how deep his pacifism was. He is a complex character. I’m afraid all of us have dark sides, as well as light sides. But today, it’s all out in the open, maybe that makes politics so much more difficult. Maybe it explains why so many people don’t go into politics in democracies today. In, “The Rough Guide to the History of the USA,” I read this in a conclusion about Martin Luther King, and it reads like this, “Many former associates of King argued that his posthumous quasi-deification has served to obscure two points which they see as critical and crucial. Firstly that, for all his pacifism, King was a fiery political being, and secondly, that the movement created King, not King the movement.”

That’s interesting. If you were writing an essay, you know, I often say that, if you were writing an essay, maybe at university, I think that’s a quotation I would give you to comment on. “The movement created King, not King the movement.” In short, we’re left with a complex character, of whom there will be many arguments for many years to come. And yet, he changed American society, or at least helped to change American society for the good. His legacy is a positive legacy. I don’t particularly mind what he did in his personal life. Immoral? It may be. We can condemn immorality, but we should not forget the light side. What’s more difficult to come to terms to is the hypocrisy. Now, I can say this, because the audience, that is largely Jewish, and I was brought up in an evangelical Protestant public school in Britain, and the truth is that evangelical Christianity, which is where our friend, King, came from, is often hypocritical, often hypocritical. Don’t ask me. Well, I suppose we could go into reasons why, but it simply is, and King was an example of that. A story some of you know I’ve told before, when I was at school, we were visited by a conservative member of parliament who spoke in chapel, and he spoke about morality. And the next day, he was plastered over the newspapers for having left his wife and having an affair with his secretary.

Now, hypocrisy isn’t a preserve of evangelical Christianity by any means, but it is prevalent within it. But don’t just leave King like that, I can’t do that. I can’t do that because of the effect that he had. His greatest moment came with the march on Washington in August of 1963, and what a march that proved to be. Let me just read you a piece here, “Word of mouth has spread far and wide, that at 8:00 AM, the first of 21 chartered trains arrived in the capitol, followed by more than 2,000 buses and 10 aeroplanes , all in addition to standard scheduled public transport. Around 1,000 people, black and white,” that’s the success of King, “Both black and white, poured into the Lincoln Memorial every five minutes.” I may possibly have an American listening who was one of those on that day, so please tell us your memories of that day. What was particularly memorable was the speech that King made. Say what you like about King, he had, what we say in Britain, the gift of the gab. He could speak beautifully. And in an age when our politicians stumble over making any sort of speech, to think of King lifts the spirits. We all remember, wherever you are listening from, “I have a dream today,” he said, “I have a dream that one day, every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted, and every mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

It’s one of the great speeches of the 20th century, one of the great speeches of history, let alone the 20th century. I can forgive King for a lot, given that he brought black and white together, given that he could speak like that. But he was assassinated in 1968. The day before speaking in Memphis, King said this the day before his assassination came, he said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life, longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now, I just want to do God’s will, and he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” And the next day, he’s assassinated by James Earl Ray. But he had done, as it were, he would say, he’d done the Lord’s work, it was complete. And the Civil Rights Movement is said to have ended with his death in 1968. And by the second Civil Rights Act, there’d been a Civil Rights Act in 1964, followed by a second one, the second one largely dealt with housing in 1968. So we now have civil rights legislation on the statute book of America. And what can I draw out of that? Well, let me use this English book on American history in the 20th century, just to short circuit it. What did the Civil Rights Act leave as a lasting impact?

One, the act forced the federal government to protect democracies, sorry, to protect minorities from discrimination. Although the government powers to enforce the act were weak at first, they were gradually strengthened. This is the power of the federal government over the state governments, the centre over the parts, the age old American problem of a federal state, here answered very clearly in favour of the federal state. Two, it led to the introduction of what was called Affirmative Action. Businesses and government agencies actively tried to increase the number of African Americans and other underrepresented groups that they employ. And that’s something that’s gone on in Britain, and we’re still having arguments in 2024 about that. We’re having arguments within the armed forces at the moment in Britain. Although the act outlawed many forms of discrimination, there were, however, shortcomings. All of the barriers that prevented African Americans from voting were only officially removed under the Voting Rights Act, which wasn’t passed for another year. 1965 was that passed. The act of 1964 couldn’t immediately end racial discrimination or get rid of racist beliefs. Many African Americans felt that the Civil Rights Movement made little difference in their daily lives, they still suffered inequality. That’s the problem governments always face, they can’t control in here.

They can’t control that people continue to have racist ideas, and it’s difficult to control how those racist ideas act in practise. When I worked as a principal in London, we were very careful about equal rights. And I was doing a set of interviews, and we had to tell candidates, if they asked, why they had been rejected. And we had a letter after one set of interviews by a young man who was an Australian. And he wrote in and said, well, we were very nervous when he wrote in to complain, because he complained over the phone before he sent the letter in. And we thought, “My God, he’s going to claim he’s gay.” And I think he probably was gay, and I thought, “Well, if he says he’s gay, I’m really going to be crucified for this, because I will be accused of discriminating against gays.” We hadn’t, we’d appointed a woman who was by far the best candidate. But we were very nervous, my vice principal and I, we felt that the local authority would be really critical of us rejecting a gay. So the letter came in, we opened it, and our relief was wonderful.

The letter said, “I feel I’ve been discriminated against because I’m an Australian.” Well, my predecessor, as principal in London, had been an Australian, we had Australians on the staff, and to be accused of being anti-Australian was fine, but had he said, “I’m gay, and that’s why you didn’t appoint me,” would not have been. And I’m talking about the 1990s. So, discrimination and racism, I don’t know what people think. Are we ever going to get rid of racism? I think maybe we will. I notice how my grandchildren are indeed, as Chief Justice Warren said all those years ago, they are colorblind. They don’t see their black friends as black, they just see them as whatever their name is. They’re not bothered. Now, maybe that’s because they’ve been brought up in a middle-class household that would abhor any form of racism, and would stop the children. But I’m not sure it is, it’s a generational thing. My mother was strongly racist, I would hope I’m not. My daughter and son-in-law, and son, are clearly not. My grandsons don’t even recognise the issue. So maybe we are, maybe we can indeed have hope. Now I was reading out, and this is an important bit to add in, the lasting impact of the 1964 legislation in America. Other groups also faced discrimination, I said that at the very beginning, such as women.

And they used the Civil Rights Act as a blueprint for the women’s movement, which takes off in the 1960s, Betty Freedom in America. And we will look at that next week, amongst other groups that were marginalised in American, and indeed, in western societies. I will go back to the issue of Black Americans post 1970, but let me just read you this and add a comment. This is Carol Jones again writing, and she writes this, “It seems that although progress has been made in legal and political rights, and the fields of culture and sport, the USA remains, in certain aspects, a segregated society.” Well, she wrote that at the turn of the century. I’m not sure, you’ll have to say, if you are American, how far you think that applies today. But what we do know is the Black Lives Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, which began in the States, spread across the western world, and hit us here in Britain in big ways, particularly over the issue in Britain of slavery. In my home city of Bristol, which was a slave port in the 18th century, a man who was a great philanthropist in the city, a man called Colston, C-O-L-S-T-O-N, Colston, was a great philanthropist who gave a lot of money, but he made it through slaves.

And so, in recent times, his statue was taken down and thrown into the harbour, covered in red paint. It was rescued from the harbour, and is now in a museum with explanations that this was destroyed by black Bristol, well, truly, black and white Bristolians in the 21st century, as Bristol came to terms with its slave past. And that story is replicated all over the place. The question is ever with us, isn’t it, of equal rights? And I said we would have to take the story back to the Civil War, and that’s where I began. And how interesting that the Times of London should have reported a week ago under the heading, “Haley Foster to admit slavery was key cause of Civil War.” Its reporter in New York wrote, “Nikki Haley, the Republican presidential candidate, has been forced to correct herself after she spoke about the causes of the Civil War without mentioning slavery.” That seems extraordinarily crass, from viewing on this side of the Atlantic. But she’s appealing, or attempting to appeal, to Trump’s MAGA supporters. The Times article also quotes a professor of American history at the University of Oxford, Adam Smith. Adam Smith, a professor of American political history at University of Oxford, said Haley was well aware of the causes of the conflict of the Civil War, but Republicans don’t like being made to say that the Civil War is about slavery, he said, quote, “Because of things that followed from that, like ongoing structural racism.”

We would normally call that, in Britain, not structural racism, but institutional racism. I’m not sure what the phrase would be to Americans, but structural racism, institutional racism, you understand. I’m sure everybody listening understands. So, the Civil Rights Movement did not end the problem. The paradox, as Richardson says, at the heart of American democracy, the paradox that all men are born free and equal does not yet fully apply. Can it ever fully apply? We’ll look at these questions next week. And I think I’m pretty well on time, I’m sure there’s going to be lots and lots, I’m awaiting a deluge of things to come at me. Oh, there are a lot. Shall I go straight in?

Q&A and Comments

Francine says, “New York City and Barnes are expecting,” oh, somebody’s talking about the snow. Sorry. That’s very interesting, Francine. Oh, Bernard says, “Have I heard of a book,” yes, I have, the book called “The Colour of Law: Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America,” by Richard Rothenstein. Yes, more than worth a glance, Bernard, a good book.

Q: Monique says, “What is the name of the book and author?” A: I’ll put it on my blog. But the name of the book is, “How the South Won the Civil War,” “How the South Won The Civil War,” and its author is Richardson. Richardson. Richardson. She’s an American prof at Boston. I think it’s wonderful.

Oh, thank you, Joe, for putting on. Oh, thank all of you for answering the question. Rita, “Oh, today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and mine, so happy birthday to you, and happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln as well.” Oh, that’s fantastic. David. David, “Civil War still rages in America. Instead of north and south, we have left versus right, Antifa, BLM, the regime, and the so-called progressives, versus MAGAists. No matter who or which side wins the November election, the Civil War will continue, and perhaps become a hot war.” Praise God not. And you see, where America is today, the fear is Britain will be tomorrow. We already have mainline politicians in Britain making pro-Trump statements. I mean ex-cabinet ministers, I find that very worrying.

Monty, “Hannah Arendt supported segregation as so, she said, 'The right to free association, therefore to discrimination, has greater validity than the principle of equality.’” Now I know that, and that was an argument used by many people. It’s not an argument that I would accept, and I don’t think it’s an argument many people would accept today. I don’t think people would accept that. It it based on the old Plessy Ferguson case, separate but equal. But you’re not separate but equal in that sort of society.

Patricia says, “Hannah Arendt, white supremacist article in the Jerusalem Post, June, 2016.” It is sad. Nobody’s perfect, unfortunately, what I said about Martin Luther King. It is an argument, I would’ve said that argument was an old and broken argument today. Perhaps I should say it’s an old and should-be-broken argument. Remember, none of you have to agree with my views, you may find my views unacceptable. And if you are an American, you can easily dismiss the work. Of course, he’s British, he doesn’t understand, and it may make you feel good. All I’m always trying to do is to get people to think, not to think like me, but to think for themselves. And that’s why I think this book by Heather Cox Richardson is a good book, it makes you think. I like reading stuff that makes me think, whether I agree or disagree.

Rose, “As you described the orphan situation, it reminds me sadly of South Africa, where I spent my childhood to finishing university. It was simply dreadful.” Absolutely the same. There was an old boy of my school who was the dean of the cathedral in Cape Town, a man called the Wright Reverend French-Beitar, a hyphenated name. And during apartheid, at the Christian festival coming up to Easter, he washed the feet of black South Africans, and it caused a huge, huge stir. And his view was that he was colorblind to whose feet he washed in the name of Jesus Christ. That’s all. So, yeah, many of us in Britain know about South Africa.

Gloria, “After Lincoln’s death, the vice president was a southerner, gives one a reason why the writer says the south won.” Well, okay, but she would argue that it’s a much deeper problem than that. Rose, “‘The Help’ is a very good read, it’s a fictionized story of the time, well-written.” There was a film, wasn’t there? Joe, “The play was very good, but a very uncomfortable watch.” Where am I? Carol, “The film was excellent. Same with ‘Hidden Figures,’ all the books are black like me.”

Myrna, “What about self-imposed segregation? When we moved from Canada to Detroit in 1960 in need of an apartment, we were advised to not rent in many areas close to our place of employment.” I don’t know why you were advised not to. Rita says, “That is not the same, given it was not imposed by a dominant group, systematic discrimination.” And in the South, remember, it was legalised segregation by the States. I’m sorry, Myrna, I’m not sure why you were advised not to rent in areas close to a place of employment. I’d have to know a bit more.

Carrie, “For less-told stories of women, men, and children involved in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the examples of ordinary people who took action for social justice in the UK, please see,” and everyone can see that, www.j2jhumanrights.org.uk. Trisha, “The historian, Heather Cox Richardson, the lady who wrote ‘How the South Won the Civil War,’ has an excellent easy-reading daily blog, ‘Letters from an American.’” Tricia, since I discovered this book yesterday, I’ve signed on to her blog, and I’ve been reading about Lincoln today. And you can pay, I think I got it, oh, I can’t remember. It was in dollars, I can’t remember how many dollars you pay to get the whole lot, but most of it you can get free. I think she makes quite a lot of money out of the blog, to be honest. But good to her.

Monique and Danny, “Until 1948, it was legal in America to have a clause in a real estate sale that excluded Negroes and Hebrews.” Absolutely. Now, in Britain, there was no such legislation, but in practise, it was allowed. No blacks or Irish would appear in windows in the 1950s in Britain. And there may be Jewish friends who are British who will tell me if such things happened there. Certainly, Jews would be excluded from some clubs, but it wouldn’t have been, it wasn’t, they would just have been excluded because they were Jewish, it wasn’t publicised in that way. Michael, “In South Africa, about 20,” whoops, I’ve lost it. Come on, come back. I’ll get back to Michael, where’s he gone? Michael, “In South Africa about 20 years ago, any club,” that’s what I was talking about, “A golf club that had the name ‘Royal’ was closed to Judeans and Blacks.” Absolutely. That was so here in Britain as well.

Joe, “And it was Groucho Marx who, having previously been refused membership of the golf club because he was Jewish, on later being invited to join, said,” oh yeah, “That he would not join a club that was prepared to have him as a member.” Yeah, Groucho. “Just around one of the many horrors of Jim Crow, returning black soldiers were still subject to lynching, and some were. Lynching was not declared illegal by Congress until 2022.” That I did not know. I knew that returning black soldiers were lynched, but I did not know that the legislation was not passed by Congress until 2022. Rita says, “Lynching. Republicans Andrew Clyde, Thomas Massey, and Chip Roy were the only house members who opposed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act.” Can you imagine opposing it in 2022? Oh, Jill, bless you. “Just for your information, it’s tar-pika,” I’m sorry I pronounced it wrong. I normally look words up to get a pronunciation, I still get them wrong. But on this occasion, I thought it was straightforward. How you can be defeated using the English language in America and in Britain, we do get things wrong between us.

Q: Francine, “Could the British have had a more worldly attitude because of its years of colonisation?” A: Well, the no precise opposite, I think, is the truth. No, precise opposite. It’s a difficult question to say. I wouldn’t want anyone to think, who isn’t British, that Britain was or is free of racism. It isn’t. It wasn’t in the legislation, that was what was important. And increasingly in the 20th century, it was regarded as, using a silly English expression, poor form to state something that was racist.

Jonathan, oh, Jonathan, I’ve written to you I think today in the answer to an email. “I’ve read that there’s been increased segregation in school education in the USA, see Brown vs. Board of Education. So whatever immediate benefit resulted from the decision has been undone since.” Well, an American will have to answer that, but in truth, there are all sorts of ways in which this can be manipulated. Entrance examinations. There’s all sorts of ways in which this insidious racism can still play a role in whatever country in the Western world we’re talking about. In Ontario, the provisions of prevention of sale to racial religious minorities were found illegal in 1966. “Not quite what Canadians would like to think.” Exactly. There is a danger that we look, who aren’t American, at America, and tut-tut. Well, we should look at our own faults first.

Michael, “Clearly the American south was the forerunner of the South African apartheid system.” I think British historians might say the forerunner of the South African apartheid system was British racism in African colonies. But you are also right, the American south does give a model, but I think the model being followed was unfortunately a British model. “When busing was required after Brown and Board of Education, many northern cities were very unhappy.” Yes, that’s true. I should have said that. Marilyn, “The Brown and Board of Education was unanimous. Quote, Chief Justice Warren, ‘Separate but equal is inherently unequal.’” Yeah.

Q: Shelly, “As an American, I like your opinion on why Britain did not have segregated armed forces in schools. Did it have to do with a smaller percentage of non-white people in Britain?” A: Yes.

Q: “Did it have to do with slavery in Britain being born in their colonies than in Britain proper?” A: We hadn’t had slavery in the American sense at all, and slaves in Britain were banned from the 18th century onwards. We simply didn’t experience what America experienced, and so the question of numbers is true. And we’ve never, I think it’s probably numbers. And so you just accepted black children in schools, and black soldiers in the army. I don’t think that was ever questioned. We had black officers in the first World War. We also had black footballers, one black footballer was an officer, a man called William Tull, T-U double L, in the first World War. I think sport makes, well, in Britain, sport matters. And so we had black sportsmen in football, and I think that made a difference. Now, you can point to racist attacks on black footballers today, that’s also true. But I think your point about low numbers was true. Our problems began with immigration from the Caribbean in the ‘50s, that’s what set the tensions. When I was principal of the College of Adult Education in Manchester in 1980 to '84, we had race riots. And I had to close the college and stand guard one night over the building. And I really genuinely thought that these race riots would erupt into something very serious indeed. I thought we were on a path for hell. As it happens, we weren’t. And our problem in Britain does not lie with black Africans, Black Caribbeans. It simply does not lie with them. There is a very large middle-class of black British in very professional jobs, and indeed, in the government of the country. Our problem in more recent times, it has been extremist Islamists, that’s where our problem has lain, and it’s led to increased racism spilling out from the fundamental Islamists in our society.

Hillel, “As a 7-year-old Jewish child growing up in Brooklyn, my first childhood hero was Jackie Robinson, the first black player allowed to play in Major League baseball.” How wonderful that I just said something about football in Britain, and you say something about baseball in America. “Of course, in my local Brooklyn’s Dodgers team in 1947, that was the beginning of the breaking of the colour ballot in professional American sports, first in baseball, then in basketball, et cetera.” Never underestimate the power of sport, or the power of entertainment. It’s said that black American entertainers who came here in the '30s, and then again in the '40s, and particularly in the '50s, led to a change of viewing Britain as well. But the basic difference is we did not have slavery as the American South had slavery, that’s the huge difference that America has had to come to terms with.

Sharon says, “Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg was one of the first Jewish baseball players in the ‘30s. Oh, sorry, it’s David who sent that in, not Sharon. Esther, "Did you know that, quite late in the 20th century, blacks could spend their money in white stores, but not try on or return clothes?” I didn’t know that. “I was appalled to learn that, maybe that is why black men would cut new lovely shoes. My guess is that the money had been spent, but the shoes didn’t fit. We don’t see that anymore.” Oh, goodness gracious. Isn’t it awful when you look back over our own lifetimes, how we’ve lived through dreadful things. Rita’s given photography pictures, Civil Rights Movement, has given a link there, which other people can follow.

David, “James Baldwin, visiting South Africa during the apartheid years, he said he was less worried about the future for black African peoples in South Africa because they were the majority. He was much more worried for black Africans in the United States 'cause they were a minority.” I think he’s been proven right in that respect, that’s true, David. Yes, it is. But the hope of Mandela, remember when he was released from prison, was this rainbow people. And that seems now a long, long way off.

Michael, “Teaching non-segregation being taught in England doesn’t seem to have helped the Judeans there.” “Teaching non segregation taught in, doesn’t seem to have help the Judeans.” Michael, I’m not sure whether you are British or not, but I’ll let a Jewish friend answer that. I think you can, the problem now of antisemitism is the problem of Hamas and Palestine, and of the woke left supporting that. But British people, in the main, the vast majority of British people are not anti-Semitic. I think that would be a correct statement to make, but I will leave a Jewish friend.

Q: “Wasn’t it Rosie the Riveter, not the welder?” A: Absolutely right. I did that off the top of my head, and I could not remember properly. You’re absolutely right. And you know the story, I couldn’t tell. You’re all grown, and you’re all over 21, right? You won’t be offended. But in the film, you can see it, it was made a long time ago, you can see the stock, you can see the top of Rosie’s stockings. And that was a great moment for all the men on training courses, to await the view of the top of the stockings. Isn’t that dreadful? I mean, we couldn’t possibly do it now. In fact, I wouldn’t show Rosie the Riveter because of that now, but I do remember seeing it on a training course back in the 1970s.

Carrie, “Rosa Parks had trained as an activist at Highlander Folk School. She’s often depicted, not by you, as a tired seamstress.” Yes, I knew that was wrong. “Who spontaneously refused to give up her seat. She said she thought of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy lynched in Mississippi in '55, as she was arrested. His murder was also a key date in the USCRM after his mother allowed the photo of his open casket and grotesquely disfigured face to be shared. It had an international impact.” Yes, Carrie, thank you for putting that in, all of that is absolutely 100%. And I’m sorry, as I said, I had to limit the number of stories. I could go on for the whole of the series telling the stories. I just wanted to paint the wider picture. “There is a dark side to every here, but by the way, the Washington Times is a right-wing newspaper.” Yes, I knew that. “Actually, women are very good welders, they tend to have a better touch than men,” says Michael. Well, I’ll leave that.

Margie, “A few years ago, PBS in the UK did a very good series on reconstruction of America after the Civil War.” Sally, “When I was studying in Rochester, New York Medical School in '56, there was only one black student who mixed well with other students. Indeed, he was almost a celebrity.” Yeah, and it wouldn’t be like that today, would it? And no, I won’t say how many years ago that was, Sally. But yes, a lot has happened between then and now. And Washington Times, very conservative newspaper. Yes. Yeah. Estelle, “Evangelical hypocrisy, prevalent in their backing of Trump. They took him, they look on him as a Messiah.” I know. And that’s what worries me. And it’s, well, American evangelism comes from Britain anyhow, or from England, and it is a worrying, to me, it’s a very worrying form of Christianity. I’m uneasy about evangelical Christianity, and I’m in a position to say so, because that’s where I was brought up, and I’m really uneasy about it. They always think they’re right because God has told them they’re right. Any religion where a group of people said, “I’m right because God is,” you can’t argue with people that say, “God has told me personally I am right,” they won’t listen. I find that worrying, and it doesn’t matter which religion you’re talking about.

Monique and Danny, “Even after the Civil War, most white Americans did not wish to live together with black Americans. Ending slavery was one thing, living in the same neighbourhoods was another.” Exactly as in Britain, that was one of the troubles in Bristol. “In the 1960s, such cities as New York used busing to force integration by race in different schools.” Yes, I know that. “Sorry to say that no race has a monopoly on racism. There’s a great deal of social unrest, crime, and fear of crime. Realtors engaged in block busting, which meant moving black families into a white block. These things contributed to white flight from the northern cities, their suburbs, and a new structure to segregation. I would recommend the writings of Thomas Sowell, at the Hoover Institute, for a deeper perspective on the American story.” It’s not much different here, Monique and Danny, than it is in America. Exactly the same things happened. And Suzanne makes a point about the evangelical movement, brackets, “White-supported Donald Trump.”

Esther goes back to the film, “The Help,” which we’ve mentioned. Nikki said, “Some years ago, I attended a Hebrew language school in Israel, generic name,” oh, I hope I pronounce that right, Olpat? “A student South African couple returned to their country because the Israeli local buses had wooden seats like the blacks had in South Africa.” Oh dear. “I Have a Dream,” says Heather, “Is studied by English speaking 11th graders in Israel.” It would also be studied here in Britain.

Malcolm X and his movement, I didn’t talk about, and you’re right, complicated the scene. And Rita said, “Complicated the scene?” I thought about including Malcolm X today, and I just felt that I didn’t have the space. I may, I don’t promise, but I may use what I’d researched. I may use it next week. I haven’t written, I don’t write until the last minute, when I’ve allowed things to sort of swirl around in my brain, and I like just then to put a blank piece of paper in front of me and start writing, so I don’t know sometimes where the pen will take me. Ah, yeah. Here we go. Oh, sorry. “There was much,” I’m told here, “There’s much debate about whether Ray was really the killer.” I’m afraid when there’s ever deaths like that, just think about JFK for goodness’ sake, or think about Princess Diana, there’s always lots of, can we use the term “conspiracy theories?” There’s lots of alternative history, and that’s just the way of the world. I don’t know enough, Jonathan, to comment about the James Earl Ray position.

• [Host] So sorry to interrupt, William. Thoughtful. But -

• Oh, I’m running out of time. I need to stop.

• [Host] You’ve done so well. I was like, you’ve got through about 50 of those, you did them so smoothly.

• Yeah, I was rushing through. Yes, it’s true. But I can speak quickly. Thank you, everyone, for listening, and thank you for the large number of people who’ve been listening to the questions and answers. I’ve enjoyed myself this evening, I hope you have.

I will be back, same time, same place next week. See you all then.