PAPERS of the NAACP Part Segregation and Discrimination, 15 Complaints and Responses, 1940-1955
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A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of BLACK STUDIES RESEARCH SOURCES Microfilms from Major Archival and Manuscript Collections General Editors: John H. Bracey, Jr. and August Meier PAPERS OF THE NAACP Part Segregation and Discrimination, 15 Complaints and Responses, 1940-1955 Series A: Legal Department Files UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of BLACK STUDIES RESEARCH SOURCES Microfilms from Major Archival and Manuscript Collections General Editors: John H. Bracey, Jr. and August Meier PAPERS OF THE NAACP Part 15. Segregation and Discrimination, Complaints and Responses, 1940-1955 Series A: Legal Department Files Edited by John H. Bracey, Jr. and August Meier Project Coordinator Randolph Boehm Guide compiled by Martin Schipper A microfilm project of UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA An Imprint of CIS 4520 East-West Highway • Bethesda, MD 20814-3389 Library of Congress Cataloglng-ln-Publlcatlon Data National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Papers of the NAACP. [microform] Accompanied by printed reel guides. Contents: pt. 1. Meetings of the Board of Directors, records of annual conferences, major speeches, and special reports, 1909-1950 / editorial adviser, August Meier; edited by Mark Fox - pt. 2. Personal correspondence of selected NAACP officials, 1919-1939 / editorial - [etc.] - pt. 15. Segregation and discrimination, complaints and responses, 1940-1955. 1. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-Archives. 2. Afro-Americans-Civil Rights-History-20th century-Sources. 3. Afro- Americans-History-1877-1964~Sources. 4. United States-Race relations-Sources. I. Meier, August, 1923- . II. Boehm, Randolph. III. Title. E185.61 [Microfilm] 973'.0496073 86-892185 ISBN 1-55655-460-5 (microfilm : pt. 15A) Copyright© 1993 by University Publications of America. All rights reserved. ISBN 1-55655-460-5. TABLE OF CONTENTS Scope and Content Note v Note on Sources ix Editorial Note ix Abbreviations x Reel Index ReeM Group II, Series B, Legal File Group II, Box B-2 American Legion 1 Group II, Box B-8 Civil Rights 1 Reels 2-9 Group II, Series B, Legal File cont. Group II, Boxes B-60-B-67 Discrimination 3 Reels Group II, Series B, Legal File cont. Group II, Box B-96 Legal Conference 16 Group II, Box B-102 National Committee on Segregation in the Nation's Capital 16 Group II, Box B-106 Negroes in Sports 17 Group II, BoxB-183 Tennessee Valley Authority 17 Transportation 17 Reels 10-18 Group II, Series B, Legal File cont. Group II, Boxes B-183 cont.-B-190 Transportation cont 17 Reel 19 Group II, Series B, Legal File cont. Group II, Box B-190 cont.-Box B-191 Transportation cont 30 Group II, BoxB-218 Washington Airport 31 Subject Index 33 SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE This edition reproduces the files of the NAACP legal department regarding complaints about segregation and exclusion in places of public accommodation and recreation between 1940 and 1955. Complaints involving hotels, clubs, hospitals, restaurants, parks, playgrounds, beaches, common carriers, and transportation depots poured into the NAACP national office from branches and individuals all across the country. In addition, there are a few small files that shed light on the fight against employment discrimination and a small series devoted to segregation in organized sports. (Files on segregation in education, housing, and labor discrimination are the focus of separate editions of Papers of the NAACP. See Part 3: The Campaign for Educational Equality, Series B, Legal Department and Central Office Records, 1940-1950; Part 5: The Campaign Against Residential Segregation, 1914-1955; and Part 13: The NAACP and Labor, 1940-1955.) The bulk of the files predate the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Thus the records on this microfilm provide valuable insights on how the NAACP worked to oppose segregation before there were federal grounds to attack the practice. Outside the South, the NAACP's strategy in opposing segregation relied heavily on the civil rights laws that existed in a number of states. Some of these laws, though often unenforced, had been on the books for decades while others were enacted in the period after World War II. As could be expected, they varied widely in their strength and effectiveness. Due to the sheer volume of complaints and the number of jurisdictions involved, a large number of complaints were referred to local NAACP branches in the hope that a local attorney might press the matter. Contributing to the number of cases were the mass migrations that intensified during and after World War II. Also contributing were the gradual changes in white public opinion and the growing power of the black vote in the North and West, exemplified best by events during the presidency of Harry S Truman. A final factor was the growing militancy of the African-American community. These files illuminate many of the social tensions occasioned by these factors. In the southern states, of course, the only avenue of litigation available to the NAACP during this time was through the federal courts. Accordingly, the NAACP's campaign against discrimination in public accommodations focused on interstate transportation. As early as 1946, the NAACP won a landmark decision, Morgan v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in interstate travel. This was the first victory in the courts against the concept of separate-but-equal. Although the Supreme Court struck down the Virginia law mandating segregation on interstate carriers, it was a narrow decision that did not apply to intrastate travel or to terminals. This left the door open for the various companies to implement private rules segregating the races. Nevertheless the line of legal activity staked out by the NAACP was significant. It paralleled and complemented the line of attack being developed simultaneously in the area of educational equality that led to the Brown decision. As these files make clear, the Morgan decision paved the way for challenges to the application of state Jim Crow laws to all forms of interstate transportation—rail, boat, and bus—in all of the southern states. Except for the interstate transportation cases, most of the struggle against segregation and discrimination in public facilities was waged at the local level. These files reveal much about race relations at the grass roots level throughout the United States in the period from 1940-1955. They also demonstrate the growth of black activism during the 1940s and 1950s, a record that has largely been forgotten. As with previous editions of Papers of the NAACP, the files selected for this edition from the Legal Department series shed considerable light on the network of civil rights attorneys working on behalf of the NAACP. This network included national staff members such as executive secretaries Walter White and Roy Wilkins, Branch Director Gloster Current, and Publicity Director Henry Lee Moon. It included a staff of attorneys in the national office working under the direction of Thurgood Marshall, including Constance Baker Motley, Robert L. Carter, Edward R. Dudley, Milton Konvitz, Roger Ming, Marian Wynn Perry, Leon A. Ransome, Franklin Williams, and Frank D. Reeves. This group worked with an even wider network of civil rights attorneys on the local level, including Spottswood W. Robinson, Harold Boulware, Daniel E. Byrd, Z. Alexander Looby, T. G. Nutter, A. Maceo Smith, A. P. Tureaud, and local branch leaders such as John L. LeFlore and Lulu B. White. Several files provide rich empirical data on segregationist practices and their impact. Apart from the thousands of complaints discussed earlier, several files include systematic surveys of segregation practices (see, for example, the American Legion and Transportation files) as well as in-depth community analyses (as in the files on the National Committee on Segregation in the Nation's Capital and on swimming pools in St. Louis). Following is a summary of the major subgroups of files reproduced in this edition. American Legion. These files document the (largely successful) effort to integrate the American Legion organization. Among the highlights is a survey on integration and segregation in the American Legion made in 1944 and 1945 by NAACP branches. VI Civil Rights. This series contains a mixed batch of incoming material ranging from complaints about discrimination and reports on state civil rights laws and bills to correspondence with supportive organizations in the struggle against segregation. The files reveal many of the organizations that openly opposed segregationist practices in America during the 1940s and early 1950s, including the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the American Jewish Committee, the American Friends Service Committee, the Southern Conference Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Americans for Democratic Action, and the Urban League. Complaints touch on segregationist practices and also employment discrimination, suffrage restriction, jury exclusion, and restrictive convenants. Discrimination. This large series includes the bulk of incoming letters complaining about discriminatory practices (apart from the transportation cases, which are filed separately below). Major subgroups within the series contain files of complaints about discrimination in bars, hotels, restaurants, swimming pools, and theaters. These files illustrate the pattern of engaging local NAACP branches to take up cases of this sort. A few files focus on private organizations, such as the American Bowling Congress (ABC). In the case of the ABC, the NAACP cooperated with other integration-minded organizations to stage boycotts and picket the congress's events. It also backed lawsuits based on state civil rights law in several northern and western states, which ultimately succeeded in desegregating the ABC. Discrimination on the part of other private organizations, such as the Amateur Athletic Union of America and the Girl Scouts of America, is covered in the General files of this subseries. There are also files on hospitals and insurance companies and synopses of state civil rights laws and their applications.