Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II

Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II — page 3
INTRODUCTION 3 explain its policy of admitting only whites to the university In 1939 famed singer Marian Anderson was denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution DAR to sing at their hall Constitution Hall in Washington DC because she was black When America entered the war in 1941 no one could have anticipated the changes that would shape the future for women But postwar America held hope for many black women The opportunities that they took advantage of during the war years in the 1940s set the stage for the 1950s 60s and 70s decades that saw the emergence of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement In the 1950s the women of Thomasina Walker Johnson Norford’s generation wondered what it would mean for their children when the US Supreme Court ruled that racial segrega tion in public schools was unconstitutional They heard about a black woman named Rosa Parks who challenged life as it was in the South by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus in Mont gomery Alabama Many Americans participated in marches that resulted in equal rights for women and minorities in the 1960s In 1963 a man named Martin Luther King Jr spoke about having a dream for future generations The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sex or race was passed by Congress As the 1970s and 80s dawned Thomasina and the women of her generation began to enter their elder years The US Supreme Court again took actions that were intended to bring equality to the nation’s education system when it ruled that busing of students could be used as a tool to force integration of public schools in America Black and white women entered political life as never before Many were encouraged when Sandra Day