1890-1920 SOCIETY

1896 Plessy vs Ferguson

Ruled racial segregation laws were not a violation of the US constitution.

Legalised separate but equal

1898 Louisiana Grandfather Clause

Only vote if your Grandfather could before 14th Amendment (1867)- e.g. white grandfather

Overturned in 1915 when challenged by the NAACP

1915 KKK Revival

The Birth of A Nation romanticized the KKK and presented them as saviours of the South from black rapists

Immigration

1890-1914: 18.4m immigrants

1892: new immigration centre opened on Ellis Island

1900: New York had more italians than Naples and 2x as many Irish as Dublin

1900: 2/3 immigrants lived below sustenance level

1/3 immigrants returned home

1892 Homestead Steelworker's Pittburgh Strike

Carnegie and Frick cut wages 20% at steel plant Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers (AFL branch).

Led to 12 hour day and reduced wages which were blamed on foreign agitators and 'strike breakers'

1894 Pullman Strike

Pullman cut wages by 25% but didn't cut rent. Strikers paralysed the railroads west of chicago by refusing to handle the Pullman cars.

Broken by immigrant 'strike-breakers' and gov troops

1907 Gentlemen's Agreement

Informal agreement that the US would not restrict Japanese Immigrants if Japan stopped emigration of its people to the US.

Decreased Japanese immigrants hugely

1919 Red Summer of Chicago

KKK activities led to 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 in 1919.

White supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas.

500 injured and 40 killed

1000 black families made homeless

1890 Literacy Test

Mississippi

Can only vote if you passed

Harder for blacks than whites

Booker T Washington

1901: set up National Negro Business League

1895: Atlanta Speech which suggested AA focus on education and not voting rights

Seemingly accepting of segregation

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People

1909

oldest and largest civil rights organisation

aimed for equal rights and elimination of racial prejudice

Birth of a Nation

1915

Based off a book by a friend of Woodrow Wilson

Showed blacks were uncouth, intellectually inferior and a predator of white women

Romanticized the KKK - made out they were there to save the white south from savage black men raping white women

19th Amendment

Gave women the right to vote in 1920

18th Amendment

Pushed by women (who were fed up with violence from drunk husbands) and Anti-Saloon League.

Banned the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol.