1.05 US History - Face of Freedom

Nadir (1877 - 1920)

period of terrible relations between black and white people after the civil war. very few former slaves could escape the south.

• beginning of civil rights movement that continues today

• leaving the south was the only option

sharecropping system

a labor system in which a tenant agrees to farm for a landowner in return for a portion of the corps harvested

• cycle of debt that nobody could pay due to a terrible economic system in the south from the civil war

Klu Klux Klan

group formed for old confederate soldiers in Tennessee, then become a terrorist group that was determined to keep African Americans from obtaining their rights

Enforcement Acts (1870 and 1871)

acts that aimed to diminish the power of the KKK

Literacy tests

reading comprehension tests that aimed to keep black people away from voting

poll taxes

fees to vote that aimed to keep black people away from voting

grandfather clause

a provision that allowed poor white people in the south to vote even if they failed the literacy test or could not pay the poll tax

• anybody whose grandfather would have been eligible to vote before 1867 was guaranteed the right to vote

Jim Crow Laws

harsh segregation laws passed mainly in southern states to deny African Americans equal economic, political, and social treatment

• gov did nothing for black people after end of reconstruction, so southern states passed these laws

Homer Plessy

black person who purchased a seat in a “white” train car and was arrested and claimed this law violated the 14th amendment

Plessy vs. Ferguson

segregation was upheld as constitutional

• led to doctrine of separate but equal

Exodusters

African Americans who migrated from the south to the Great Plains region due to poverty in the south

Benjamin “Pap” Singleton

“father of the exodus movement”

• encouraged 20000 African Americans to move to Kansas

Nicodemus, Kansas

one of the first towns settled by African Americans who decided to leave the south

great migration

the movement of 2 million African Americans from the south to pretty much anywhere in the north

lynching

public hanging without the benefit of a trial