race relations chapter 7

slavery

a central part of life in our country, as it was tolerated and legally protected by the US Constitution and US Supreme Court for half of US history

*Black people had no basic rights or privileges; they lived in bondage under a system of oppression and terror, with 1/5 people Black and enslaved in the US

*Slavery backed the booming economy of the North despite more of it being prevalent in the South

*Enslaved people provided agricultural labor and domestic services to households in the North

slavery conditions

○ Slavery was for life

○ Status was inherited

○ Enslaved people were considered property

○ Enslaved people were denied of rights

○ Coercion was used to maintain the system

slave codes

laws that defined the low position of enslaved people in the US, with the most common ones being:

• no legal marriage of free Black

• marriage between slaves not legally recognized

• no buying or selling anything

• no possession of weapons or liquor

• no fighting back with White people

• no possession of property or money

• no contracts or hiring oneself out

• no education or literacy

• curfews

• no testifying in court against anyone except another slave

*Violations of these rules were dealt with mutilation, branding, imprisonment, whippings; because they could not testify, White people's actions against enslaved Black people were above the law

Slave families

• Enslaved families had no standing in law; marriages between enslaved people were not legally recognized and therefore masters rarely respected those unions when they sold adults or children

○ Slave breeding to maximize offspring was practiced with little attention to emotional needs of slaves and the slaveholder would decide at what age the child would work in fields

○ The enslaved family couldn't offer children shelter, security, rewards, or punishments; the man was to sire offspring and the woman to bear them

slavery as an institution

vulnerable to outside opinion

restrictions increased on slaves after American Revolution because South saw it as permanent

slave revolutions and antislavery propaganda intensified oppression

Abolitionists

included White people and free Black people

• Many White people who opposed slavery did not believe in racial equality; they believed that slavery was a moral evil

• Abolitionists continued to speak out against slavery and its harm to both the enslaved and the nation as a whole, which had become economically dependent on it

○ Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, both free enslaved people, became visible figures in the fight against slavery through speeches and publications

○ Harriet Tubman and sympathetic White people developed the Underground Railroad to transport slaves to freedom into the North and to Canada

Constitution and slavery

○ To appease the South, the framers of the Constitution recognized and legitimized slavery's existence; the Constitution allowed slavery to increase Southern political power

○ An enslaved person counted as 3/5 of a person in determining population representation in the House of Representatives

Resistance

escaped from the South; fugitive slave acts provided for return of slaves even though they reached the free states

○ Passive actions included feigned clumsiness or illness, pretending not to understand, ridiculed White enslavers with mockery and subtle humor, and destroyed farm implements/sabotaged tools

Emancipation Proclamation

○ Freed enslaved people only in the Confederacy

○ Abolition became law in 13th Amendment, banning it nation-wide, after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865

Reconstruction Act of 1867

put each Southern state under a military governor until a new state constitution could be written; interracial marriages occurred, Black and White people went to school together, and there was no segregation in public transport services; some Black people also gained election in office

Reconstruction in the South and Jim Crow

• Discrimination based on racism emerged; reconstruction failed to change the racist social order

○ Jim Crow: Southern laws passed to keep former enslaved people and their descendants in a subordinate status

Jim Crow term became synonymous with segregation and the statuses that kept African Americans in their inferior position

*lynchings

Plessy v. Ferguson

laws requiring "separate but equal" accommodations for Black people

*overturned by Brown v. Board of Education

Williams v. Mississippi

declared constitutional use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and residential requirements to discourage Black people from voting

White primaries

forbade Black people from voting in election primaries; the South had a one-party system, which made the primary the significant contest and general election less impactful

○ The political party explicitly excluded Black people from voting, an exclusion that was constitutional because the party was defined as a private organization that was free to define its own membership qualifications

○ The White primary brought an end to political gains of Reconstruction

Slavery reparation and legacy

refers to the act of making amends for injustice of slavery

○ Since 1989, African American members of Congress have annually introduced the bill to call for the creation of a commission to make recommendations for appropriate remedies

• Symbols and reminders of the Old South/Confederacy continue to appear and stir controversy

○ Come in the form of White supremacy terrorist/hate groups and attacks, displaying Confederate flag/symbols in real life and online, etc.

○ The Confederate battle flag reflects racism; studies have found that racial prejudice is strongly associated with support for these symbols

○ The symbolism of the flags associated with the Confederacy and its leaders is complex; some argue they shouldn't be erased due to the historic nature of the Civil War

○ Supporters of the removal emphasize that there's a difference between acknowledging the Confederacy and its leaders and honoring/revering them generations later; as Confederate monuments come down, some Southern communities are replacing them with monuments to acknowledge the victims of Black lynching

Institutionalization of White supremacy

perpetuated different responses- in the late 1800s-early 1900s, several prominent Black leaders attempted to lead the first generation of freeborn Black Americans

Booker T. Washington

born a slave, White Accommodation politics

• Willing to forgo social equality until White people saw Blacks deserving of it; his most famous speech was made to mostly White and wealthy audience, where he pledged the continued dedication of Black people to White people

• Washington's theme was compromise; he asked Black people be educated because it would be an investment for White society

  Called racial hatred an intricate problem God laid down at the doors of the south; said Black Americans should have the goal of economic respectability

  Washington's attitude and beliefs made him popular among White people and was recognized by White society

• Assimilation into White society, Blacks proving to White people of worth

*Washington designed his image as an accommodator to allow himself to fight discrimination covertly

WEB Dubois

*9/10 rule: privileged Black intellectuals must serve the other 9/10 Blacks who were oppressed

*emphasis on academics and education

*no accommodation, push for rights

*formation of NAACP

Violence in South

*began during Reconstruction and continued into the 1900s

*resulted from White fear of social and economic gains by Black Americans

*Red Summer and competition between Blacks and Whites after returning from WWI

*resurgence of KKK

*resulted in Black migration north into urban areas

Fair Employment Practices Commission

set up in response and established the precedent for federal intervention in job discrimination

Congress of Racial Equality (1942)

founded to fight discrimination using nonviolent direct action

○ War years and postwar period saw several US Supreme Court decisions that suggested the court was moving away from tolerating racial inequities

○ White primary elections that were endorsed during Jim Crow were challenged in Smith v. Allwright (1944)

Restrictive covenant

private contract entered into by neighborhood property owners that said property couldn't be sold or rented to certain minority groups, thus ensuring they couldn't live in that area (redlining)

Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)

said restrictive covenants and redlining wasn't constitutional but didn't attack their discriminatory nature

Civil Rights movement

gained movement in 1954 with desegregation of public schools

*fought for rights of Black Americans through civil disobedience, protest, and challenging the law

Brown v. Board of Education

All Black schools could not be equal to all White schools; but the integration of these educations connects to Black assimilation into White society

*separate but equal is not equal and is unconstitutional

14th amendment was supposed to rule out segregation in schools

De jure vs de facto segregation

De jure= segregation by law (ex is educational segregation)

De facto= separation that exists even though law doesn’t require it (ex is discriminatory actions at workplace cause POC to work in separate area than White people)

Montgomery Improvement Association

led to boycott of buses that demanded the end of segregation (Rosa Parks)

Civil disobedience

the belief that people have the right to disobey the law under certain circumstances; a method of protest to defy unjust laws

MLK jr

Actively but nonviolently resisting evil

Not seeking to defeat or humiliate opponents but instead win their friendship and understanding

Attacking the forces of evil rather than the people who happen to be doing the evil (systemic attack rather than individual)

Being willing to accept suffering without retaliating

Refusing to hate the opponent

Acting with the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice

March on Washington

fighting for jobs and freedom

middle class White and Black people looking for federal support

I Have a Dream speech given

Civil Rights Act (1964)

banned discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender

Voting Rights Act (1965)

allowed African Americans to vote and overcome legal barriers at state and local levels that they faced under the 15th Amendment

13th amendment, 14th amendment, 15th amendment

13= ended slavery

14= citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans who had been freed from slavery

15= all male citizens over 21 can vote (did not account for discrimination within voter ID laws, White primaries, and violence that scared Black people away from voting)

Riff-raff/rotten apple theory

riot participants were mostly unemployed youths involved in narcotics and had criminal records; Black adolescence being delinquent, young African Americans coming from single parent families and poor socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to commit crimes than White youth from stable families

*better explained by Black frustration with rising expectations in the face of continued discrimination compared to White people (relative deprivation)

• Standard of living improved after WWII, but income and occupation levels of White Americans also improved; the socioeconomic gap remained

• Rising expectations: refers to the increasing sense of frustration that legitimate needs are being blocked; a type of relative deprivation

• Black people felt like they had legitimate aspirations to equality, and the Civil Rights Movement had reaffirmed discrimination blocked those aspirations (mobility); as their opportunities expanded, they felt more and more discontent when comparing White households to theirs

• Civil Rights Movement resulted in higher aspirations, but lives remained unchanged, and they also felt like the social structure had no way of leading to improvement

Black Power

rejected assimilation into middle class White society and instead said Blacks must create new institutions, must follow the same paths as other ethnic groups, and that they needed group solidarity before operating effectively in pluralistic society in a strong bargaining position

• Black Power gained acceptance among Black and many White people; it implied the endorsement of Black control over political, economic, and social institutions in Black communities and gave African Americans a viable option for surviving in segregated society

African Americans and religion

• African Americans brought to Western Hemisphere involuntarily were non-Christian; to "civilize" them slaves were required to attend church and embrace Christianity, where they were encouraged to accept their inferior status, equate salvation to Whiteness, and see Whiteness as acceptable/preferred

• Christian faiths are embraced by modern African Americans; majority are Protestant and belong to historically Black churches

○ Church was important to Black community but failed to be more than a social organization stratified by class

○ Today Black churches are socially involved in communities but more and more are becoming unaffiliated/nondenominational

New immigration

• Substantial flow of Black immigrants coming from Africa and the Caribbean

• Some come to study, some come to join family, some come as refugees

• Relative concentration of immigrants lies in urban areas