Chapter 10 (Key Terms): 1877-1915 Black Life and Culture during the Nadir

369 Jim Crow

A system of laws and customs that enforced segregation, the spatial and physical separation of the races.

• The expanding system of racial segregation 

  • After a popular minstrel show character show that ridiculed black people 

• Legislatures moved to make segregation mandatory 

• Deeply tied to Plessy v. Ferguson(Separate but equal clause)

• White person mimicked the mannerisms of black people 

  • This became very popular

• Thomas D. Rice 

  • Daddy Rice 

  • Daddy Jim Crow 

    • His show used these images to become famous 

    • 1828 - Old Zip Coon 

370 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws mandating racial segregation in public facilities.

• “The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together” Came from the dissent in Plessy v Ferguson

• The court declared Lousianas seperate car act constitutional 

• Established the separate but equal legal doctrine 

• Prompted a series of Jim Crow laws

• With Jim Crow came a system of racial etiquette 

  • Limited outward resistance in a Jim Crow world

370 Separate but Equal doctrine

The legal doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) stating that as long as they were deemed equal to those of whites, separate (Jim Crow) facilities and accommodations for blacks did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

• Constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause

373 Social Darwinism

The idea that the evolutionary notion of the survival of the fittest applies to society and the economy, used to justify white domination of both.

• Supported the economic and social order the suppressed black people 

• Wealth going to black people was going against the natural order and the idea that “Wealth and power should go to the fittest” in this case white people.

• 
  

373 scientific racism

Pseudoscientific yet powerful notions of white superiority endorsed by most of the academic and scientific establishment until well into the twentieth century.The view that categorized human populations hierarchically by race and contended that races evolved unequally

• Concluded that “Anglo-Saxons were superior to Negroes”

• The view that categorized human populations hierarchically by race and contended that races evolved unequally

375 Wilmington Insurrection (1898)

A race riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, that restored white political power in the city and signaled the end of biracial politics in the city and state.

Wilmington 

• A small city that was ⅔ black

• Alexander Manly an editor of the Daily Record 

  • Published an editorial arguing that the relationships between poor white women and black men were often consensual. 

• Whites killed black people and destroyed black property 

• White insurrectionists overthrew the local government and handpicked leaders

376 lynching

The public murder, by a lawless mob, of an individual alleged to have committed a crime or a breach of social custom.

• “the public murder, often a hanging, of an individual by a mob acting outside the law.”

• To Ida B. Wells this issue mattered deeply because 3 of her friends were lynched

• “In short, the police and courts that did almost nothing to protect blacks were often complicit in these murders.”

• A form of Terrorism

• State sanctioned violence 

395 Atlanta Exposition Speech/Atlanta Compromise

Booker T. Washington’s classic statement of racial conciliation and accommodationism.

• emphasis on self-help, solidarity, economic uplift, and making the most of life within the confines of segregation hit widely popular notes. 

• In 1895, Washington delivered a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta

• Argued for black uplift 

400 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People/NAACP

Founded in 1909, the leading advocacy group for black civil rights up to the present.

• The nation’s leading AA civil rights organization 

• Turned over the Grandfather clause 

  • Adapted new tests and polls to make it harder for AA to vote

  • Anyone who was eligible to vote typically before Jan 1867 was exempt

  • Making it so white rich voters had far more political power than poor whites and African Americans

• Organizations journal was founded by Dubois “The Crisis”

• Adapted the “Lift Every Voice and Sing as the “Negro national anthem.”’