African American History: Segregation to Black Pride (1866-1939)
Strategic Importance
African American history is highly tested on the APUSH exam.
The period from Reconstruction to the New Deal generates an average of about seven points per exam.
Scoring well on this topic is crucial for achieving a 3, 4, or 5 on the APUSH exam.
Key Points and Historic Generalizations
Fourteenth Amendment:
Overturned the Black Codes (severely restricted African American right after Civil War to maintain white supremacy), Three-Fifths Compromise (enslaved people counted for taxation and representation purposes) , and the Dred Scott decision (enslaved people were not citizens and could not sue for their freedom).
Established equality before the law, which was critical in Brown v. Board of Education (racial segregation in school was unconstitutional)
Sharecropping:
Trapped African American farmers in a cycle of debt and poverty.
Redeemer Governments:
Reestablished white supremacy in the South.
Used poll taxes and literacy tests to disenfranchise and suppress black voters/rights (Fifteenth Amendment)
Plessy v. Ferguson:
Provided legal support for "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws (legally enforced racial segregation and discrimination)
Booker T. Washington:
Advocated for accommodation by accepting segregation.
Stressed avoiding political agitation.
Focused on economic advancement for African Americans.
W.E.B. Du Bois:
Urged "ceaseless agitation" to challenge Jim Crow laws.
Demanded full economic, social, and political equality.
Progressive Era:
Reformers and presidents neglected the plight of African Americans in the South.
NAACP:
Used lawsuits in federal courts against segregation.
Great Migration:
Discrimination and Northern job market caused a mass movement of African Americans from the South to the North.
Harlem Renaissance:
Marked an outpouring of literary and artistic works expressing the spirit of the "New Negro."
Marcus Garvey:
Preached black pride and self-help.
New Deal:
African American voters became an important part of the New Deal political coalition.
Black Codes and Constitutional Amendments
A. A Period of Uncertainty
Post-Civil War: Uncertainty about the future of over four million freedmen.
Thaddeus Stevens recognized African Americans were impoverished and illiterate.
B. Black Codes
Slave codes regulated African Americans in the South before the Civil War.
Black Codes were enacted to limit the labor, mobility, and rights of African Americans.
Mississippi law required freedmen to sign annual labor contracts; aiding those who left employment was criminalized.
Blacks were forbidden from owning guns, marrying whites, or assembling in groups.
Frederick Douglass: Black Codes aimed to return freedmen to a system resembling slavery.
He said they made the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation a "mockery and delusion."
C. The Fourteenth Amendment, 1868
President Johnson didn't object to Black Codes, leading to conflict with Radical Republicans.
The Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Black Codes.
Granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States.
Overturned the Dred Scott decision and the Three-Fifths Compromise.
Prohibited states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process; ensured equal protection of the laws.
"Equal protection of the laws" is the only reference to equality in the Constitution.
Used in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to strike down segregation in public schools.
D. The Fifteenth Amendment, 1870
Frederick Douglass pressed for enfranchisement of black men.
The Fifteenth Amendment forbade denying citizens the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
Enabled African Americans to exercise political influence for the first time.
Freedmen provided about 80% of the Republican votes in the South.
Over 600 blacks served in state legislatures, 14 in the House, and 2 in the Senate.
Black voters helped elect Grant in 1868 and 1872.
From Slave to Sharecropper
A. Sharecropping
Reconstruction amendments brought freedom and political rights, but not economic prosperity.
Sharecropping: Black families exchanged labor for land, tools, and seed.
Sharecroppers typically gave the landowner half of the crops as payment.
B. An Endless Cycle of Debt and Poverty
Sharecropping did not lead to economic independence.
Landowners and shopkeepers charged sharecroppers exorbitant prices and unfair interest rates.
This system trapped African Americans in debt and poverty.
The Restoration of White Supremacy
A. The Ku Klux Klan
White Southerners believed Republicans sought to punish them by repealing Black Codes and enfranchising African Americans.
The Ku Klux Klan formed in 1866 and spread across the South.
Klansmen used whippings, house-burnings, kidnappings, and lynchings to intimidate blacks.
The Klan's terror resulted in declining black voting and Democrats regaining power.
By 1876, Democrats replaced Republicans in eight of eleven former Confederate states.
B. The Compromise of 1877
Republicans grew weary of reconstructing Southern society.
The 1876 presidential election dispute led to the end of Reconstruction.
Democrats agreed to support Republican Rutherford Hays in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
Southern Democrats proclaimed a return to "home rule" and white supremacy.
Historian Jill Lapore: "The Confederacy had lost the war, but it had won the peace."
C. The Disenfranchisement of Black Voters
Redeemers (Democratic Party leaders) aimed to redeem the South from Republican rule and were committed to white supremacy.
Tactics to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment:
Poll taxes: Required payment to vote.
Literacy tests: Required voters to read and answer difficult questions about state constitutions.
These tactics excluded African Americans from voting.
In 1887, no African Americans served in Congress.
In Louisiana, black voter registration plunged from 130,000 in 1894 to 1,342 a decade later.
D. "Separate But Equal"
During the 1890s, white Southerners rejected racial equality.
Ida B. Wells protested that Redeemer governments rendered freedom a curse.
Jim Crow laws mandated segregated facilities.
A Separate Car Act in Louisiana required "colored cars" for African American passengers.
Homer Plessy challenged the law but Judge John H. Ferguson ruled against Plessy and his challenge to the Separate Car Act based on violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court ruled that segregated facilities were constitutional as long as they were "separate but equal."
The "separate but equal" doctrine allowed Jim Crow segregation to spread across the South.
Segregation affected every detail of daily life.
Responses to "The Color Line"
A. "The Color Line"
By 1900, Jim Crow segregation, political disenfranchisement, and Klan violence defined race relations in the South.
The Richmond Times: "God Almighty drew the color line and it cannot be obliterated."
B. Booker T. Washington and Accommodation
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was born a slave and later became an educator.
He established an industrial and professional school for blacks in Tuskegee, Alabama.
At the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta (1895), Washington delivered the "Atlanta Compromise Speech."
He encouraged blacks to accept segregation, avoid politics, and concentrate on economic advancement.
His message of accommodation and self-help was praised by white audiences.
C. W.E.B. Du Bois and "Ceaseless Agitation"
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) criticized Washington's gradual approach.
In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois argued that accommodation would perpetuate segregation and injustice.
Du Bois advocated "ceaseless agitation" to challenge Jim Crow and demand equality.
He urged a "talented tenth" of educated blacks to lead the fight for equal rights.
Du Bois co-founded the NAACP in 1909, which used lawsuits in federal courts to fight segregation.
He lived to see the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Du Bois died one day before Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
African Americans and Progressive Reform
A. Presidential Prejudice
Progressive reformers neglected the plight of African Americans in the South.
President Taft applauded Jim Crow laws.
President Wilson shared racist views and endorsed the racist film The Birth of a Nation.
B. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The NAACP was founded in 1909 in response to a bloody riot in Springfield, Illinois.
It marked the first major attempt since Reconstruction to focus on civil rights.
The NAACP used lawsuits in federal courts to fight segregation.
In 1915, the Supreme Court struck down a grandfather clause in an Oklahoma law.
C. Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a teacher and journalist who fought against racial injustice.
She sued a train company after being forcibly removed for refusing to move to a segregated car.
Wells became a vocal critic of segregation and founded a newspaper.
After three black friends were lynched, Wells wrote scathing articles condemning the deaths.
A mob burned her newspaper office, but Wells continued her work.
She published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, documenting how lynchings were used to intimidate blacks and enforce Jim Crow laws.
Wells emerged as an effective leader of an anti-lynching crusade and helped found the NAACP.
The Great Migration, 1910-1930
A. Leaving the Land of Cotton
In 1900, most black Americans lived in the South, often on farms.
Jim Crow segregation, poverty, and Klan violence motivated Southern blacks to leave.
World War I created a labor shortage in the North, providing economic opportunity.
1. 5 million African Americans moved from the South to the North and Midwest between 1910 and 1930 (the Great Migration).
B. Living in the "Cold, Cold Minded North"
The North offered higher salaries, better schools, and access to public libraries and movie theaters.
However, African Americans faced union exclusion and lived in dilapidated housing.
Despite hardships, most black migrants did not return to the South.
The Harlem Renaissance and the "New Negro"
A. "The Greatest Negro City in the World"
The Great Migration fostered the growth of a new urban black culture.
Harlem became the center of black literary, artistic, and political expression during the 1920s (the Harlem Renaissance).
Alain Leroy Locke described the "New Negro" as having a new common consciousness rooted in their collective racial identity.
B. Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) preached black pride and self-help.
He exhorted followers to embrace their African heritage.
Garvey's vision fueled the growth of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
The UNIA became the first mass movement in African American history.
Garvey was later charged with mail fraud and deported to Jamaica.
Dr. King said Garvey gave millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny.
The Great Depression, New Deal, and African Americans
A. "Last Hired, First Fired"
The Great Depression began in 1929, causing a devastating economic collapse.
African Americans were disproportionately affected, with unemployment rates soaring to 50%.
The Harlem Renaissance declined with the end of the Roaring Twenties.
B. A Limited New Deal
President Roosevelt's New Deal aimed to address the economic crisis.
The New Deal did not directly confront racial injustice.
Some programs allowed segregation or discriminated against African Americans.
However, New Deal programs helped African Americans survive the Great Depression.
FDR appointed the first African American federal judge and increased black employment in the federal government.
C. The New Deal Coalition
African American voters in the North had been reliably Republican.
The New Deal caused a shift, with most black voters switching to the Democratic Party in 1936.
African Americans became a key part of the Democratic coalition.
D. More Than a Concert
Eleanor Roosevelt's actions reflected her personal convictions.
When the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) barred Marian Anderson from performing in Constitution Hall, Eleanor resigned.
She arranged for Anderson to give a free outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939.
An integrated audience attended, and Anderson's performance set the stage for the Civil Rights era.