"New South", Segregation, & Discrimination

Review

• 13th Amendment → Freed the slaves
• 14th Amendment → Due Process; everyone equal before the law and entitled to same rights
• 15th Amendment → Universal Male Suffrage

Disenfranchisement

• African Americans faced their right to vote being revoked due to the following ways:
  • Poll Tax- tax that was required in order to vote
  • Literacy Tests- required tests to qualify for voting
  • Grandfather Clause- people could still vote (even if they didn’t pay tax or pass test) if their father or grand father was eligible to vote before Jan. 1, 1867
  • Violence and intimidation

Segregation

De Jure vs. De Facto

• De Jure:
  • Segregation by Law
  • Ex: Plessy v. Ferguson
• De Facto:
  • Segregation by Practice
  • Ex: White only neighborhoods

Background on Plessy v. Ferguson

• 1892
  • Homer Plessy sat in a vacant seat in the “Whites Only” section and refused to sit in the railroad car for “Blacks Only”
  • Was arrested and jailed
  • Plessy claimed that this violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment
• Result: Supreme Court declared that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights, not “social rights”.

Plessy v. Ferguson Case

• Landmark Supreme Court case in 1896
• Established the constitutionality of “Separate but Equal” → Racial Segregation

The Great Migration

• The Mass Movement of more than 6 million African Americans from the South to cities to the following areas:
  • The North
  • The Midwest
  • The West
• Many migrated for the following reasons
  • Opportunities for jobs
  • Violence & intimidation
  • Segregation

Origin of Jim Crow (Thomas Rice)

• White performers painted cork on their faces to resemble Blacks
  • They danced and sang → minstrels
  • “Wheel about and turn about and do just so, every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow”
  • Laws named after these characters

Race Riots in America

• 1898- Wilmington Insurrection/Coup/Race Riot
  • White supremacist mob:
  • Overthrew Fusion local government (black and white leaders)
  • Attacked and destroyed a black newspaper
  • Terrorized black community (killed 60 to 300 people)
  • Blacks stopped voting and left Wilmington by the thousands
• 1921- Tulsa Massacre
  • Black Wall Street destroyed
  • At least 300 African Americans

Responses to Jim Crow

• Ida B. Wells
  • Journalist- investigated and spoke publicly on lynching
  • Co-founded the National Association of Colored Women
  • Fought for civil rights, especially after Plessy decision

W.E.B Dubois

• First African American to earn a degree from Harvard
• One of the founding members of the NAACP
• Argued that African Americans should strive for higher education and equal rights
• Believed in the “Talented Tenth”
  • The best of the race must be educated i order to lead the rest

NAACP

• National Association of the Advancement of Colored People
• Founded in 1909
• Formed the Niagara Movement
  • Compromised of African American intellectuals seeking equal rights
• Used courts system to gain rights for African Americans
  • Focus:
  • Abolish segregation
  • Increase educational opportunities for African Americans

Booker T. Washington

• Critic of W.E.B Dubois
• Was born enslaved
• He advocated for vocational training for African Americans in order to achieve economic independence
  • Believed that African Americans can’t reach political and social equality if there isn’t a secure economic base
• Founder of the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University)
  • Initial focus on:
  • Farmers
  • Mechanics
  • Domestic servants

Marcus Garvey

• “Back to Africa Movement” (1920)
  • Move back to Africa to find homeland
  • Important for building “Black Pride”

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