Convict Leasing, Jim Crow Laws, and Segregation

Railroads in the South were built by convicts.
Convicts were used for picking cotton and cutting sugarcane, similar to enslaved people before the Civil War.
Convict leasing: African Americans were returned to work through the prison system.
Convicts were leased out and under the care of those who rented them.
Renters often did not prioritize housing or feeding workers.
High convict mortality rates were often ignored by state officials.
Convict leasing is considered by many as a perpetuation of slavery.
Attempts to reform the convict labor system in Georgia were unsuccessful due to its profitability.
In 1881, a law was passed in Georgia to improve prisoners' quality of life, authorizing one person (whipping boss) in each work camp to administer punishment.
This legislation enabled harsh treatment.
Many states, including Texas, ended the farming out of prisoners in the 1910s, transitioning to manufacturing materials within prisons.

The New South saw new business investments and the rise of a wage-working class.
White supremacy maintained inequality between white and black working classes.
Factories segregated black and white workers; black people were relegated to janitorial or dangerous jobs, while skilled labor was reserved for white people.

Lynching gained momentum during Reconstruction as a terroristic method against viable black towns.
Lynching increased as African Americans made political and economic progress (voting, establishing businesses, running for office).
White landowners and poor white people felt threatened by the rise in black prominence.
Foremost fear: sex between white women and black men.
Rumors: Black men were sexual predators seeking to integrate races and access white women.
Lynchings were public displays, like executions during the French Revolution.
Lynchings were advertised in newspapers and drew large crowds of white families.
White men saw themselves as protectors of their way of life and white women, acting as vigilantes.
Mark Twain nicknamed the South "The United States Of Lynchingdom."
Lynchings occurred throughout the US, most prevalent in the South.
Local newspapers covered lynchings with horrific details.
Photos of victims were distributed in newspapers and on postcards.
Body parts of victims were sometimes distributed or put on display.
Victims were often tortured to death before being hanged.
Reasons for lynching: petty crimes, Jim Crow violations, associating with white women, or being successful black businessmen.
Political cartoons satirized figures like sheriffs, suggesting they only resisted mob rule due to state government threats of fines for allowing lynchings.
A $2,000 penalty was the fine for any lynching law of South Carolina.
This law was not regularly enforced.

Jim Crow laws emerged as Southern states tried to limit black voting through taxes.
Poll taxes: fees required to vote, disproportionately affecting black citizens.
Literacy tests: arcane trivia or confusing wording, disproportionately administered to black citizens.
Grandfather clause: if your grandfather was registered to vote, then you are registered to vote (benefited poor white people).
Understanding clause: white people were allowed to provide a general understanding of the constitution to vote.
Southern states created boundaries to prevent black people from voting.
Poll taxes were eventually struck down, but grandfather clauses, understanding clauses, and literacy tests were not.

Jim Crow laws were segregation and disenfranchisement laws in the South against black people.
They represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid.
These laws dominated the American South for three quarters of a century, beginning in the 1890s.
Laws affected almost every aspect of daily life (housing, marriage, travel, etc.).
Jim Crow laws became more stringent over time.
Designations were marked for restrooms and bus stations (whites only vs. colored).
Terminology: It is not okay to use the term "colored people."
Signs served as constant reminders of the enforced racial order.
In legal theory, black people received separate but equal treatment; in actuality, public facilities for black people were nearly always inferior or nonexistent.
Black people were systematically denied the right to vote in most of the rural South through the selective application of literacy tests.
The Jim Crow system was upheld by local government officials and vigilantes.
In 1896, the Supreme Court established a doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy versus Ferguson.
Homer Plessy, who was 1/8 black, challenged Louisiana's segregation law on rail cars.
Plessy boarded a whites-only rail car and identified himself as black to challenge the law.
The Supreme Court codified segregation as legal in The United States.
The Plessy versus Ferguson case legitimized all Jim Crow laws so long as they were so-called separate but equal.
Separate but equal was a term that's in theory only.

Restrictions on intermixing of races created unintended consequences.
Segregation led to the establishment of a new black middle class.
Segregation meant black people could not:
- eat at the same restaurant
- get hair done by the same beautician
- see the same doctor
The black middle class was small but powerful within their communities.
Small black middle-class groups emerged in places like Atlanta and Chicago due to strict segregation.
Most black people in the South worked in agriculture or as wage workers in industry.