Jim Crow Era Flashcards

Mary Church Terrell

• Born during the Civil War in 1863.
• Parents were enslaved but gained freedom due to the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Attended early historic Black colleges and universities.
• Represented high class and money to dispel stereotypes about Black women through her attire.
• Straightened her hair as an assimilationist aspect.
• Participated in respectability politics to stave off stereotypes.
• Was one of the few Black women invited to white women's suffrage organizations as a token member.
• Was a teacher and a member of the National Association of Colored Women, conducting research and engaging in activism.

Mary McLeod Bethune

• Born after slavery ended in 1875.
• Parents had been slaves, making her part of the first generation born after slavery.
• Educated in South Carolina in early public schools set up for colored children by the Freedmen's Bureau.
• Also educated in the Black church.
• Considered the mother of Black education in the United States.
• Became a politician during the New Deal era.
• Befriended Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Was a member of FDR's "Black Cabinet," working for different federal government agencies.
• Had a direct telephone line to the president and his wife.
• Served as the spokesperson for the suffering of Black Americans during the Great Depression, which was disproportionately higher than that of white Americans.
• Explained the need for New Deal programs to address education and Black youth, highlighting racial disparities in funding due to Plessy versus Ferguson.
• Explained racial disparities in public school funding, where the difference in money allocation per pupil between Black and white children ranged from 42 to 130 dollars.
• Highlighted that schools already underfunded were hurt even more during the Great Depression, necessitating federal attention to address racial disparities.
• Founded the National Council of Negro Women in the 1930s.
• Founded a school that became Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona, Florida.
• A statue of Mary McLeod Bethune was added to the statuary room in the US Capitol during the Biden administration.
• Her pioneer work in funding and education, pointing out disparities under Jim Crow, was nationally recognized, aided by her connection to FDR and his wife.

Anna Julia Cooper

• Born enslaved after the Civil War in North Carolina.
• Recognized as having high potential by white women who came to the South to help educate during Reconstruction.
• Received scholarships to an all-girls school.
• Married in 1877 to a formerly enslaved man who later died.
• Obtained a scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio to gain advanced education.
• Earned a PhD in Paris in 1925.
• Taught at predominantly Black schools in the American South.
• Wrote "A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South,” which made her the first Black feminist.
• Famous line: "When and where I enter, the whole race enters with me."
• Her race is ever present and she carries her blackness everywhere she goes, especially in white spaces, during the Jim Crow era.
• Black women are at the bottom rung of American society, facing racism and sexism, also known as the double burden.
• Argued that when Black women are seen as equal everywhere, the racial and gender hierarchy in America will be sincerely altered.
• The idea of the double burden was picked up by Pauli Murray, who coined the term "Jane Crow" to describe the intersectionality of being Black and a woman.
• Pauli Murray laid out legal arguments used in Brown versus Board of Education and the Equal Rights Amendment, cited by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Madam C.J. Walker

• Born Sarah Breedlove two years after the Civil War during Reconstruction.
• Created a chemical compound relaxer/texturizer for Black hair - extremely flammable and toxic at the time.
• Trained beauticians to handle the product in beauty shops set up in their homes, enabling them to become business owners.
• She altered the hot comb making it suitable for textured Black hair.
• Developed beauty products and makeup for Black skin tones.
• Set up a tiered business venture aimed at helping Black women become business owners and escape domestic service.
• Women could become local representatives of Madam C.J. Walker products, setting up beauty salons, traveling door-to-door, and becoming sales reps.
• Her entrepreneurial shift aimed to safeguard Black women and move them away from economic oppression.
• Her success was disliked by some Black men who believed Black women should be housewives.
• Madam CJ Walker became the first African American woman millionaire and the first American woman millionaire who was self-made.
• Provided salons/products for activists practicing respectability politics and performers during the Harlem Renaissance.
• The Great Migration helped create a larger network where Black women leaders connected with other Black women, building a nationwide safety net for activism.

Jim Crow Segregation

• Jim Crow supported geographically and de jure in South, but de facto outside South.
• Different entrances for Black people in establishments, often through alleys.
• Arrows used visually to direct people to different entrances, training children to internalize racial separation.
• Segregated water fountains with different technology.
• Segregated entrances expanded beyond the South, like at Paramount Theater.
• Threats to destroy establishments if integrated seating was allowed.
• Spatial arrangement inside establishments reinforced segregation, with Black people seated separately.
• Segregated benches at bus stops, with Black people restricted from using white benches even if empty.
• Rosa Parks: sat in the colored section of the bus. When the white section was full, a white man demanded her seat because the law stated Black people had to move, even in their section.
• Public spaces such as parks and beaches were racially segregated.

Racially Segregated Swimming Pools

• In the South, public pools for Black people were not established.
• Outside the South, swimming pools were initially integrated with dividers separating black side and white side.
• Public pools were essential for hygiene and disease reduction. But children often crossed the divide and: When the white children ended up in the black side, the black kids scrambled, but when black kids ended up in the white side, the white children drowned them (often children drowning other children).
• To solve the issue: public schools began white days and black days at the pool; after black days the pool was fully drained, cleaned, and refilled before white days, due to beliefs about Black people carrying diseases.
• 1952 - An integrated little league baseball team won the state world series, where, on a white day at the pool, the boy was only taken around the pool in a raft but not allowed to touch the water.
• Many Black americans did not learn to swim for this reason. Beaches also segregated.

Racially Segregated Bathrooms

• Initially, white bathrooms and black bathrooms. But money was short, therefore only a one black bathroom for both men and women.

Jim Crow Memorabilia

• Racist memorabilia (clocks, ink, instruments, minstrel shows) was sold through Sears Roebuck catalog, depicting stereotypes of African Americans.

• Blackface performers common.

• David Pilgrim, founder of the Jim Crow Museum, explains that racist memorabilia reflects and shapes attitudes toward Black people.

• The shift from African Americans portrayed as reliable in antebellum times to demonized figures after slavery was a propaganda campaign to demean and enforce Jim Crow.

• Millions and millions of these images were found among white america.

• At the 1900 World's Fair the American Negro exhibit: It featured a collection of nearly 500 images of dignified, well dressed African American men, women, and children.

• African Americans are putting out information about how Jim Crow is undemocratic. They've been going over for black leadership to show them what African Americans are really doing.

• Racist memorabilia shaped future generations by internalizing them. Regular items that are being sold and circulated everywhere. Memorabilia is found everywhere, geographic segregation is found everywhere.

Smith and Chase used racist depictions on packaging

• This helped lead to 1000s of Americans hooked on cigarettes because they're trying to please their kids.
• Other companies start mimicking that.
• McDonald's of your generation has mean. Mammy or nanny looking trinkets. African prince and king trinkets with Always Good Which pancakes.
• Cream of Wheat pushed out ads using African Americans as servants or staff.
• NAACP sued Negro Head Oyster Company and it was successful.
• Salt pepper shakers and lamps did this.
• There were even little golden Books that did it, for example: pick a ninny in the African jungle.
• Jim crow wasn't just the segregation. It was in the culture, funding of the school and spaces people travelled. They are still using earlier elements of paternalism.

Ole Miss University & Segregationist Sentiments

• During the Civil War, the university closed and the all male student body entered the Confederacy.
• After Civil War, they opened back. Nickname was Ole Miss.
• Mascot: colonial rib to rebels from confederacy represented as slaveholder
• Has that name to this day
• Aunt Jamima was a family but she changed to depict in black face but she did profit. Battles of how the image were changed. It was only during COVID. But if you find them now, it’s expired. There is also miss butterwork shaped as a black woman.
• Ole Miss : There were people who also went there and that had names in the notebooks that were the segregations. White guy made a doc. About how this happened at the football team and the university.