Racism in the 1910’s-1930’s

Sharecropping

• A farmer works a piece of land but doesn’t own it.

• Rent is a portion of the crop

• White landowners make sure the Black sharecropper is always in debt.

Jim Crow Laws

• Plessy vs. Ferguson allows laws that segregate blacks and legalize racism.

• Usually effect voting and social rights.

The writer just returned from Elmira NY on Michigan Central Train No.17 and was very much surprised to find that it is now becoming necessary to associate with negro passengers on a so called high grade, excess fare train.

I am sure you can appreciate the unpleasantness of being compelled to share dressing rooms with the negros.Yours very trulyM.W. Briggs

More Jim Crow

Segregation SpeechMembers of the Ohio House of Representatives will be

astonished when I tell them that I have traveled in this free country for twenty hours without anything to eat; not because I have no money to pay for it, but because I was colored. Other passengers of as lighter hue had breakfast, lunch and dinner...

This foe of my race stands at the school house door and separates the children, by reason of color, and denies to those who have a visible mixture of African blood in them the blessings of a graded school and equal privileges...We call upon all friends of Equal Rights to assist us in this struggle to secure the blessings of untrammeled liberty for ourselves and prosperity.

Jim Crow

Ku Klux Klan

• A secret white supremacist organization that hates Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants

KKK March in Seattle WA

KKK Cross burning ceremony

Birth of a Nation

• Enrollment in the KKK rises after the movie “Birth of a Nation” is released.

• It was VERY racist and VERY popular at that time.

Lynching

• The killing of a person (hanging, beating, burning) by a mob.

Tulsa Race Riot

• A young black boy was supposed to have attempted an assault on a white woman in a downtown elevator. Whites then used this as an excuse to destroy the large Black neighborhood and business district.

Black Migration North WW1

• Southern Blacks escape southern racism

• Find better jobs in northern factories/RR’s

• Discover northern racism