African-Americans

14th Amendment (1868)

• Section 1.– All persons born or naturalized in the United States,

and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

15th Amendment (1870)

• Section 1.– The right of citizens of the United States to vote

shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Segregation

• De jure– Literally means “from

law”– Legal framework set up

in order to maintain segregated society• Laws that enforce

segregation

• De facto– Literally means “from

fact”– Systemic framework that

creates and maintains a segregated society• Economic opportunity,

educational opportunity, etc.

Jim Crow Laws

• State laws enacted to keep blacks below whites / segregated– Public accommodations– Poll Tax (economic) / Literacy tests (educational) for

voting– Grandfather clause (political)

• Louisiana law – could only vote if voted in 1868, or descended from someone who did

• Blacks did not have the right to vote in 1868

• KKK forms

1895 – “Atlanta Compromise”

• Booker T. Washington – influential black leader

• Gave a speech to a largely white audience– Was seeking economic opportunity, not equality– Well received by whites because of his willingness

to forgo social equality– “In all things that are purely social we can be as

separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

Plessy v Ferguson• In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 act, ruling that the 14th

Amendment did not give Congress authority to prevent discrimination by private individuals. Victims of racial discrimination were told to seek relief not from the Federal Government, but from the states. Unfortunately, state governments were passing legislation that codified inequality between the races. Laws requiring the establishment of separate schools for children of each race were most common; however, segregation was soon extended to encompass most public and semi-public facilities. … Beginning with passage of an 1887 Florida law, states began to require that railroads furnish separate accommodations for each race.

• In 1891, a group of concerned young black men of New Orleans formed the “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” …[O]n June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a mulatto (7/8 white), seated himself in a white compartment, was challenged by the conductor, and was arrested and charged with violating the state law. In the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, [Plessy’s lawyer] argued that the law requiring “separate but equal accommodations” was unconstitutional.

– “civil disobedience” - A symbolic, non-violent violation of the law, done deliberately in protest against some form of perceived injustice. Mere dissent, protest, or disobedience of the law does not qualify. The act must be nonviolent, open and visible, illegal, performed for the moral purpose of protesting an injustice, and done with the expectation of being punished.

1896 – Plessy v Ferguson• Supreme Court declares “separate but equal” to be legal– “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument

to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it… The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured except by an enforced commingling of the two races… If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”

Plessy v. Ferguson

• “The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either."

1905 – Niagara Movement• W.E.B. DuBois – advocated a much stronger

stance than Booker T. Washington– “They do not expect that the free right to vote, to

enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.”

– “We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.”

1906 Atlanta Riot

• Atlanta seemed like a model city of the South– Many black businesses and universities– Peaceful on the surface

• Simmering tensions and anger below the surface– Governor’s race featured race-baiting candidates– White newspapers ran false stories accusing black men

of sexually assaulting white women• 10,000 whites rioted from Sept 22-24– Militia was called in to restore order– Officially, 25 black and 1 white citizen were killed

1909 – NAACP Formed• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

– The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.

– Echoing the focus of Du Bois' Niagara Movement began in 1905, the NAACP's stated goal was to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, the equal protection of the law, and universal adult male suffrage, respectively.

Marcus Garvey / Back to Africa

• 1914 – Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)– Urged African-Americans to be

proud of their race, and return to Africa, their ancestral homeland

– Founded a steamship company to transport blacks to Africa (Black Star Line)

– Tried to persuade government of Liberia to grant settlers land (unsuccessfully)