African-Americans after Reconstruction

Laws limited freedom for African-Americans• Literacy tests kept blacks and

poor • Poll taxes whites from voting• Grandfather clause(1898) – if you, father,

or grandfather could vote prior to 1867 you could now vote (declared unconstitutional in 1915)

Poll tax

In South “Jim Crow” laws are passed forcing the separation of the races in public places. By the 1890s schools, hospitals, restaurants, railroad stations, parks, playgrounds, water fountains, and entrances to factories and theaters were segregated.

Intimidation and other crimes including lynching directed at African-Americans.

African-Americans looked to the courts to safeguard their rights.

•Plessy v. Ferguson(1896) – Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” did not violate the 14th amendment.

Great Migration – African-Americans move to northern cities in search of jobs and to escape poverty and discrimination in the South.• Between 1910 and 1920 about 1 million

African-Americans moved to northern cities(Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia)• Another 800,000 migrated during the

1920s.

Responses of African-Americans

Ida B. Wells• Journalist and newspaper editor who documented the extent of lynching in the U.S.•Led anti-lynching crusade and called on the federal government to take action.

Ida B. Wells

Booker T. Washington• Believed way to equality was through

education and economic success• Accepted social separation• Did not urge blacks to compete

economically or seek social equality• 1881- opened Tuskegee Normal and

Industrial Institute

Booker T. Washington

W.E.B. DuBois• Believed education was meaningless

without equality•Wanted black people to strive toward higher

education and the industrial mainstream of America.• Helped form the National Association for the

Advancement of colored People(NAACP) in 1909.

W.E.B. DuBois