AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE GILDED AGE

After the Civil War…

In the years right after the Civil War, freedmen (former slaves) were able to vote and participate in government, thanks to the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments

However…..

After the Civil War

The federal government had been protecting these rights, but in 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes became president and ended Reconstruction.

All of a sudden, there was no one to enforce the new laws and amendments and no authority to punish those who treated blacks unfairly.

From then on, people worked to undermine efforts at equality, and states passed laws that greatly restricted the rights and freedoms of blacks living in the South (and the North!).

Segregation

By the 1870s, most southern states adopted laws known as Black Codes (JIM CROW LAWS)creating a legal form of segregation. Segregation is when people are separated by

race. These codes limited the rights and freedoms

of black people. Northern states varied in the way they accepted the new arrivals, but segregation was common all over the nation.

Segregation and the Right to Vote One of the main

rights that was taken away from blacks in the South by loopholes in the nation’s laws was the right to vote.

(15th amendment)

No Vote?

Some of the ways that southern states would deny African Americans their right to vote was to:Have a poll taxHave a poll testHave a grandfather clauseHave a white primary

Rise of Jim Crow

Segregation in the South was enforced by laws designed to prevent African Americans from exercising their equal rights which were known as “Jim Crow” laws.

Legalization of segregation The Supreme Court case that legalized

segregation was the case of “Plessy vs. Ferguson”.

Plessy v. Ferguson was the Supreme Court case that legalized segregation and established the principle of “separate but equal”.

Rise of change The African American, who

believed the way to stop discrimination was for African American’s to concentrate on economic goals rather that political goals was Booker T. Washington.

He wanted to strengthen the race from the inside

He believed economic security would lead to greater civil rights and better race relations.

Started the Tuskegee Institute

Rise of Change Believed that the only way

Blacks would achieve full equality was to get a good education was W.E.B DuBois.

He believed that the only way black Americans could gain civil rights was through protest and activism.

He disagreed with Washington’s desire to earn respect of whites first and hope that rights would follow.

NAACP

The organization created in 1909 that worked to improve living conditions for African Americans was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, better known as the NAACP.

Founded by W.E.B Du Bois