The Rise of Segregation

Sharecropping After Reconstruction most African Americans are

living in conditions no better than slavery

Technically they were free but very few could escape the impoverished conditions

Sharecroppers: Landless farmers who gave a share of their crop to the landlord to cover their costs for rent and farming supplies

“Cycle of Poverty”

Exodus to Kansas

Mass migration of African Americans from the South to Kansas

Kansas = The land of Abolitionist John Brown and more Progressive and Tolerant

Led by Benjamin “Pap” Singleton: Former Slave, Abolitionist, and Community leader

Colored Farmers’ National Alliance

African Americans who stayed in the South joined the fight with other poor white farmers

Set up cooperatives and many African Americans joined the Populist Party

Threatened by the power of the Populist, Democrats use racism to try and win back the poor white vote in the South

15th Amendment ???

Right to vote shall not be denied by any citizen based on race, color, or previous conditions of servitude

Loophole: Doesn’t bar the government from requiring that citizens be literate or own property

Poll Taxes Citizens must pay a

sum of money in order to vote

Most African Americans can’t afford this fee

Literacy Tests

Most African Americans can’t read and the ones who can don’t fare any better

Complicated Passages from Constitution filled with legalese and convoluted sentences

Write down the section as the registrar spoke it

Asked to interpret questions based on the excerpt you just read

What about the poor illiterate Whites?

Whites were given simple passages as election officials were far less strict in applying these tests

Grandfather Clause: Any man may vote as long as an ancestor had voted before

Jim Crow Laws “Jump Jim Crow” A song and dance

done by a white performer in black face during the 1820’s

Lampooned African Americans as being ignorant, lazy and buffoonish

Jim Crow Laws = Legalized Segregation

Mandated de jure Segregation of all Public Facilities including:

Public Schools Public Places Public Transportation Restaurants Hotels Theaters

Bus Station

Restaurant in Louisville, KY

Schools

Drinking Fountain

Plessy v. Ferguson

Homer Plessy challenges a Louisiana law that forced him to ride in a separate railcar

He was arrested for riding in a white’s only car

1896 Supreme Court upheld the Louisiana Law and endorsed a new doctrine of “Separate but Equal”

Separate but Equal?

Ruling establishes the legal basis for discrimination for over 50 years

While Public Facilities for African Americans were separate, they were far from being equal

Almost always drastically inferior

Lynching of African Americans Huge Spectacles

with 100’s watching

Consisted of Hanging the Victim, Mutilating, and then burning the body

African Americans Respond Ida B. Wells Journalist who

launches a campaign against lynching

Believed that lynching was a result of economics and greed

Booker T. Washington Born into slavery

became a successful educator, orator, and author

Wanted African Americans to focus on Economic goals as opposed to Legal or Political ones

Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Speech

Presented to a mostly white crowd at the Cotton States and International Exposition

“We shall constitute one third of the ignorance and crime of the south or one-third of its intelligence and progress”

Wanted the whites to rely on African American Labor and not immigrant

Washington actually endorsed segregation by claiming that blacks and whites could exist as separate fingers of a hand

W.E.B. Du Bois

Concerned with African American voting rights

Helped found the NAACP Disagreed with Washington’s integration

of blacks into the community, wanted equal rights, self government, and unity for African people

Du Bois called Washington’s speech the “Atlanta Compromise”