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The War on Civil Rights: De Jure and De Facto Discrimination 1860s- 1950s
The War on Civil Rights:
De Jure and De Facto Discrimination
1860s- 1950s
Warm-Up
You open your U.S. History textbook to the first page of the new chapter introducing the Civil Rights Movement. What does the first paragraph say?
Write a few sentences on your noteguide describing the setting for the Civil Rights Movement.
De jure discrimination:Black codes & Jim Crow laws Local laws in the South that attempted to
maintain the social order and restrict the rights of African-Americans during (i.e. black
codes) and after (i.e. Jim Crow laws) Reconstruction.
The following excerpt is from the Black Codes of Mississippi in 1865.Section 6. All contracts for labor made with freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes for a longer period than one month shall be in writing, … and said contracts shall be taken and held as entire contracts, and if the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of his term of service, without good cause, he shall forfeit his wages for that year up to the time of quitting.
First: Put the section into your own words. (You can use your noteguide sheet.)
Second: In what way is this Black Code restricting the rights of African-Americans?
Turn and talk with a partner:
1896: Plessy vs. Ferguson 1890- Louisiana passed a law requiring
separate train cars for colored and white railroad passengers
1892- Homer Plessy, encouraged by the Citizens Committee of New Orleans, refused to mvoe from the whites-only car and was arrested.
Citizens Committee Of New Orleans fought the case to the Supreme Court
1896- Plessy lost the case in the Supreme Court, which decided that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional
Turn and talk with a partner:Read the excerpt from the 1896 majority opinion (the explanation of the court’s decision) in your resource folder.
• First: Put this excerpt into your own words.
• Second: The court distinguishes between legal and social equality. What 3 factors does the court say are necessary for social equality? What assumptions does it make about race?
Do you agree with these statements?
From the majority decision:
"If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits and a voluntary consent of individuals… Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.”
Literacy tests & Poll taxesBoth were used to keep people of color
(and often poor whites as well) from voting
Literacy tests were administered at the discretion of voting registration officials, who could heavily influence the outcome by selecting specific questions
Poll taxes required payment of a tax in order to vote, which could be avoided through a grandfather clause
After viewing the 1965 Alabama literacy test, discuss the following questions in pairs:
Which questions seem most difficult? Easiest?
How could a registration official select or use them in such a way that would determine the potential voter’s success?
“During World War I there was a great migration north by southern Negroes,” by Jacob Lawrence
African-Americans in WWII
De facto discriminationLynching, or murder by mob for alleged
crimes (without trial), was used to intimidate and control the black population in the South
“Housing covenants” were often used to exclude racial minorities from buying or renting property in certain neighborhoods or subdivisions
Prominent in the 1920s- 1940s and helped establish current housing patterns
De facto discrimination
After viewing the Seattle restrictive housing covenants, Think about the following questions:What are your first reactions?
What patterns do you notice?
How do you think these covenants shape demographics in our neighborhoods today?
Then pair and share with your partner(s).
