Segregation and Discrimination

African Americans begin to fight against legal

discrimination

Voting Restrictions

• All southern states imposed new voting restrictions and denied legal equality to African Americans.

• Some states limited the vote to people who could read and required registration officials to administer literacy tests.

Poll Tax • Another requirement was an annual tax that

had to be paid before qualifying to vote.

• Black as well as white sharecroppers were often too poor to pay the poll tax.

Grandfather Clause

• To reinstate white voters who may have failed the literacy test or could not pass the literacy test many states added the grandfather clause.

• The clause stated that even if a man failed the literacy test or could not afford the poll tax he was still entitled to vote if he, his father, or his grandfather had been eligible to vote before January 1, 1867.

• The date being important because before that time freed blacks did not have the right to vote.

Jim Crow Laws

• During the 1870’s and 1880’s,

the Supreme Court failed to

overturn the poll tax or the

grandfather clause

• The racial segregation laws to separate white and black people in public and private facilities.

• These laws came to be known as Jim Crow Laws after a popular song that ended in with “Jump, Jim Crow”

1896 Plessy v. Ferguson

The Supreme Court decided that the separation of races in public accommodations was legal and did not violate the 14th Amendment. This decision permitted the legalized racial segregation for almost 60 years.

Race Relations at the Turn of the Century

• African Americans faced not only formal discrimination but also informal rules and customs: racial etiquette.

• Example: Blacks and whites never shook hands, since this would have implied equality

Moderate Reformers

• Booker T Washington

Earned the support of whites. Washington suggested that white and black people work together for social progress

Argued for a gradual approach to racial equality

“It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top”

W.E.B. DuBois • DuBois thought the

opposite of Washington. He thought that the problems of inequality were to urgent to postpone.

• DuBois demanded full social and economic equality for African Americans

– “Persistent manly agitation is the way to liberty”

Ida B. Wells

Born into slavery shortly before emancipation, but moved to Memphis in the early 1880’s to work as a teacher.

She later became an editor of a local newspaper.

Racial justice was a common theme.

Wells had some of the same thoughts as DuBois on racial equality…the fast track.

Violence

• African Americans and others who did not follow etiquette could face severe punishment and/or death

• Between 1882 and 1892 more that 1400 African Americans men and women were shot, burned, or hanged

• Lynching peaked during the 1890’s but continued well into the 20th century.

The lynching of

Leo Frank

Typical lynching for the time period

Discrimination of the West

• Western communities were home to people of many backgrounds working and living side by side. – There were Asian,

Mexican, African American, and Native American were all living in the west

• Some Mexicans along with African Americans were forced into debt peonage. – A system that bound

laborers into slavery in order to work off debt to an employer

– Eventually found to be a violation of the 13th Amendment