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White only: Jim Crow in America

By the late 1870s Reconstruction was coming to an end. In the name of

healing the wounds between North and South, most white politicians

abandoned the cause of protecting African Americans.

In the former Confederacy and neighboring states, local governments

constructed a legal system aimed at re-establishing a society based on

white supremacy. African American men were largely barred from voting.

Legislation known as Jim Crow laws separated people of color from whites

in schools, housing, jobs, and public gathering places.

Taking away the vote

Denying black men the right to vote through legal maneuvering and

violence was a first step in taking away their civil rights. Beginning in the

1890s, southern states enacted literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate

registration systems, and eventually whites-only Democratic Party primaries to exclude black voters.

The laws proved very effective. In Mississippi, fewer than 9,000 of the

147,000 voting-age African Americans were registered after 1890. In

Louisiana, where more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in

1896, the number had plummeted to 1,342 by 1904.

Poll tax receipt

Poll taxes required citizens to pay a fee to register to vote. These fees kept

many poor African Americans, as well as poor whites, from voting. The poll

tax receipts displayed here is from Alabama.

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Jim Crow songbook

This songbook, published in Ithaca, New York, in 1839, shows an early

depiction of a minstrel-show character named Jim Crow. By the 1890s the

expression Jim Crow was being used to describe laws and customs aimedat segregating African Americans and others. These laws were intended to

restrict social contact between whites and other groups and to limit the

freedom and opportunity of people of color.

Advertising CardsInsulting racial stereotypes were common in American society. They reinforced discriminatory customs and laws that oppressed Americans of many racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds. The cigarette holder andearly 20th-century advertising cards depict common stereotypes of African Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, and Irish Americans.

arly Klan image

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to combat

Reconstruction reforms and intimidate African Americans. By 1870 similar

organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia and the White

Brotherhood had sprung up across the South. Through fear, brutality, and

murder, these terrorist groups helped to overthrow local reform-minded

governments and restore white supremacy, and then largely faded away.

KKK robe and hood

By the mid-1920s the Klan was again a powerful political force in both theSouth and the North, spreading hatred against African Americans,

immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. Klan membership plummeted later in the

decade after a series of scandals involving its leadership. But by then, the

Klan had inflamed racial hatred and strengthened the political power of

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white supremacists in many parts of the country. This Ku Klux Klan robe

and hood date from the 1920s.

KKK parade in Washington

Demonstrating their political power, Klansmen triumphantly parade down

Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 1926, in full

regalia. (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

BallotNo Negro Equality

The fight over civil rights was never just a southern issue. This ballot is

from the race for governor of Ohio in 1867. Allen Granbery Thurmans

campaign included the promise of barring black citizens from voting. He

narrowly lost to future president Rutherford B. Hayes. Thurman was then

appointed U.S. Senator for Ohio, where he worked to reverse many

Reconstruction-era civil rights reforms.

Thurmond campaign poster

Race and white privilege have long been central issues in American politics.

At the Democratic presidential convention in 1948, southern delegates

broke with the party over civil rights and formed the States Rights Party.Their nominee for president was a prominent segregationist, SouthCarolina governor Strom Thurmond. He received more than a million votesand carried four southern statesAlabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, andSouth Carolina. His campaign sent a clear message to the nation that theSouth would not give up segregation without a fight.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/white-only-2.html