Brief History of Racism

in the United States

Background for

Mississippi Burning

1600’s

• Africans brought from

Africa by the British on a

ship to be slaves in the

new American colony• Ships had horrendous conditions, stored in tiny

dirty facilities with little to no food or sanitation. Many diseases spread.

• 8 million killed on the way to America

Slavery

• Worked on Farms, particularly cotton fields• Symbol of slavery became the white mansion surrounded by large fields• Slave masters were legally allowed to whip slaves if they disobeyed • Families worked together on farms, but always in risk of losing each other in a Master debt or trade for other goods or profit

A man that was whipped by his owner. It took him months for him to recover.

1865

• Slaves freed in Emancipation of the slaves the thirteenth amendment to the constitution

• However, slavery culturally embedded in the United States and Africans are treated as second class citizens.

• A system of “laws”

developed in the

South known as the Jim Crow

Laws

Jim Crow Laws

• Named after a song and dance caricature of a black man known as “Jump Jim Crow”

• Claimed to promote “separate but equal” for African Americans

• Led to segregated schools, restaurants, bathrooms and more

• Black facilities notoriously underfunded

Jump Jim Crow

Jim Crow Continued

• Even when Jim Crow didn’t legally call for segregation it happened, such as on sports teams and church

• Examples of Jim Crow Laws: "The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a

Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void.“

"The schools for white children and the schools for Negro children shall be conducted separately."

"All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license."

Ku Klux Klan

• Many groups tried to uphold the Jim Crow Laws• In 1915 there was a group formed by

Confederate army veterans designed to reinstate white supremacy lost in the Civil War

• Used fear, intimidation and violence to enforce segregation and prevent black people from voting or holding office

KKK continued

• Best known for their practice of burning crosses, lynching and wearing white hoods

• At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization included about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men.

• Wear hoods and attack at night to protect their identity

Violence by KKK

• 16th street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham: In 1953, a court battle was lost in favor of keeping schools in Alabama segregated. The KKK retaliated by bombing an African American Church and killed four young black girls

• Death of Emmitt Till: 1955, 14 year old black boy found in river beaten to death, eyes gouged out, shot in the head and a cotton gin fan tied to his neck. White men acquitted of his murder, even though they admitted to it.

Lynching

• 1868-71, KKK involved in

over 400 lynchings

• Any form of vigilante

justice, usually hanging

Civil Right Movement• Lots of protests against treatment of African Americans, but nothing really changed until Civil Rights Act of 1964 which undid the Jim Crow Laws• Even after Civil Right change came very slow. Many high ranking government officials such as the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, fiercely supported segregation• However, racism in the US is still prominent today