jim crow laws 2) the compromise of 1877 led to the election of republican president rutherford b....
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Jim Crow Laws2) The Compromise of 1877
led to the election of Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes, but also resulted in the removal of Union troops from the former Confederate states. This effectively ended reconstruction in the South and prevented the enforcement of many key civil rights laws passed by the Radical Republican Congress.
Jim Crow Laws
4) Southerners referred to the Republican rule as “reconstruction” governments and the resurgence of the Democratic Party after 1877 was exalted as the “redeemer” governments. Redeemer governments gradually reinstituted white rule in the South by passing a series of laws that preserved white supremacy. These “Jim Crow” laws imposed strict racial segregation, denied blacks the right to vote, and ensured their status as second-class citizens.
Jim Crow Laws
5) Jim Crow laws were a form of “de jure” segregation because they represented state-sponsored segregation that was enforced according to the law. However, this also encouraged a culture of Jim Crow racism in the South where private citizens expanded these policies to areas of society not specifically addressed by the law (ex. - neighborhoods, churches, and private businesses also developed segregationist policies). This represents “de facto” segregation because it exists as a “fact of life” in the absence of legal mandate.
Jim Crow Laws7) Many state governments
also used difficult “literacy tests” in order to prevent uneducated blacks from registering to vote. The tests were rarely given to whites and they were purposely manipulative, requiring blacks to answer obscure and difficult questions about the state constitution. Even more appalling were “Grandfather Clauses” that only allowed citizens to vote if their grandfather had been a registered voter.
Jim Crow Laws
8) Various “Jim Crow” laws represented a veiled attempt by southern states to nullify the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. As a result of the Republican Party’s abandonment of reconstruction sacrificed the constitutional rights of the freedmen and women. Political compromise ensured that these laws were effectively un-enforced until the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century.
Plessy vs. Ferguson
1) The 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of “du jure” segregation in the South, despite overwhelming evidence that these laws violated the civil rights guarantees of the 14th Amendment.
14th
Plessy vs. Ferguson
2) In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed Act 111 that required racial segregation of rail cars. This was just one of many Jim Crow laws that had been passed in the South following reconstruction. A liberal group of whites and blacks from New Orleans responded by forming an association known as the “Citizen’s Committee to Test the Separate Car Act.”
Plessy vs. Ferguson3) They raised a considerable
amount of money and enlisted the assistance of Homer Plessy, a biracial man that was 1/8th black, in order to test the new state policy. Plessy’s indistinct racial identification was intended to prove the unreasonable nature of the state segregation law. The case was also intended to demonstrate that racial segregation was unconstitutional because it violated the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment.
Plessy vs. Ferguson4) Plessy purchased a
first-class ticket in the whites-only rail car and then notified a train conductor that he was “1/8th negro.” Plessy was promptly arrested after he refused to move the “colored” car. After losing two cases in state court, Plessy’s case was appealed before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Plessy vs. Ferguson
5) Plessy’s attorneys argued that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens of the United States or denying those citizens the “equal protection of the law.” By a vote of 7 to 1, the Supreme Court upheld the Louisiana state law. The Justices noted in the majority decision that the train cars were of equal quality and that segregation of the races did not imply that blacks were inferior.
Plessy vs. Ferguson
6) The Supreme Court Justices ruled that racial segregation was legal as long as the facilities were “separate but equal.” This decision effectively legitimized southern Jim Crow laws that obstructed the civil rights protections of the 14th Amendment. Southern state governments often disregarded the “equal” requirement and later forced blacks into substandard facilities like dilapidated schools, the backseats of buses, and the balconies of theatres.
The Great Migration1) The systematic denial of
civil rights and the outright hostility from white southerners led hundreds of thousands of African-Americans to move to northern cities during the early decades of the 20th century. It is estimated that over seven million moved north by 1970. This “Great Migration” represents the single greatest demographic shift in American history.
The Great Migration2) Immigration restrictions
that occurred during and after the First World War (1914-1918) caused severe labor shortages in the industries of northern cities. These jobs offered blacks the opportunity to escape the oppression of the Jim Crow South while also giving them a greater degree of economic independence.
The Great Migration3) Black communities
steadily grew in cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. Despite various forms of northern segregation, these African-Americans attained a degree of wealth and many climbed their way into the growing ranks of the middle-class.
Booker T. Washington
4) At the age of sixteen, Washington left Malden to attend the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute for blacks in Hampton, Virginia. The Hampton Institute was designed to train black teachers and farmers, the two principal fields where blacks could find work after the Civil War.
Booker T. Washington7) After receiving his education,
Washington became the President at Tuskegee Institute which began in the basement of a black church in 1881 and Washington served as the first principal and only the teacher for the class of twenty-five students that enrolled. Tuskegee became the most renowned black college in the country under the direction of Booker T. Washington, with an endowment over $1.5 million. Washington served as President of Tuskegee until his early death in 1915.
Booker T. Washington
9) During his time at Tuskegee Washington accepted racial segregation and seemed to accommodate to the Jim Crow restrictions in the South. He believed that education could make blacks economically self-sufficient and this would eventually break down the barriers of segregation.
W.E.B. Du Bois3) Du Bois’ intelligence and
work ethic led his teachers to encourage him to pursue additional classical courses while enrolled in high school. He later attended the all-black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated at the top of his class in 1888. After receiving a $250 scholarship, he attended Harvard University and became the first black student to earn a Ph.D.
W.E.B. Du Bois
5) Du Bois rejected black assimilation and referred to Booker T. Washington as the “Great Accommodator” and as the white man’s “Uncle Tom.” Du Bois believed that the acceptance of racial segregation would perpetuate the second-class status of black citizens. He shared Washington’s faith in education, but believed that blacks should pursue the same classical liberal arts education taught at white colleges and universities.
W.E.B. Du Bois
11) Du Bois soon joined with a number of white liberals in order to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the N.A.A.C.P.) in 1909.
W.E.B. Du Bois
13) NAACP strategy primarily focused on litigation within the judicial system as a means to fight discrimination in the law. The NAACP seldom sponsored mass demonstrations and public protests that were later associated with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Ida B. Wells4) While teaching in a black
elementary school in Memphis, Ida B. Wells wrote several newspaper editorials that addressed racial problems like segregation, inequality, and lynching. Wells decided to leave Memphis after three successful black grocery store owners were lynched after they were falsely accused of raping a white woman. Wells wrote in an editorial, "there is... only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons."
Ida B. Wells5) In the Memphis case, Wells believed the three black grocery store owners were targeted because they were economically successful and had encroached upon white competitors. Her study of lynching revealed that blacks were lynched for trivial crimes like theft, unpaid debt, insubordination to whites, and public drunkenness.
Ida B. Wells6) In 1893, Wells took her
anti-lynching campaign abroad and traveled across Europe, giving shocking presentations on lynchings and race crimes in America. Racially naïve Europeans were shaken by her vivid descriptions of racial violence and the widespread acceptance of lynch mobs. Doubters were convinced by her enlarged photo of smiling white children posing in front of a hanging black corpse.
Ida B. Wells
8) She also joined the Niagara Movement in 1906 and was a founding member of the NAACP with W.E.B. Du Bois in 1909. She later left the organization because its predominantly white leadership sought a more moderate course. However, her crusade against racial violence became an early focus of the NAACP and the group lobbied Congress for an anti-lynch law throughout the 1930s.