Segregation and DiscriminationSegregation=separating people of different races, classes or ethnic groups, as in schools, housing, public places, especially as a form of discrimination

Discrimination=unfair treatment of a person, racial group, minority, etc. action based on prejudice

The U.S. in the late 1800s was a place of great changes - and a place in need of even greater change:

● The 14th and 15th Amendments were meant to guarantee the rights of African Americans, yet that did not happen.

● In the late 1800s, prejudice persisted throughout the country● In the South, new laws made discrimination legal

Segregation and DiscriminationBy the time Reconstruction ended, white Democrats had regained control over the southern state legislatures. They went to great lengths to make sure that African Americans could not exercise their right to vote. One tactic was to require voters to pay a poll tax (a tax of a fixed amount per person payable as requirement to vote) and pass a literacy test. These measures kept most African Americans from voting because most were too poor to afford the poll tax and many had been denied the education needed to pass the literacy test.

The laws prevented some poor or illiterate white men from voting. However, many southern state legislatures had written grandfather clauses into their constitutions. The clauses stated a man could vote if he, his father, or his grandfather had been eligible to vote before January 1, 1867. That date is significant because before then, only white men had the right to vote. Freed slaves had not yet achieved that right. The grandfather clause made sure that African Americans could not vote.

Segregation and DiscriminationSouthern state legislatures also passed a series of laws designed to create and enforce

segregation called Jim Crow laws. The name Jim Crow came from a stereotypical

character in a minstrel song of the1820s. By the 1890s the term was used for the

laws discriminating against African Americans.

The first of these laws, passed in Tennessee in 1881, required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. By the 1890s southern states had segregated many public places and services, including schools.

Segregation and DiscriminationAfrican Americans filed lawsuits against railroads, hotels and theaters that refused to serve them. They wanted equal treatment under the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In 1883, the Supreme Court declared that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional. The Court ruled that the 14th Amendment - which guarantees equal protection of the law - applied only to state governments. Congress could prevent the states from denying African Americans their rights, but Congress could not outlaw discrimination by private individuals or businesses.

Segregation and DiscriminationThirteen years later another key case came before the Supreme Court. This time the matter involved a Louisiana state law requiring railroads to provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” Homer Plessy, and African American man, sat in a whites-only train compartment to test the law. He was arrested, but he appealed based on the 14th Amendment.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the Court upheld the practice of segregation. The Court ruled that “separate but equal” facilities did not violate the 14th Amendment. The Plessy decision allowed legalized segregation for nearly 60 years.

Segregation and DiscriminationLaws were not the only source of racial barriers. Strict rules of behavior called racial etiquette, governed social and business interactions. African Americans were supposed to “know their place” and defer to whites in every encounter. If they failed to speak respectfully or acted with too much pride or defiance, the consequences (a result of an action) could be serious.

The worst consequence was lynching - the murder of an individual, usually by hanging, without a legal trial. Between 1882 and 1892 nearly 900 African Americans lost their lives to lynch mobs. Lynchings declined after 1892, but they continued into the early 1900s.

Lynchings could be sparked by the most minor offenses, or perceived offenses. Many, if not most, victims were innocent of any crime, and few of the killers were ever punished.

Segregation and DiscriminationNear the turn of the century, two different approaches emerged for improving the lives of blacks:

1. Booker T. Washington, born into slavery, believed that African Americans should accept segregation for the moment. He thought they could best prosper by gaining farming and vocational skills. He founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to teach African Americans practical skills for self-sufficiency.

2. W.E.B. Du Bois, a Harvard trained professor, believed in speaking out against prejudice and striving for full rights immediately. African Americans, he said, should be uplifted by the “talented tenth,” their best educated leaders. Du Bois launched the Niagara Movement in 1905 to protest discrimination. Four years later, he helped found an even more influential organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The NAACP remains today an influential civil rights organization for ethnic

minorities in the United States.

Segregation and DiscriminationIn October 1901, soon after he became president, Theodore Roosevelt invited a national leader to dinner at the White House. The invitation made headlines because that leader was an African American: Booker T. Washington, educator, author, orator and advisor to U.S. presidents.

Roosevelt often consulted him about political appointments in the South because he knew that Washington understood the complicated relationships in the region. The dinner was a small occasion with the president, his family and a few guests. To some people, that social closeness was upsetting. At the time, many restaurants would not serve black people.

Booker T. Washington was not the first African American to visit the White House. President Lincoln had welcomed Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to discuss abolition. Black entertainers performed there in the late 1800s. But a social invitation to dinner was another matter.

Segregation and DiscriminationAfrican Americans were not the only people to face racial prejudice. Mexican Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans all experienced legal and social discrimination in the late 1800s.

Many Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants encountered hostility from white Americans. They often did not speak English well and had to take the most menial jobs for little pay. Some worked in the mines or on railroads, but most worked on farms. Many Mexican immigrants became trapped in their jobs because of a system brought from Mexico called debt peonage (also known as debt slavery). In this system, workers were tied to their jobs until they could pay off debts they owed their employer. Debt peonage was finally made illegal in 1911.

Segregation and DiscriminationChinese and Japanese Americans had to live in segregated neighborhoods and attend separate schools. They had trouble finding homes to rent because whites did not want Asian tenants. Several states also forbade marriage with whites.

Native Americans endured injustices, including continuous government efforts to stamp out their traditional ways of life. Children were sometimes sent away from their parents to be “Americanized.” People living on reservations had few opportunities for economic advancement. Many Native Americans were also excluded from political activity. In many states, they were not considered citizens until the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.