The Politics of Segregation: Jim Crow and Disenfranchisement

1
The Politics of Segregation Jim Crow and
Disenfranchisement
2
The Election of 1876

• The Election of 1876 virtually ended in a tie.
• Democrat Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York,
  narrowly won the popular vote but, with several
  states still in dispute, remained one vote shy of
  winning the electoral college vote.
• Republican Rutherford B. Hayes needed twenty
  votes, a sweep of the disputed states, to win the
  election.
• As the term of President Grant was set to expire,
  a compromise was reached that handed Hayes the
  White House. In exchange, Hayes ended
  Reconstruction and returned the former
  Confederate states to home rule.
• As a practical matter, this ended federal
  supervision of race relations and ushered in the
  political and social system of white supremacy
  known as Jim Crow.

3
The Election of 1876
4

• Robert Smalls was an African American man, born a
  slave, who, after the Civil War, was elected to
  the House of Representatives five times from
  South Carolina.
• This excerpt decries the sorts of fraud practiced
  against Republicans in the state. Southern whites
  voted overwhelmingly Democratic while Southern
  African Americans voted heavily Republican.
• When Smalls speaks of measures designed to
  discourage Republican voters, this would
  disproportionately impact black voters.
• In the coming years, many of these same
  techniques were refined beyond party affiliation
  and concentrated exclusively on race.
• The brutality and fraud of the Democracy in the
  campaign and election of 1876 and the
  determination of its result were only equaled,
  but not excelled, by the Kuklux outrages which
  aroused the just indignation of the entire North.
  Republicanism was in that year overthrown by
  murderous gangs called rifle clubs, who, acting
  in concert, terrorized nearly the entire State,
  overawing election officers and defying the
  courts.

5
The Racist Climate of 19th Century America

• Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Century
  were accustomed to thinking of life in racial
  terms.
• Europeans and persons of European descent saw
  their society as being far more advanced and
  sophisticated than other world societies.
• Social philosophers, such as Herbert Spencer,
  combined this observation along with a
  misapplication of the new study of evolution to
  compose an understanding of the world built on
  racial characteristics.
• Since these studies were conceived to demonstrate
  the supremacy of white Anglo Saxon Europeans,
  that is exactly what they found. All other races
  were deemed inferior and were treated as such.

6
Below are a selection of products,
advertisements, and packaging from the 19th
Century from popular culture demonstrating
prevalent racial attitudes.
7
Lynching

• Lynching was a common act of violence and
  terrorism used in 19th and 20th Century America.
• The victim, typically a black man accused of a
  sexual or violent crime, was usually taken from
  the jail, courthouse, or his home by a mob,
  beaten, tortured, and murdered.
• A number of people were burned alive. Between
  1882 and 1968, 4,743 people were lynched in
  America.
• Every state experienced at least one lynching,
  though they were most common in the South.

8

• On 28 September 1919, Willie Brown, accused of
  sexually assaulting a white woman, was lynched
  outside of the Douglas County Courthouse in
  Omaha.
• Brown was hanged and shot repeatedly. When the
  mayor attempted to intervene, he was hanged from
  a tree, though a policeman was able to cut him
  down before he was seriously injured.
• Browns body was dragged behind an automobile
  through downtown Omaha and, eventually, burned at
  the intersection of 17th and Dodge Streets.
• The burning of Willie Browns body is the
  photograph presented.

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(No Transcript)
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Plessey v. Ferguson

• Plessey v. Ferguson was an 1896 Supreme Court
  decision allowing separate facilities on the
  basis of race.
• Court Opinion
• In determining the question of reasonableness,
  it is at liberty to act with reference to the
  established usages, customs, and traditions of
  the people, and with a view to the promotion of
  their comfort, and the preservation of the public
  peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we
  cannot say that a law which authorizes or even
  requires the separation of the two races in
  public conveyances is unreasonable, or more
  obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment than the
  acts of congress requiring separate schools for
  colored children in the District of Columbia, the
  constitutionality of which does not seem to have
  been questioned, or the corresponding acts of
  state legislatures.
• Justice Harlan dissent
• I am of opinion that the state of Louisiana is
  inconsistent with the personal liberty of
  citizens, white and black, in that state, and
  hostile to both the spirit and letter of the
  constitution of the United States. If laws of
  like character should be enacted in the several
  states of the Union, the effect would be in the
  highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an
  institution tolerated by law, would, it is true,
  have disappeared from our country but there
  would remain a power in the states, by sinister
  legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment
  of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil
  rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of
  race, and to place in a condition of legal
  inferiority a large body of American citizens,
  now constituting a part of the political
  community,

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"Pitchfork" Ben Tillman

• Pitchfork Ben Tillman was the governor and,
  eventually, a Senator from South Carolina.
• He received the nickname after he threatened to
  impale President Grover Cleveland on the farm
  implement in a dispute over monetary policy.
• Tillmans time as governor was marked by his use
  of racial tensions for his own political
  purposes.
• While campaigning, he boasted that if a black man
  were accused of raping a white woman he, as
  governor, would be the first in the lynch mob.
• In 1895, Tillman presided over the South Carolina
  Constitutional Convention that disenfranchised
  African Americans in the state.

12

• "Tillman on Lynch Laws" is a section of an
  exchange between Tillman and Wisconsin Senator
  Spooner in which Tillman justifies racial
  violence and explains the motivation behind the
  Jim Crow laws.
• I realize that there are millions of good
  negroes, if they are let alone and not taught
  heresies and criminal thoughts and feelings and
  actions. I should like to see this good, easy,
  good-for-nothing people given a chance to live.
  Give them justice give them equal rights before
  the law enable them to get property and keep it,
  and be protected in its enjoyment give them
  life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
  provided their happiness does not destroy mine.
• A statue of Tillman stands before the South
  Carolina capitol.

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Jim Crow Laws

• Based upon the racial understanding of the time,
  the protection of white political power and
  bloodlines became paramount.
• White people of the time could not conceive
  subordination to what they considered a lesser
  race nor the dilution or tainting of their white
  blood.
• Therefore, Jim Crow laws were constructed to
  insure white power and govern relationships
  between the races.

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• These laws were built on the constitutional
  precedent of Plessey v. Ferguson.
• However, the "separate but equal" standard from
  Plessey was no more than a legal fiction as these
  laws were heavily tilted to the advantage of
  white people.

15

• Jim Crow Laws Nebraska
• Close Although Nebraska outlawed segregation of
  all public facilities beginning in 1885, the
  state passed four miscegenation laws between 1865
  and 1943.
• 1865 Miscegenation StatuteDeclared marriage
  between whites and a Negro or mulatto as illegal.
  Penalty Misdemeanor, with a fine up to 100, or
  imprisonment in the county jail up to six months,
  or both.
• 1885 Barred public accommodations segregation
  StatuteAll persons entitled to equal access to
  inns, public transportation, barber shops,
  theaters, and other places of amusement. Penalty
  Misdemeanor, fined between 10 and 25, and court
  costs paid.
• 1893 Barred public accommodations segregation
  StatuteAmended 1895 law to include
  restaurants. Increased penalty from 25 to 100,
  and payment of court costs.
• 1911 Miscegenation StatuteMarriages between a
  white and colored person declared illegal. Also
  noted that marriages between whites and those
  persons with one-quarter or more Negro blood were
  void.
• 1929 Civil rights protection StatuteOutlawed
  racial discrimination. PenaltyCriminal
  prosecution
• 1929 Miscegenation StatuteForbid marriages
  between persons of the Caucasian race and those
  persons with one eighth or more Asian blood.
• 1943 Miscegenation StatuteProhibited marriage
  of whites with anyone with one-eighth or more
  Negro, Japanese or Chinese blood.
• 1957 Barred National Guard segregation
  StatuteProhibited discrimination within
  National Guard.

16
Tom Watson

• Tom Watson was a populist politician from Georgia
  in the later part of the 19th Century.
• Though he would later be known for his stridently
  racist and anti-Semitic writings, he was
  instrumental in the 1913 lynching of Leo Frank, a
  Jewish factory owner accused of murder, he began
  his career urging conciliation between the races.
  
• In The Negro Problem in the South, Watson
  argued that poor people in the South share common
  interests regardless of race and that, if they
  could be persuaded to set aside their racial
  animosities, they could become a potent political
  force.
• A statue of Watson stands in front of the Georgia
  capitol.

17
Ida B. Wells

• Ida Wells was a journalist living in Memphis,
  Tennessee who wrote a series of editorials
  following the lynching of three of her friends.
• Following the publication, the newspaper office
  was ransacked.
• Wells moved to New York and became an
  anti-lynching advocate.
• In 1895, published the first statistical analysis
  of lynching.
• For nearly twenty years lynching crimes.have
  been committed and permitted by this Christian
  nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the
  United States of America do men, possessing all
  civil and political power, go out in bands of 50
  and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to
  death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely
  powerless.

18
Jack Johnson

• Jack Johnson was the first black man to become
  heavy weight champion of the world.
• In 1908, after overcoming a conspiracy among
  title holders to deny the belt to a black
  fighter, Johnson defeated Tommy Burns to win the
  championship.
• Johnson took advantage of all that his title
  offered him spending vast amounts of money,
  dressing extravagantly, buying expensive
  automobiles, and, unpardonably in his time, he
  married, at various times, four white women

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• This was too much for turn of the century
  America.
• Newsreels of Johnsons fights were censored for
  fear of sparking race riots, and Johnson was
  convicted of a violation of the Mann Act, taking
  an unmarried woman across state lines for immoral
  purposes, due to his affinity for prostitutes.
• It was said that Johnson integrated more brothels
  than any man alive.
• Before he could be sentenced however, Johnson
  fled the country for France.
• Johnson returned to America bankrupt after losing
  the title in Cuba.
• He served one year in prison on the Mann Act
  charge. After his release from prison, Johnson
  wrote his memoirs, "Mes Combats," in French.
  Johnson died in a car accident in 1946.

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Early Civil Rights Movement Booker T. Washington
and W.E.B. DuBois

• Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois were the
  two most significant early leaders in the modern
  Civil Rights movement.
• This being said, they were very different men
  with very different approaches.
• Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee
  Institute, believed that Jim Crow was the reality
  and that, for the time being, African Americans
  should focus on self improvement through
  education and economic strength separate from
  whites.
• In one of his most famous speeches, Washington
  used the metaphor of a hand, saying that whites
  and blacks could be as separate as the fingers
  but, when needed, as united as a fist.

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• DuBois, the first African American to receive a
  PhD from Harvard, believed that Jim Crow should
  be opposed with every means available.
• To this end, he was one of the founders of the
  NAACP, which offered legal challenges to the Jim
  Crow system.
• Although seeking the same ends, Washington and
  DuBois shared a rivalry through the early part of
  the twentieth century.