The Rise of Segregation

1
The Rise of Segregation
2
Resistance and Repression

• After Reconstruction, African-Americans were
  free, but most lived in total poverty.
• Many were sharecroppers, landless farmers who had
  to hand over to the landlord a large portion of
  their crops to cover the cost of basic supplies.
  They stayed in constant debt.

3
Exodus to Kansas

• 70-year-old Benjamin Singleton took action to
  escape the conditions of the rural South. He
  organized a mass migration of thousands of
  African Americans from the rural South to Kansas.
  
• Newspapers called it an exodus and the migrants
  became known as Exodusters.
• These people hoped to escape control by the very
  people that once held them as slaves

4

• Those that did not leave the South joined farmers
  alliance with poor white farmers.
• However eventually many realized the need for a
  separate alliance and created The Colored
  Farmers National Alliance.
• Many African-Americans joined the Populist Party
  because they believed it would unite the poor
  white and black people of the nation.

5
Crushing the Populist Revolt

• The Populist Party was weakened by the Democratic
  Party using racism to persuade white members to
  leave the party.
• The Democrats feared that a unified black and
  white voting population would create a situation
  like Reconstruction when anti-Southern
  Republicans dominated politics.
• They began to utilize methods to prevent African
  Americans from voting, such as literacy tests,
  poll taxes, and violent intimidation.

6
Legalizing Segregation

• In 1883, the Supreme Court set the stage for
  legalized segregation by overturning the Civil
  Rights Act of 1875 that prohibited keeping people
  out of public places on the basis of race.
• Segregation also existed in the North, however
  the difference in the South was that it was
  enforced by law. The statutes enforcing
  segregation were called Jim Crow laws.

7

• The Courts decision said that the 14th Amendment
  only provided that no state could deny citizens
  equal protection under the law. Private
  organizations and businesses-hotels, railroads,
  theaters and others-were free to practice
  segregation.

8

• Encouraged by this decision southern states
  passed laws to segregate every aspect of public
  life railroad cars, dining halls, water
  fountains, restrooms, hotels and swimming pools.
• In 1892, an African-American named Homer Plessy
  challenged a Louisiana law that forced him to
  ride in a separate railroad car. Criminal court
  judge John Ferguson rejected Plessys argument
  that the law was unconstitutional. In 1896, the
  Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, upheld the
  Louisiana law and expressed a new legal doctrine
  Separate but Equal.

9
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL?

• Plessy Vs. Ferguson
• This ruling established the legal basis for
  discrimination for the next 50 years. Public
  facilities were always separate, but they were
  far from equal.

10
Racial Violence

• Brutality leveled against African Americans
  increased drastically during this time period.
• Between 1890 and 1899, there was an average of
  187 lynchings-executions without a court
  trial-carried out by mobs each year. 80 percent
  of these were in the South.

11
Emmett Till

• Use your yoga to look this up.
• American Experience The murder of Emmett Till
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/

12
African American Response

• Pg. 383-385

• Pg. 383-385

• Ida B. Wells
• Booker T. Washington
• W.E.B. Dubois

• Memphis Free Speech
• Atlanta Compromise
• The Souls of Black Folk

13
The African American Response

• In 1892 a fiery young African American woman from
  Tennessee name Ida B. Wells, launched a fearless
  crusade against lynching.
• She pointed out that greed, not just racial
  prejudice, was often behind these brutal acts.
  She reported in the Memphis Free Speech paper
  that 3 African American grocers had been lynched
  for simply competing successfully against white
  grocers.

14

• A mob destroyed the papers printing press and
  drove her out of town. She relocated to Chicago
  and continued her campaign.
• She demanded a fair trial for those accused of a
  crime and fair punishment for those found guilty.
• Congress rejected an anti-lynching law, but
  lynching's decreased drastically in the 1900s,
  mostly due the efforts of individuals like Wells.

15
A Call for Compromise

• While some protested the unfair treatment of
  society, others chose to advocate different
  approaches.
• One such person was the influential educator
  Booker T. Washington. He suggested that African
  Americans focus on economic goals instead of
  legal or political ones.

16

• Booker T. Washington gave a famous speech in
  front of mostly white audience-this speech called
  the Atlanta Compromise- encouraged African
  Americans to delay the fight for civil rights and
  to instead focus on educational and vocational
  equality.

17
Voice of the Future

• This compromise provoked a strong challenge from
  W.E.B. Du Bois, leader of a new generation of
  African-American activists born after the Civil
  War. In his book The Souls of Black Folk, he
  stated that white southerners had continued to
  strip African Americans of their civil rights.
• He said this was true despite economic and
  vocational advancement. He said it was necessary
  to demand your rights be given.

18

• Du Bois was very concerned with voting rights and
  believed that voting was part of proper manhood
  and that denying these rights was barbaric.
• In the years that followed many African Americans
  continued to fight for an end to discrimination
  and for equal rights. This would prove to be a
  very long fight.