Review

• 13th Amendment → Freed the slaves

• 14th Amendment → Due Process; everyone equal before the law and entitled to same rights

• 15th Amendment → Universal Male Suffrage

Disenfranchisement

• African Americans faced their right to vote being revoked due to the following ways:

  • Poll Tax- tax that was required in order to vote

  • Literacy Tests- required tests to qualify for voting

  • Grandfather Clause- people could still vote (even if they didn’t pay tax or pass test) if their father or grand father was eligible to vote before Jan. 1, 1867

  • Violence and intimidation

Segregation

De Jure vs. De Facto

• De Jure:

  • Segregation by Law

    • Ex: Plessy v. Ferguson

• De Facto:

  • Segregation by Practice

    • Ex: White only neighborhoods

Background on Plessy v. Ferguson

• 1892

  • Homer Plessy sat in a vacant seat in the “Whites Only” section and refused to sit in the railroad car for “Blacks Only”

  • Was arrested and jailed

  • Plessy claimed that this violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment

• Result: Supreme Court declared that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights, not “social rights”.

Plessy v. Ferguson Case

• Landmark Supreme Court case in 1896

• Established the constitutionality of “Separate but Equal” → Racial Segregation

The Great Migration

• The Mass Movement of more than 6 million African Americans from the South to cities to the following areas:

  • The North

  • The Midwest

  • The West

• Many migrated for the following reasons

  • Opportunities for jobs

  • Violence & intimidation

  • Segregation

Origin of Jim Crow (Thomas Rice)

• White performers painted cork on their faces to resemble Blacks

  • They danced and sang → minstrels

    • “Wheel about and turn about and do just so, every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow”

  • Laws named after these characters

Race Riots in America

• 1898- Wilmington Insurrection/Coup/Race Riot

  • White supremacist mob:

    • Overthrew Fusion local government (black and white leaders)

    • Attacked and destroyed a black newspaper

    • Terrorized black community (killed 60 to 300 people)

  • Blacks stopped voting and left Wilmington by the thousands

• 1921- Tulsa Massacre

  • Black Wall Street destroyed

  • At least 300 African Americans

Responses to Jim Crow

• Ida B. Wells

  • Journalist- investigated and spoke publicly on lynching

  • Co-founded the National Association of Colored Women

  • Fought for civil rights, especially after Plessy decision

W.E.B Dubois

• First African American to earn a degree from Harvard

• One of the founding members of the NAACP

• Argued that African Americans should strive for higher education and equal rights

• Believed in the “Talented Tenth”

  • The best of the race must be educated i order to lead the rest

NAACP

• National Association of the Advancement of Colored People

• Founded in 1909

• Formed the Niagara Movement

  • Compromised of African American intellectuals seeking equal rights

• Used courts system to gain rights for African Americans

  • Focus:

    • Abolish segregation

    • Increase educational opportunities for African Americans

Booker T. Washington

• Critic of W.E.B Dubois

• Was born enslaved

• He advocated for vocational training for African Americans in order to achieve economic independence

  • Believed that African Americans can’t reach political and social equality if there isn’t a secure economic base

• Founder of the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University)

  • Initial focus on:

    • Farmers

    • Mechanics

    • Domestic servants

Marcus Garvey

• “Back to Africa Movement” (1920)

  • Move back to Africa to find homeland

  • Important for building “Black Pride”