6.5 The Rise of the Jim

Crow South

After the Civil War…• Most African Americans are sharecroppers…• Basically another form of slavery…• Poor whites were beginning to take out their

frustrations on blacks

White Feelings in the South toward Blacks:They hated black suffrage

Life should have been better…• 15th amendment gave

blacks the right to vote• Whites found ways to

intimidate blacks to keep them from voting

• 1866—KKK is formed • Most white men in the

south were VERY POOR. While economically equal to the black, prejudice helped them to feel more powerful.

Depression of 1873

The Colfax Massacre -- • Easter, April 1873, a group of whites had been harassing a

group of blacks• A large number of blacks gather at the towns court house• Whites surround the court house—many were former

Civil War soldiers, were armed…even had a cannon• Attacked and blacks went into hide• Caught a black man and told him to light the building on

fire or they would shoot him• He lit it and then they shot him• People ran out and were executed…others burned alive• 150 died

1875 – Civil Rights Act• Last-ditch effort by the

Republicans to continue Reconstruction.• It granted freedom of access to

all public facilities regardless of race.

Election of 1876 • Rutherford becomes president• Reconstruction ends• Union troops leave blacks in the hands of the

white people with the money and the power

For blacks: “Oh crap.”Violence and

prejudice is about to get worse.

Should we stay or go?

Exodusters

TAKING AWAY THE RIGHT TO VOTE• 15th Amendment said that no one could be denied a

vote based on race…LOOPHOLE• Southern states designed requirements for voting

that didn’t mention race, but targeted blacks• Poll tax –citizens had to pay to vote• Literacy test – had to show competency of the

state’s constitution• Grandfather clause – said that if your grandfather

had voted then you were exempt from the poll tax and literacy test

Jim Crow Laws•Jim Crow laws – forced racial segregation in the South

•Segregation – the separation of races

•Segregation in the began as customs, but ending up as laws

•Named after “Jim Crow” dance

"Weel about and turn about and do jis so, Eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow."

Some Facilities that Were Separate: •Schools

•US military

• cemeteries

•Courts

•Hospitals

•mental institutions

•Orphanages

•Prisons

•Bibles to swear on in trials

At the bus station, Durham, North Carolina, 1940.

Greyhound bus terminal, Memphis, Tennessee. 1943.

A rest stop for bus passengers on the way from Louisville, Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee, with separate entrance for Blacks. 1943.

A sign at bus station, Rome, Georgia. 1943.

A highway sign advertising tourist cabins for Blacks, South Carolina. 1939.

Cafe, Durham, North Carolina. 1939.

Drinking fountain on the courthouse lawn, Halifax, North Carolina. 1938.

Movie theater’s "Colored" entrance, Belzoni, Mississippi. 1939.

The Rex theater for colored people, Leland, Mississippi. June 1937.

Restaurant, Lancaster, Ohio. 1938.

Water cooler in the street car terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 1939.

Sign above movie theater, Waco, Texas. 1939.

Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee. 1939.

2 Ways Jim Crow Laws Were Supported:

TERRORISM

TheLaw

Homer Plessy• 30 year old shoe maker• 1/8th black, 7/8th white• Under Louisiana law had to

sit in the “black” section of the railroad car

• Refused and was jailed• Louisiana courts upheld

decisions• Goes to the Supreme Court

Plessy v. Ferguson•Establishes “separate but equal” is equal

• Separate but equal is NEVER equal. This legalized the systematic prejudice of blacks through poor education, medical services, etc.

African American Response• Ida B. Wells - was from

Tennessee. She fought against lynching.

• Lynching – hangings without proper court procedures

• She wrote articles for papers• Went on speaking tours to

Europe• Eventually she was run out of

Memphis and had to live in Chicago

African American Response• Booker T. Washington was an

educator who started the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

• Delivered the “Atlanta Compromise Speech”

• This college focused on the many things including inventions made from the peanut

• Didn’t argue for political rights…instead urge blacks to get an education—this was very controversial in the south

The Compromise• On the one hand, Washington warned white America of the

consequences of ignoring racial abuse or "efforts to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro." He said that "we shall constitute one third of the ignorance and crime of the south or one-third of its intelligence and progress. One-third to the business and prosperity...or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic." However, Washington also argued that "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing."

Cabin that Booker T. Washington was born into slavery

1st Three Buildings of the Tuskegee Institute

Booker T. on a speaking tour in Tennessee.

His famous book:“Up From Slavery”

Tuskegee in 1916

• W. E. B. Du Bois was the founder of the NAACP

• He clashed with Booker T. Washington

• Wanted more political representation for blacks to ensure civil rights

• Wanted an elite rich, powerful, and intellectual black class to strive to help other blacks

• 1st African American to earn a PhD from Harvard

• start the NAACP which will be discussed in Chapter 8.