Social & Political Problems of African Americans

Gilded AgeUnit 2 Lesson 3

Civil War 1861-1865

Civil War Amendments13th Amendment – abolished slavery throughout the U.S.

14th Amendment – guaranteed all citizens, including former slaves, “due process” and “equal protection” from state governments

15th Amendment – guaranteed voting rights to former male slaves

Abolish SlaveryBe a citizenCan voteFree Citizens Vote

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After the US Army leaves the South…

Jim Crow laws – segregated virtually all public places to deny Af-Am 14th Amendment rights

Ku Klux Klan – used terroristic tactics to deny Af-Am rights

Poll tax and literacy tests deprived minorities of the 15th Amendment

Vocabulary Word

Disfranchisement

Great Migration

• Slow migration in Gilded Age…but gains momentum in the early 20th Century

• North has selective “de facto segregation” but no laws requiring segregation

• North has industries• North has few barriers to voting

Background

• Homer Plessy purposely sits in “Whites only” train car so that he is arrested

• Why? • To set up the court challenge to Louisiana’s

segregation laws• His hope?• US Supreme Court will find segregation laws

unconstitutional according to the 14th Amendment

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896Majority Opinion

“The object of the 14th amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color….Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply inferiority of either race to the other…”

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896Minority Opinion

“What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens?”

Plessy Outcomes

• Supreme Court declared segregation legal as long as facilities are equal in value• Established “separate but equal” policy• Who will enforce “equal facilities”?• Segregation was “Law of the South”

until the 1950’s (reason for modern Civil Rights Movement)

• since the separate cars provided equal services, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was not violated. Thus, the "separate but equal" doctrine became the constitutional basis for segregation.”

The scary part is that Plessy did not look black. People hated black people so much that the law stated that if:

BlackWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhiteWhite

• you had at least 1/16th black in you, you had to legally claim yourself as black.

Anti-Lynching Legislation• Ida B. Wells• Journalist• Pushed for Congress to pass a

law declaring lynching “an act of murder”

• Reported 3 Af-Am grocers lynched in Memphis. Why?– Guilty of nothing more than

competing successfully against white grocers

• Congress rejected Anti-lynching bill, but #s decreased in 1900s

Who do we follow?• Booker T. Washington– Believed Af-Ams should postpone the

fight for civil rights and focus on education and vocations

• W.E.B. DuBois– Believed the only way Af-Ams could

achieve full equality was by demanding their rights, particularly voting rights

– One of the founders of the NAACP

Vocabulary Word

Disfranchisement