Jim Crow, “Separate, but equal”

African-Americans in the South

After Reconstruction

Reconstruction Review

Remember that following the Civil War, African-

Americans enjoyed many new freedoms in the

Union-occupied South

Access to education, voting… pretty much had all

civil rights

Many African-Americans became sharecroppers

Redeemers

After the backdoor deal that gave Rutherford B.

Hayes the presidency in 1876, Union forces

pulled out of the South

“Redeemers” took over and sought to limit the

freedoms of African-Americans

First, they kicked all African-Americans out of

political office limiting the African-American’s

opportunities to stop the redeemers

Key Vocab- Segregation

The process of keeping two or more different

groups separate from each other

People with blue eyes are allowed to play on the

slide while people with green eyes can only play

on the swings

Segregation can be both voluntary (Little Italy and

China Town in NY), and forced

Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow Laws are all of the laws made in the

South that segregated blacks and whites in

public facilities

The ultimate goal was to separate blacks from

whites treating both groups “separate, but equal”

In reality, it legally made African-Americans a

lower class in the South with major inequalities

between whites and blacks

Historical Connection – Germany

Think back to Cambridge World History!

One of the first steps the Nazi government in

Germany took against the Jewish population was

to separate the Jewish population from the

“Aryan” population

This legally made the Jewish population a lower

class and led to many rights and liberties being

taken away

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A pivotal Supreme Court case that upheld

segregation in the South

The Court ruled that as long as facilities for

blacks and whites were both equal, they could

remain separate

The Reality of Plessy

Facilities became separate and unequal

White facilities were better funded and

maintained

This was seen especially in the schools

Voting Oppression One of the ways in which the white population

kept African-Americans out of political office or voting for those who would support them was to put up barriers to voting

Ways African-Americans could be kept from voting: Literacy test (have to read to vote)

Poll tax (have to have money to vote… coincidentally not applied to white voters)

Grandfather clauses (you could only vote if your ancestors voted before the Civil War)

Violence / Intimidation

Rise of the Civil Rights

Movement

The Civil Rights Movement would not earnestly

begin until the 1950s…

But, a major organization and several prominent

leaders arose in the early 20th century that started

the movement

Please now move on to task 2 to learn more!