Sharecropping
. . . the said Cooper Hughs Freedman with his wife and one other woman, and the said Charles Roberts with his wife Hannah and one boy are to
work on said farm and to cultivate forty acres in corn and twenty acres in cotton, to assist in putting the fences on said farm in good order and to
keep them so and to do all other work on said farm necessary to be done to keep the same in good order and to raise a good crop and to be under
the control and directions of said IG Bailey and to receive for their said services one half of the cotton and one third of the corn and fodder raised
by them on said farm in said year 1867 and the said Charles Roberts Freedman with his wife Hannah further agrees and binds themselves to do
the washing and Ironing, and all other necessary house work for said IG Bailey and his family during said year 1867 and to receive for their said
services fifty dollars in money at the expiration of said year 1867 and the said Cooper Hughs Freedman further agrees and binds himself to give
the necessary attention of feeding the Stock of cattle and milking the cows twice daily belong to said IG Bailey, and do the churning when ever
necessary during the said year . . .
This 1867 contract between [white] landowner Isham G. Bailey in Marshall County, Mississippi, and two freedmen [former slaves]
stipulates different arrangements for each man’s family. Both Charles Roberts and Cooper Hughs were to raise cotton and corn and
give more than half of the cotton and two-thirds of the corn they raised to Bailey, but the Roberts family was to receive 487 pounds of
meat to the Hughs family’s 550 pounds. Additionally, Charles Roberts and his wife agreed to do housework for an additional $50 a
year, while the Hughs family agreed to tend the livestock for no additional compensation.
The freedmen, who wanted autonomy and independence, refused to sign contracts that required gang labor, and sharecropping
emerged as a compromise. Landowners divided plantations into 20- to 50-acre plots suitable for farming by a single family. In
exchange for the use of land, a cabin, and supplies, sharecroppers agreed to raise a cash crop and give a portion, usually 50 percent, of
the crop to their landlord. Landowners extended credit to sharecroppers to buy goods and charged high interest rates, sometimes as
high as 70 percent a year, creating a system of economic dependence and poverty.
1.) Write your own definition of Sharecropping based upon the above information
2.) Which new amendment (or amendments) effectiveness was limited by the use of sharecropping?
Jim Crow Laws and Segregation
Jim Crow, or segregation, laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries effectively divided the Ameri-can South into black and white
in almost every as-pect of public life. The laws codified practices that had developed over many decades during and after slavery, and
the laws made the custom of racial separation much more rigid. Jim Crow laws ex-tended to restaurants, hotels, theaters, bus stations,
parks, public restrooms and drinking fountains, public schools, and the United States military. Jim Crow placed a stigma on African
Americans and promoted the idea that they were second-class citizens.
(turn over)
Segregation established an intricate set of rules to govern every kind of interracial contact that were reinforced by its repeated daily
humiliations. Laws and practices that assigned African American laborers the most menial and lowest-paying jobs and kept them out
of labor unions ensured their economic subordination.
Segregation literally rendered African American life less valuable than white life. Black Southerners had higher mortality rates, for
example, because they lived in areas where white officials did not invest in improving sanitation and because the lack of public
spending on health services for black people typically meant fewer hospitals and treatment options. An untold number of black adults
and black children died as a result.
This 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. It stemmed
from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana
law. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Court ruled that segregation laws “implies merely a
legal distinction” between whites and blacks (Plessy vs. Ferguson).
1.) Write your own definition for Jim Crow (Segregation) and Plessy vs. Ferguson based upon the information provided in
the document.
2.) Which amendment (or amendments) were limited by the introduction of the Jim Crow Laws?
Poll Taxes
Poll tax receipt
Poll taxes required citizens to pay a fee to register to vote. These fees kept many poor African Americans, as well as poor whites, from voting. The
poll tax receipts displayed here is from Alabama.
1.) Write your own definition of poll tax based upon the above information.
2.) What amendment (or amendments) were limited due to the introduction of the poll tax?
Literacy Tests
EXCERPTS FROM THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
Part 1. In case of the removal of the president from office, or of his death, resignation or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the
same shall devolve on the Vice-President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death. resignation or inability, both of the President
and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall
be elected.
Part 2. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have
original jurisdiction
Part 3. In all the other cases before mentioned, the supreme court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under
such regulations as the Congress shall make.
Part 4. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction
INSTRUCTION "C"
(After applicant has read, not aloud, the foregoing excerpts from the Constitution, he will answer the following questions in writing and without assistance:)
1.
In case the president is unable to perform the duties of his office, who assumes them?______________________
2.
"Involuntary servitude" is permitted in the United States upon conviction of a crime. (True or False)___________
3.
If a state is a party to a case, the Constitution provides that original jurisdiction shall be in_________________
4.
Congress passes laws regulating cases which are included in those over which the United States Supreme Court has____________________________
jurisdiction.
These tests were “supposedly applicable to both white and black prospective voters who couldn’t prove a certain level of education”
(typically up to the fifth grade). Yet they were “in actuality disproportionately administered to black voters.” Additionally, many of the tests
were rigged so that registrars could give potential voters an easy or a difficult version, and could score them differently as well.
(Turn over)
In 1898 several southern states enacted “grandfather clauses” to allow uneducated whites to circumvent the literacy tests. The clause
allowed any person who had a grandfather who could vote before the Civil War to automatically be allowed to vote, regardless of education
or literacy.
1.) Write your own definition of literacy tests and grandfather clauses based on the information provided.
2.) Which amendment (or amendments) were limited by the use of literacy tests and grandfather clauses?
The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan
In the late 1860s and early 1870s, the Ku Klux Klan inflicted terror and violence on black Southerners in an effort to intimidate them
and influence elections. Abram Colby, an African American legislator from Georgia, was a victim of Klan violence. An excerpt from
his 1872 testimony, given before a congressional committee formed to investigate violence against freedpeople in the South, is
presented here.
Colby: On the 29th of October 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and
left me for dead. They said to me, “Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?” I said, “If there was an election tomorrow, I would vote
the Radical ticket.” They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, with sticks and straps that had buckles on the ends of them.
Question: What is the character of those men who were engaged in whipping you?
Colby: Some are first-class men in our town. One is a lawyer, one a doctor, and some are farmers. They had their pistols and they took me in my night-clothes
and carried me from home. They hit me five thousand blows
Question: How long before you recovered from the effects of this treatment?
Colby: I have never got over it yet. They broke something inside of me. I cannot do any work now, though I always made my living before in the barber-shop,
hauling wood, etc.
Question: You spoke about being elected to the next legislature?
Colby: Yes, sir, but they run me off during the election. They swore they would kill me if I stayed. The Saturday night before the election I went to church.
When I got home they just peppered the house with shot and bullets
1.) Write your own definition of the Ku Klux Klan according to the document provided.
2.) What amendment (or amendments) were limited by the actions of the KKK?