Preview: Why do you think certain groups experienced violence and racial discrimination?
Do you think these actions are justified? Why or Why not?

 Ida B. Wellseditor of a local paper in
Memphis.
 Racial Justice was a persistent theme in her reporting.
lynching – “An excuse to get rid of
Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized…”
 By writing and lecturing, she tried to end the lynching of African Americans.

 Faced hostile and violent opposition from whites.
 End of Reconstruction 1877, African Americans continued to vote and occasionally hold political office in the South up until the turn of the century.
 Southern states adopted a broad system of legal policies and methods to weaken African-American political power.
-voting restrictions
-Jim Crows Laws
Plessy v. Ferguson

 Literacy test-had to be able to read
-Asked more difficult questions than whites
-Given test in a foreign language
-Officials could pass or fail applicants as they wished

 Annual tax that had to be paid before qualifying to vote.
 Black as well as white sharecroppers were too poor to pay poll tax.
 Whites could vote even they failed literacy test or couldn’t pay poll tax if they fell under the grandfather clause . (added to states constitutions)

 Even if a man failed the literacy test or couldn’t afford the poll tax, he was still entitled to vote if he, his father, or his grandfather had been eligible to vote before
Jan. 1, 1867.
Why is this date so important?
Supreme Court (1870s and 1880s) failed to overturn the poll tax or grandfather clause.

 Segregation laws in Southern states to separate white and black people in public and private facilities.
 Put in effect in schools, hospitals, parks, and transportation systems throughout the
South.

 Legal case that reached the Supreme Court to test constitutionality of segregation.


In 1896, Supreme Court rule that the separation of races in public accommodations was legal and did not violate the 14 th amendment.
Decision established ‘separate but equal’ doctrine
( states could have segregated facilities as long as they provided equal service )
The decision permitted legalized racial segregation for almost 60 years.

th
•Section 1 – No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the U.S; nor shall any state deprive a person of life, liberty, or property …..or equal protection of the laws……

 Racial etiquetteregulated relationships between whites and blacks.
1. Blacks and whites never shook hands
(would have implied equality)
2. Blacks had to yield the sidewalk to white pedestrians.
3. Black men always had to remove their hats for whites .

 Booker T. Washington suggested that whites and black work together for social progress, in a gradual approach to equality.
 Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois believed that the problems of inequality were too urgent to postpone.

 African Americans and others who did not follow racial etiquette could face severe punishment or death.
 All too often, Blacks accused of violating racial etiquette were lynched.
 Between 1882-1892: more than 1,400 African
American men and women were shot, burned, or hung without trial in the South.

 Many blacks moved North looking for better-paying jobs and social equality.
 Found out there was racial discrimination in
North as well.
 Forced to live in segregated neighborhoods, discrimination in the workplace, and fired before whites.


African Americans weren’t the only group to experience violence and racial discrimination.
 Groups who faced discrimination
1. Native Americans
2. Asian Immigrants
3. Mexicans
4. African Americans

 Railroads hired them, more than any other ethnic groups, to construct rail lines in the
Southwest. Paid less money
 Also vital to the development of mining and agriculture in the Southwest.
-became major labor force in the agricultural industries in the region.

 A system that bound laborers into slavery in order to work off a debt to the employer.
Some Mexicans and African Americans were forced into this system.
Supreme Court (1911) declared involuntary peonage violated the Thirteenth
Amendment.

 1880- 100,000 plus Chinese immigrants lived in the
US
 Whites feared job competition
-segregated schools and neighborhoods
-strong opposition not just in West
Remember the Chinese Exclusion Act?
Nonwhites-racial discrimination caused problems.
Others, whites particularly-leisure time and money for products