Ch 8, Section 3
Segregation and Discrimination
1. What is a lynching?
• A death-by-hanging of a person without legal trial, usually at the hands of
an angry mob.
• Often, the lynching victim was a member of a minority group
2. During the late-1800s and early 1900s, individuals from what group of
people, on many occasions, were victims of lynching?
• African-Americans
• From the 1890 to 1920, over 3000 Blacks were lynched in the United
States
• The last known lynching in the United States was in Mobile, Alabama in
1981, near McGill-Toolen Catholic School. Michael Donald, a young
African-American was lynched by Ku Klux Klan members.
3. In the late 1800s, African-American journalist,
Ida Wells reported persistently on what theme?
• Racial Injustice against Black Americans
4. What is racial segregation?
• A government-mandated and governmentenforced social system in which racial groups
are required to live separately from one
another.
5. What are some examples of how racial
segregation manifested itself in the Southern
States?
• Blacks and Whites were forbidden to marry
• Blacks and Whites attended separate schools
• Blacks and Whites had separate public facilities
such as water fountains and restrooms
• Blacks and whites were forbidden to eat together
in restaurants and lunch counters.
6. The 15th Amendment (passed in 1870) of the United States
Constitution forbids voting restrictions on account of what?
• Race
• In other words, a Southern state could not merely pass a
law outlawing Black voting
7. Then how did the Southern States, by the late 1800s, find a
way to restrict Black voting?
• By finding ways to keep Blacks from registering to vote
• In short, only registered voters could vote. Unregistered
voters could not vote.
8. What were three ways in which Southern states
restricted Black voter registration but ensured that
most whites could register to vote?
• Poll Taxes
• Literacy Tests
• Grandfather Clauses
9. What was a poll tax?
• An annual tax that had to be paid in order to vote
10. Why didn’t Blacks in the South just pay the
poll tax?
• Most African-Americans in the South were
poor and could not afford to pay the poll tax
11. What was a literacy test?
• In order to prove one’s worthiness to register
to vote, one must pass a reading test in order
to prove that a person could read
12. Why was the literacy test used to
discriminate against potential Black voters?
• First, white officials administered and graded
the tests.
• Usually Black test-takers were judged as
having failed
13. But wait. Weren’t there many poor Southern
whites who could not afford to pay the poll tax
as well?
• Yes, that is true
14. And…weren’t there many whites who could
not read as well?
• Yes, that is true
15. OK…Well, how did Southern States make it
possible for most whites (whether rich or poor)
to register to vote, while keeping almost all
African-Americans unregistered?
• Through the Grandfather Clause
16. Who benefited from the Grandfather
Clause?
• Potential White voters
17. What was the Grandfather Clause?
• Several Southern States made laws allowing
for someone to register to vote if he, his
father, or his grandfather had been eligible to
vote prior to January 1, 1867.
• Hence, thousands of poor whites (and
illiterate whites) were grandfathered in and
allowed to register to vote.
18. In the South, especially Deep South States like
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and South
Carolina, how long were Blacks systematically kept
from registering to vote?
• From the late 1800s until the passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
19. In States like Alabama, what happened in
November 1966?
• For the first time in nearly 100 years, AfricanAmericans voted in massive numbers.
20. At the same time that Southern Blacks were
disenfranchised (the ability to vote being taken
away), what other types of laws were passed in the
South?
• Jim Crow Laws
21. What are Jim Crow laws?
• Laws that required the separation of Whites and
Blacks in most key areas of life, namely the home,
the workplace, the school, public facilities, and
even the cemetery.
22. Basically “Jim Crow” was a synonym for what?
• Racial Segregation
23. What did the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v.
Ferguson declare to be legal?
• The Court declared that “separate but equal” segregated public
facilities and schools are legal.
24. When was Plessy v. Ferguson overturned by a U.S. Supreme Court?
• On May 17, 1954 when, in the Brown v. Board of Education, when
the Court declared that “separate but equal” is unconstitutional.
25. Thus, for nearly 60 years, what remained legal in the
United States (1896-1954)?
• Jim Crow Segregation
26. In addition to legally-required segregation in the
South, what forms of informal discrimination did
Southern Blacks face?
• In general, Blacks were expected to be very subservient
to Whites.
• Blacks were expected to be overly polite to Whites, and
never express disapproval to segregation
27. While Jim Crow Segregation was largely a
southern practice, what type of Black-White
relations existed outside the South in the late
1800s and early 1900s?
• In the North, Midwest, and West Coast, Black
Americans faced numerous forms of bigotry
and discrimination, though the discrimination
was less formal than in the South.
28. In 1900, what non-Southern city
experienced a racially-oriented riot?
• New York City
29. What is debt peonage?
• A system of near-slavery in which a laborer is
forced to continue providing labor to a boss in
order to work off a pre-existing debt.
30. In the American Southwest, what groups
were sometimes victims of debt peonage in the
late 1800s and early 1900s?
• Mexicans and African-Americans