Racism in the
1910’s-1930’s
Sharecropping
• A farmer
works a piece
of land but
doesn’t own it.
• Rent is a
portion of the
crop
• White landowners make sure the Black
sharecropper is always in debt.
Jim Crow Laws
• Plessy vs. Ferguson
allows laws that
segregate blacks and
legalize racism.
• Usually effect voting
and social rights.
The writer just returned from
Elmira NY on Michigan Central Train
No.17 and was very much surprised to find
that it is now becoming necessary to
associate with negro passengers on a so
called high grade, excess fare train.
I am sure you can appreciate
the unpleasantness of being compelled to
share dressing rooms with the negros.
Yours very truly
M.W. Briggs
More Jim Crow
Segregation Speech
Members of the Ohio House of Representatives will be
astonished when I tell them that I have traveled in this free country
for twenty hours without anything to eat; not because I have no
money to pay for it, but because I was colored. Other passengers
of as lighter hue had breakfast, lunch and dinner...
This foe of my race stands at the school house door and
separates the children, by reason of color, and denies to those who
have a visible mixture of African blood in them the blessings of a
graded school and equal privileges...We call upon all friends of
Equal Rights to assist us in this struggle to secure the blessings of
untrammeled liberty for ourselves and prosperity.
Jim Crow
Ku Klux
Klan
• A secret white
supremacist
organization that
hates Blacks,
Jews, Catholics
and immigrants
KKK March in
Seattle WA
KKK Cross burning ceremony
Birth of a Nation
• Enrollment in the
KKK rises after the
movie “Birth of a
Nation” is released.
• It was VERY racist
and VERY popular at
that time.
Lynching
• The
killing of
a person
(hanging,
beating,
burning)
by a mob.
Tulsa Race Riot
• A young black boy was supposed to have attempted an assault on a white
woman in a downtown elevator. Whites then used this as an excuse to
destroy the large Black neighborhood and business district.
Black Migration North WW1
• Southern Blacks
escape southern
racism
• Find better jobs in
northern
factories/RR’s
• Discover northern
racism