v. The Rise of Segregation
Guiding Question: How did African Americans
resist racism and improve their way of life after
Reconstruction?
Vocabulary
discrimination
poll tax
segregation
Jim Crow laws
lynch
Resistance and Repression
 After Reconstruction, most African American
lived in poverty
 Most were SHARECROPPERS: landless
farmers who gave a large section of their crops
to the landlord as rent
 CYCLE OF DEBT!
Resistance and Repression
 1870s Benjamin “Pap” Singleton urged
African Americans to move West to from
independent communities
 Most went to Kansas. In two months 6,000
African Americans left the rural south for
Kansas
 Newspapers called it the Exodus. Migrants
became known as “Exodusters”
Resistance and Repression
 Exodusters arrived in Kansas in 1879
 Others joined poor white farmers
 Formed the Farmer’s Alliance
 1886 African Americans formed the Colored
Farmers National Alliance. 1.2 million
members in 1890.
Resistance and Repression
 1891 many African Americans joined the
Populist Party
 Posed a major challenge to the Democratic
party in the South
 If poor whites joined the African
Americans they would be unbeatable
 Democratic leaders started to appeal to
racism to make it harder for African
Americans to vote.
Resistance and Repression
“Some of our people, some editors especially deny that African Americans are hindered
from voting; but what good is lying? They are interfered with, and we are obliged to do it,
and we may as well tell the truth” – One Southern Democratic Leader
Resistance and Repression
Question: What did the Democratic Party do to prevent
the Populists from gaining too much power?
Resistance and Repression
Answer: It appealed to racism among its poor white
followers to prevent them from allying with African
American Populists.
Imposing Segregation
Guiding Question:
What laws did southern states pass to impose
segregation and deny African Americans the right to
vote?
Imposing Segregation
 After Reconstruction ended, the
rights of African Americans declined
 Attempts to unify whites and African
Americans failed
 Movement to diminish civil rights
picked up momentum
Taking Away the Vote
 15th Amendment prohibits denying
citizens the right to vote based on
race, color, previous condition of
servitude
 Does not bar states from using other
grounds
 Poll Tax
 Literacy Test
Taking Away the Vote
 1899 Mississippi began a $2 poll tax (expensive)
 Poll tax – a tax of a fixed amount that had to
be paid before a person could vote
 Mississippi also instituted a literacy test,
required voters to be able to read and
understand the state’s constitution
 Few African Americans born after the Civil War
had attended school. Illiterate. Even if you could
read, officials would pick the hardest sections.
 Other southern states adopted similar
restrictions.
 Between 1890 – 1900 number of
registered African American voters fell.
White voters exempt
 Election officials were less strict in applying tax
or test to whites; however number of white
voters fell significantly
 Louisiana introduced the grandfather clause
for whites
 Allowed any man to vote if an ancestor could
vote in 1867
 Exempted whites from most voting restrictions
 Was designed to increase the number of white
voters
Legalizing Segregation
 African Americans faced discrimination in the
North, but in the South segregation
(separation) was different in the South where
laws were passed that rigidly enforced
discrimination
 Segregation – the separation or isolation of a
race , class, or group
 Discrimination – different treatment or
preference or a bias other than individual merit
Legalizing Segregation: Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow Laws – Statues enacted to enforce
segregation.
 1883 Supreme Court overturned the Civil
Rights Act of 1875.That law had prohibited
keeping people out of public places on the
basis of race and barred racial discrimination
in selecting jurors.
 The Supreme Court, however, ruled that the
Fourteenth Amendment provided only that
“no state” could deny citizens equal
protection under the law. Private
organizations, such as hotels, theaters, and
railroads, were free to practice segregation.
Legalizing Segregation
 Private organizations, hotels, theatres
and railroads could segregate.
 Southern states passed a series of laws
establishing racial segregation
 African Americans could no longer
ride together in the railroad car
 Could not drink from the same water
fountain
Plessy v. Ferguson
 1892 Homer Plessy challenged the
Louisiana law
 Forced him to ride in a separate
railroad car
 Arrested for riding in white only car
 1896 Plessy v Ferguson
 Supreme Court upheld Louisiana law
“separate but equal”. Established 50
years of racial segregation.
Legalizing Segregation
 What was the purpose of the “grandfather clause”?
Legalizing Segregation
 To allow whites who could not pay the poll tax to pass
literacy requirements to vote.
The African American Response
Guiding Question: How did African American
community leaders respond to legalized segregation?
The African American Response
 Historian Rayford Logan
 Opening of 20th century as the low
point of African American status
 Responded to violence and
discrimination in many ways
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Ida B. Wells
Mary Church Terrell
Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. DuBois
 Each used different approaches to
address this
Ida B. Wells
 1800s mob violence increased
 1890 -1899 154 lynched per year
Lynched – to execute, by hanging,
without lawful approval
 1892 Ida B. Wells launched a crusade
against lynching
 A mob drove Wells out of Chicago
 1895 published a book denouncing
mob violence
 Congress rejects anti-lynching bill,
but lynching decreased
significantly in 1900s
Mary Church Terrell
 College educated. Born after the Civil War
 President Benjamin Harrison refused to condemn
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lynching, she started lifelong campaign against
Lynching, Racism, Sexism
Had help from Jane Addams and Susan B. Anthony
Founded the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Formed the Women Wage Earner’s Association
 Assisted African American
 Nurses, waitresses, domestic workers
Led boycott against Washington D.C. department
stores when they refused to serve African Americans
Terrell wanted
 Future with promise and hope, no favors –
just an equal chance
“History of the Naacp & Civil Rights” Video
Booker T. Washington
 Booker T. Washington proposed achieving
economic rather than political goals
 1895 Booker’s goals in front of a mostly
white audience
 Known as the Atlanta Compromise
 Urged African Americans to postpone fight for
civil rights
 Concentrate on education and vocations to
achieve full equality
W.E.B. DuBois
 Founded the civil rights group the Niagara
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Movement which, while a failure, was the
forerunner of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in
1909.
Atlanta Compromise provoked a challenge from
W.E.B. DuBois – saw no reason to postpone
civil rights
New generation of activist
1903 wrote the book The Souls of Black Folk
Saw no advantage to giving up rights
Concerned with protecting voting rights
DuBois Rejects Compromise
 “Negroes must insist continually, in season
and out of season.” he wrote, “ that voting is
necessary to proper manhood, that color
discrimination is barbarism.”
 Many African Americans would struggle to
 win the vote
 End discrimination
 Would be a long struggle
The African American Response
 What was the nature of the compromise urged by
Booker T. Washington in the Atlanta Compromise
speech?
The African American Response
 African Americans would put on hold their fight for
the right to vote; instead they would work for
educational and vocational gains.