Populism
and
Jim Crow
Jim Crow, a minstrel theater character used to name the practice of segregation
Lynching postcard
http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/main.html
Farmer who works land for an owner who
provides equipment and seed for a share of
the crop were known as *sharecroppers
The Exodusters, the thousands of African
Americans who migrated from the rural
South to Kansas, left to escape the crushing
poverty of sharecropping and the increasing
racism of the South.
Disenfranchising African Americans
There were several methods used to prevent African
Americans from voting after the passage of the 15th
Amendment including:
• Requiring citizens to pay $2 *poll tax- a fixed amount that
had to be paid before a person could vote.
• A literacy test
• And the *grandfather clause- allowed any man whose
ancestors had voted before Reconstruction to vote,
essentially eliminating all African Americans in the South
from voting.
Legalizing Segregation
In the South, *segregation- the separation of the races, was different
from that in the North because it was enforced by laws that
perpetuated discrimination.
These laws were known as *Jim Crow laws- laws created in the South to
enforce segregation forcing blacks and whites to use separate
facilities.
The Supreme Court set the stage for legalized segregation when it
overturned the *Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Supreme Court worsened the situation with the *Plessy v.
Ferguson case, where court endorse a legal doctrine of “separate but
equal” and established the legal basis for segregation in the South.
The Plessy decision established de jure segregation- segregation
based on law in the South
Legalizing Segregation
*Ida B. Wells- a fiery young African American woman from Tennessee,
launched a fearless crusade against *lynching-executions carried out
by mobs without proper court proceedings.
*Booker T. Washington- Washington was a former slave and notable
African American leader during the Progressive Era. He founded the
Tuskegee Institute and advocated blacks advancing themselves
through economic freedom attained by excelling in teaching,
agriculture and blue-collar fields. He did not oppose segregation and
was greatly criticized by other African American leaders like W.E.B.
Dubois. Urged African Americans to postpone the fight for civil rights
in his Atlanta Compromise speech.
Booker T. Washington
On September 18, 1895 Booker T. Washington, the noted African-American
educator who was born a slave in 1858, spoke before the Cotton States and
International Exposition in Atlanta. His Atlanta Compromise address, as it
came to be called, was one of the most important and influential speeches in
American history. Acutely conscious of the narrow limitations whites placed
on African Americans‘ economic aspirations, Washington stressed that blacks
must accommodate white people’s—and especially southern whites’—refusal
to tolerate blacks as anything more than sophisticated menials.
Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Speech
In 1895, Booker T. Washington gave what later
came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise
speech before the Cotton States and
International Exposition in Atlanta. His address
was one of the most important and influential
speeches in American history, guiding AfricanAmerican resistance to white discrimination
and establishing Washington as one of the
leading black spokesmen in America.
Washington’s speech stressed accommodation
rather than resistance to the racist order under
which Southern African Americans lived.
Separate movie theater entrance, 1939
The most influential public critique of Booker T.
Washington’s policy of racial accommodation
and gradualism came in 1903 when black
leader and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois published
an essay in his collection The Souls of Black
Folk with the title “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington
and Others.” DuBois rejected Washington’s
willingness to avoid rocking the racial boat,
calling instead for political power, insistence on
civil rights, and the higher education of Negro
youth.
W. E. B. DuBois
“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and
Others,” 1903
The other class of Negroes who cannot
agree with Mr. Washington … feel in
conscience bound to ask of this nation
three things.
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth according to
ability.
*W.E.B. DuBois-argued that
African Americans could achieve
full equality only by demanding
their rights
W.E.B. DuBois was the first black PhD from
Harvard and advocated legal, social and
political activity on the part of African
Americans. He started the Niagara Movement
and was the key figure in the founding of the
NAACP.
Editorial cartoon on Plessy v. Ferguson
Populism and Jim Crow Timeline
1874 Women’s Christian Temperance Union established
1883 Supreme Court: the Civil Rights Act does not apply to
individuals
1890 “The Mississippi Plan” and the “Purity Clause”
1892 Populist Party organized
1895 Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson
1896 William McKinley wins presidential election
1898 Louisiana’s “Grandfather Clause”
1900 Gold Standard Act
1900 Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz
1903 W.E.B. DuBois responds to Booker T. Washington