Chapter 7-Issues of The Gilded Age
Section 1: Segregation and Social Tension
Section 2: Political and Economic Challenges
Section 3:Farmer’s and Populism
Standards: 2.1, 2.3, 2.9. 2.12, 9.4
• African Americans Lose Freedoms
• States’ Governments Limit Voting Rights
•
•
•
•
Poll tax: people had to pay to register to vote (Georgia $1-2)
Literacy tests: “Understanding” Tests
Had to own property
Grandfather clause: In Louisiana this clause allowed any man to vote if
he had an ancestor on the voting rolls in 1867, which made former
slaves, and their decendants ineligible to vote
• 1894: 130,000 Black Registered Voters in Louisiana
• 1904: 1,300 Black Registered Voters
• Legalizing Segregation
• Segregation: separation of the races
• Jim Crow laws: statutes that enforced segregation
• Supreme Court overturns the Civil Rights Act of 1875
– No longer a violation to keep people out based solely on color
– Plessy v. Ferguson: Court case that upheld “Separate but Equal”
– Racial Violence
• Lynching: executions without proper court hearings
– 80% in the South
– 70% of the victims were African Americans
Jim Crow and Limited Opportunity
Section 3: The Rise of Segregation
• Resistance and Repression
• Sharecroppers: landless farmers who paid in the form of crops to a
landlord for supplies, rent, seed, tools and other supplies; were always
in debt
– Exodus to Kansas
• Exodusters: migrants of African Americans from the rural South to
Kansas
– Forming a Separate Alliance
• Colored Farmers’ National Alliance: helped African Americans
economically by setting up cooperatives
– Cooperatives: a store where farmers bought products from each other; an
organization that is owned and run by the people who use the services
– Crushing the Populist Revolt
• An appeal to racism
• “Black Republicanism” a step back to Reconstruction
Exodusters
African Americans Oppose Injustices
Ida B. Wells:
– Memphis Free Speech
– Anti-lynching
» Said it was greed not just racial prejudice that led to the brutal
acts and violence
– Mob destroyed printing press of Memphis Free Speech and drove Ida
from town
– A Call for Compromise
• Booker T. Washington: proposed that African Americans concentrate
on education and economic gains rather than deal with politics
• Atlanta Compromise: Booker T. Washington wanted the African
American population to postpone the fight for Civil Rights until they
were prepared to full equality.
– A Voice of the Future
• W.E.B. Du Bois
– The Souls of Black Folk
– Promoting and protecting the voting rights of African Americans was
the only way to reach equality.
Booker T. Washington, W.E.B.
Dubois, Ida B. Wells
Chinese Immigrants Face
Discrimination
• 1882: Chinese
Exclusion Act:
Chinese Immigrants
Banned for 10 Years
• Wong Kim Ark v.
United States:
Supreme Court
Upheld 14th
Amendment
Mexicans Americans Struggle in the
West
• Abuse and Discrimination
Undermine Rights
• Courts backed white
Americans land claims
most of the time
• Las Gorras Blancas:
Extremist group who
targeted large ranch
owners with terror tactics
• Alianza HispanoAmericana: Organization
formed to protect
Mexican-American
Culture
Women Make Gains and Suffer
Setbacks
• Susan B. Anthony: Felt
betrayed when 14th/15th
Amendments did not
include women- 1872:
Broke law by voting
illegally in New York
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
National Women’s
Suffrage Association
• Women’s Christian
Temperance Movement:
Fought for women’s rights
but also wanted to prohibit
sale of alcohol (18th
Amendment)
U.S. History I
Chapter 7 Section 2
“Political and Economic Challenges”
2.5, 9.1, 9.3, 9.4
Section 2: Balance of Power Creates
Stalemate
• 1877-1897: Presidents win by narrow margins and
presidents are weak or corrupt.
– Benjamin Harrison: Second President to lose Popular vote but win
Electoral College
– Chester Arthur: Took over after James Garfield was assassinated:
Disliked by OWN Republican Party
– *Grover Cleveland: Known for his Integrity: 1884 Won: 1888 Lost
to Harrison (Electoral College) 1892: Won again (Only one
counted TWICE)
• Corruption Plagues National Politics
• Joseph Keppler: Political Cartoonist: “The Bosses of the
Senate” Next Slide
• Patronage: government jobs go to the supporters of the winning party
in an election. “Spoils System”
– The Pendleton Act: Allowed the president to decide which federal
jobs would be filled according to the rules of the Civil Service
Commission: All had to take exam to qualify for job.
• Under Pres. Arthur, 14,000 jobs were placed under this program
• Economic Issues
Challenge Nation
– Tariff: Tax on Imports
– Republicans: Wanted
High Tariffs
– Democrats: Wanted
Low Tariffs
• Silver or Gold
• Greenbacks retired
after Civil War
• Goldbugs: Wanted all
coins made of gold
• Silverites: Wanted all
coins made of silver
Section 3: Farmers and Populism
• Unrest in Rural America
• Populism: a political
movement founded in the
1890s that mainly
represented farmers,
favored free coinage of
silver, and favored
government control of
railroads and other big
industries
– Falling Prices and Rising
Debt
• Greenbacks: U.S. paper
money
• Inflation: money loses
value, higher prices
• Deflation: lower prices,
higher buying power
– Deflation Hurts Farmers
• The Crime of ’73: The
decision of the government
to stop the minting of
silver
– The Grange Takes Action: Oliver H. Kelley: 1867
• Cooperatives: marketing organizations that worked to benefit their members
– The Grange Fails
• Didn’t change economic problems of farmers
• Railroads fought back by cutting services and refusing to lay more track
• Wabash v. Illinois: limited a state’s ability to regulate the railroads, states could
not regulate interstate commerce
• The Farmers’ Alliance
• Lampasas County, Texas 1877
• Charles Macune
– The Alliance Grows
•
•
•
•
•
Kansas
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
South and Great Plains
– The People’s Party: Populists
– The Subtreasury Plan: called for the government to set up warehouses where
farmers could store crops for low-interest loans until prices increased.
• The Populist Party Demands Reforms
• Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890: authorized the U.S.
Treasury to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver a month, put
more money into circulation in an attempt to help farmers
– The South Turns to Populism
• Many Southern Democrats move to Populist Party
– A Populist for President
• James B. Weaver
– Graduated income tax: taxation of higher earnings more heavily
– Government ownership of railroads
– The Panic of 1893: Economic Crisis
• Stock Market on Wall Street Crash
• Banks closed
• Economic Depression
• The Election of 1896
• William Jennings Bryan
– Supported the minting of silver
– *Also known as prosecutor in the “Scopes Monkey Trial”
– Bryan’s Campaign
• 600 speeches in 14 weeks
• Republicans nominate William McKinley as the man who could beat
Bryan
– The Front Porch Campaign
• William McKinley spoke only at his Canton, Ohio home. Delegates
came to see him at his home.
• Full Dinner Pan
• Unemployment would rise, wages would be cut
– Populism Declines
• Depression ends
• Gold in Canada, Alaska, and South Africa increase money supply