From Slavery to Freedom
th
9 ed.
Chapter 15
Voices of Protest
A Man Was Lynched Yesterday
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Progressive Voices
 The Work of the NAACP
 NAACP membership as well as circulation of
its magazine The Crisis grew in early 1900s
 Legal victories
 Guinn v. United States (1915)
 Buchanan v. Warley (1917)
 Despite successes of NAACP, blacks generally
not beneficiaries of other Progressive-era
reforms
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Progressive Voices
 The 1912 Election
 Civil rights leaders had great hope for Woodrow
Wilson’s presidency
 Wilson Disappoints
 Upon election Wilson acted same as other
Southern Progressives
 Refused request to form a “national commission on the
Negro problem”
 Focused on economic issues such as tariff and banking
reforms that were of less interest to blacks
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Progressive Voices
 At the same time, Congress flooded with bills
proposing discriminatory legislation
 By executive order Wilson segregated eating and
restroom facilities of black federal employees
and phased out most blacks in civil service jobs
 African Americans Protest Racial Policies
 Wilson no friend to African American causes
 Blacks protested his segregation of federal
employees; occupation of Haiti; and his praise of
film Birth of a Nation
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Progressive Voices
 The Amenia Conference
 Brought together most distinguished African
Americans of the day to consolidate and achieve
a unity of thought
 Agreed to work together for:
 Enfranchisement
 Abolition of lynching
 Enforcement of laws protecting civil rights
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Men and women at the Amenia Conference
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Violent Times
 The Resurgent Ku Klux Klan
 Postwar “super-patriotism” contributed to rise of
racist and xenophobic groups
 Ku Klux Klan reemerged in South in 1915
 By 1920s became national organization
 Terrorized African Americans and other ethnic
communities; especially targeted black soldiers
 Race Riots
 “Red Summer”
 Twenty-six urban race riots in summer of 1919
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Violent Times
 Race relations tense due to continued African
American migration and resulting competition
for jobs
 The Chicago Riot of 1919
 Most serious racial riot; started with drowning
of black man on a Lake Michigan beach
 Chicago without law and order for thirteen days
 More Riots
 Race riots continued in places such as Knoxville,
TN; Omaha, NE; and Elaine, AR
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Violent Times
 Riots continued after 1919
 Tulsa, OK; Rosewood, FL; Detroit, MI
 “Outside Agitation”
 Whites blamed foreign influences for black
protest
 Blacks refuted that claim
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Civil Rights Vanguard
 The Persistence of Lynching
 NAACP persistently fought lynching
 Banner; silent parade
 Lynchings continued
 Rope and Faggot, A Biography of Judge Lynch (1929)
 NAACP continued crusade against lynching;
held a national conference; sponsored
antilynching rallies
 Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States,
1889-1918
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Civil Rights Vanguard
 NAACP Legal Efforts
 Took first step toward securing passage of
federal antilynching law in 1919
 Southern representatives organized to defeat proposed
bill; spoke in favor of mob rule
 Bill eventually filibustered in Senate
 Nixon v. Herndon (1927)
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Protesting with Their Feet
 The Leaderless Migration
 Blacks flooded out of South to North and West
 Fear among many that exodus would endanger
the institutional and financial life of the South
 It was a leaderless movement; blacks moved
with sense of collective destiny
 Migration from the Caribbean
 Between 1899 and 1937 more than 140,000
migrants came to U.S. from Caribbean
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Protesting with Their Feet
 Afro-Caribbeans in New York
 Most came from English-speaking islands
 Arthur Alfonso Schomburg came from Puerto
Rico
 Established Negro Society for Historical Research
 Caribbean migrants disproportionately educated
and skilled
 Overrepresented in population of successful New
Yorkers
 More visible in radical movements
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New Negroes
 Race and Class Politics: Civil Rights, Black
Nationalism
 African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans
disagreed over primacy of race vs. class protest
 Hubert Harrison
 Frustrated by failure of white Left to address racism
within ranks of white working class; founded Liberty
League in 1917
 Du Bois and “Close Ranks”
 Editors Du Bois and Randolph parted ways over
race-class divide
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New Negroes
 Du Bois’s “Close Ranks” article that advocated
for blacks to put race struggle on backseat during
wartime angered black leftists and nationalists
 Randolph and Owen defended the Left and
criticized NAACP in The Messenger
 Emphasized class struggle
 Caricatured Du Bois as an “Old-Style Negro”;“New
Style Negro” portrayed as one who defends himself by
shooting his attackers
 Shied away from socialism during the Red Scare
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New Negroes
 Marcus Garvey
 NAACP failed to secure following of lower class
and poor African Americans; working-class
blacks skeptical of class-based interracial
coalition to fight racism
 Garvey filled the void; founded Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA); drew a mass
following
 Popularity based on appeal to race pride
 Believed hope lied in redeeming Africa from
colonialism; started back-to-Africa movement
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New Negroes
 Garvey had mass appeal; created huge black
movement
 The Negro World
 Denounced by most African American leaders
 Garvey’s Decline
 Garvey’s “pact” with a representative of the
Ku Klux Klan drew much criticism
 Convicted for using the mails to defraud in
raising money for his steamship line;
incarcerated and eventually deported
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New Negroes
 Father Divine
 George Baker
 Interracial religious movement that looked to religion
to foster racial harmony
 More than religious cult; addressed followers’ social
and economic needs
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New Women
 Black Feminism
 Interracial feminism impacted by racism
 Black women aware that demand for women’s
rights linked to black disfranchisement and
segregation
 To ensure southern congressional endorsement of
suffrage amendment, national suffrage
organizations capitulated to southern racism
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Black suffragist Mary Church Terrell
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Black suffragist Nannie Burroughs
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New Women
 Black Women Voters
 Ida B. Wells’s Alpha Suffrage Club instrumental
in black voter turnout in Chicago in 1915
 With ratification of Nineteenth Amendment in
1920, black women faced same difficulties at
southern voting booths as black men
 Black women leaders sought to garner women’s
vote during the great migration
 Women’s clubs mobilized black voters
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New Women
 Growing Political Involvement
 Black people’s political involvement growing
despite fact they were often insulted by those for
whom they had cast their ballots
 Black women sought to make their voices heard
within the electoral system
 New Negro’s protest overshadowed genteel
feminism advocated by NACW
 New Woman exalted as man’s helpmate
 Neither New Negro nor New Woman movements
gave due credence to the New Negro Woman
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