The Struggle for Black
Equality
APUSH - Spiconardi
“Strange Fruit”
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern
breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar
trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to
suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Lynchings
Lynching  murdering
by a mob in order to
intimidate, control, or
otherwise manipulate a
population of people
Lynchings
• In every year between
1883 and 1905, more
than fifty persons were
lynched in the South
• Estimates vary between
3,500 to 5,00o
lynchings in the U.S.
• Only one in
Canada, but
perpetrated by
Americans who
crossed to border
The lynching of Allen Brooks in downtown Dallas,
1910.
Source: New York Times
Ida B. Wells
• Former slave who became a
journalist who documented
lynchings and a civil rights leader
• Writes the pamphlet, Southern
Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its
Phases
If it were
possible, I
would
gather the
race in my
arms and
fly away
with them
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All
Its Phases
But Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell
and Henry Stewart had been lynched in
Memphis,…and they had committed no
crime against white women. This is
what opened my eyes to what lynching
really was. An excuse to get rid of
Negroes who were acquiring wealth and
property…The more I studied the
situation, the more I was convinced that
the Southerner had never gotten over
his resentment that the Negro was no
longer his play thing…The federal laws
for Negro protection passed during
Reconstruction had been made a
mockery by the South…
The lesson this teaches and which
every Afro American should ponder
well, is that a Winchester rifle should
have a place of honor in every black
home, and it should be used for that
protection which the law refuses to
give. When the white man who is
always the aggressor knows he runs as
great a risk of biting the dust every
time his Afro-American victim does, he
will have greater respect for AfroAmerican life. The more the AfroAmerican yields and cringes and begs,
the more he has to do so, the more he
is insulted, outraged and lynched.
Source: Ida B. Wells, The Crusade for
Justice, 1892
Source: Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors:
Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892)
Jim Crow
• Jim Crow  System of racial
segregation in the South
named after a minstrel show
character that lasted a
century, from after the Civil
War until the 1960s.
Jim Crow
• Disenfranchisement Laws
– Grandfather Clause
• Allowed some uneducated whites the
ability to vote
– Literacy Test
– Poll Taxes
• Social Etiquette
– A black male could not shake hands
with a white male because it implied
being socially equal
– White motorists had the right-of-way at
all intersections
– Under no circumstance was a black
male to offer to light the cigarette of a
white female -- that gesture implied
intimacy
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• Landmark Supreme Court case
in which the constitutionality of
racial segregation was upheld
• The Case
– In 1890, Louisiana passed a law
requiring separate railway cars for
blacks and whites
– In 1892, Homer Plessy, a man 1/8
black and 7/8 white boards a white
only railcar.
• He refuses to move to the black
railcar
– Under Louisiana law, Plessy was
legally a black citizen
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• The Ruling
– Read the majority and
dissenting opinions
– What arguments did each side
make?
• Court rules 7 to 1 to uphold
Louisiana's law providing
accommodations were equal
• “Separate but equal”
How does this image
compare to the reality of
the event?