Strange Fruit
Racism and Life in 20th
Century America
What do these terms mean?
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Jim Crow Laws
Ku Klux Klan
Lynching
Voting with your Feet/Great
Migration
• Civil Rights
• Freedom, Liberty, Justice
Jim Crow
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Members [of the Ohio House of
Representatives] will be astonished when I tell
them that I have traveled in this free country
for twenty hours without anything to eat; not
because I had no money to pay for it, but
because I was colored. Other passengers of a
lighter hue had breakfast, dinner and supper.
In traveling we are thrown in "jim crow" cars,
denied the privilege of buying a berth in the
sleeping coach. This monster caste stands at
the doors of the theatres and skating rinks,
locks the doors of the pews in our fashionable
churches, closes the mouths of some of the
ministers in their pulpits which prevents the
man of color from breaking the bread of life to
his fellowmen.
This foe of my race stands at the school house
door and separates the children, by reason of
color, and denies to those who have a visible
admixture of African blood in them the
blessings of a graded school and equal
privileges...We call upon all friends of Equal
Rights to assist us in this struggle to secure the
blessings of untrammeled liberty for ourselves
and prosperity.
Ku Klux Klan
Lynch Law
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: to put to death (as by
hanging) by mob action
without legal sanction
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History: In the late 18th
century, Pittsylvania
County, Virginia, was
troubled by criminals who
could not be dealt with by
the courts, which were too
distant. This led to an
agreement to punish such
criminals without due
process of law. Both the
practice and the
punishment came to be
called lynch law after
Captain William Lynch, who
drew up a compact on
September 22, 1780, with a
group of his neighbors.
Voting With your Feet
• African Americans
began moving from the
South to Northern
Metropolitan areas
such as Chicago and
Detroit between 1910s1930s. Many were
escaping the racial
tension and economic
hardships of the South
Voting with their feet
that conditions were
no longer acceptable
or tolerable.
Civil Rights
• Voice of Action
published this woodcut
by artist Richard
Correll in its February
15, 1935 issue. The Civil
Rights Movement has no
definitive beginning but
it is clear that all
minority groups
wanted to enjoy the
same rights and
responsibilities as the
white majority long
before protests and
actions began in the
1950s.
Freedom, Liberty, Justice
The Price of Freedom
Who are these People?
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Ida B. Wells
NAACP
Billie Holiday
“Lewis Allen” AKA Abel Meeropol
Emmett Till
James Bird
Ida B. Wells
NAACP
Billie Holiday
Lewis Allen/Abel Meeropol
Emmett Till
James Bird
Strange Fruit