Jim Crow Laws
Home Work For Thursday
 Answer the Questions to Consider and
 The following Questions for each of the following groups:
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Radical Republicans
Freedmen
The Reconstruction Presidents
Redeemer Governments
 What were the goals of Reconstruction for each group?
 What were the outcomes of Reconstruction for each group?
 What is the legacy of Reconstruction for each group?
 What was the Freedman’s Bureau? How effective was
it (597-600)?
 How did African Americans become a force in southern
politics? Be Specific (609-612)?
 Who were “carpetbaggers” and who were
“scalawags”? (612)
 Explain the role of the Klu Klux Klan in ending
reconstruction (616-620)? How did they use violence to
attain their goals?
-⎯ Presented by the National Humanities Center for use in a Professional Development Seminar ⎯
*
“The Dogwood Tree,” postcard, Texas, 1908
*
National Humanities Center, 2007: nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/. Postcard published by the Harkrider Drug Co., Center, Texas, 1908. Copyright status
 How did whites justify lynching? Why did they get away
with it?
 How does intimidation through terror function today?
Billie Holliday Strange Fruit
 Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves
and blood at the root Black bodies swingin' in the
Southern breeze Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar
trees
 Pastoral scene of the gallant South The bulgin' eyes
and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias sweet and
fresh Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh
 Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to
gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for the
tree to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop
 Summarize the conflict between President Johnson
and Congress (600-602):
 What were “Black codes”? Describe a few of them
(602-604)
 Who were the “Radical republicans”? What were their
political goals? (604-609)
 Why does the Presidential election of 1876 mark the
end of Reconstruction (622-624)? Who won and what
was the compromise?
 Summarize Fredrick Douglass’s views on
Reconstruction (626)
 Tilden won 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, with 20
votes unresolved.
 These 20 electoral votes were in dispute in four states,
Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, each party
reported its candidate had won the state,
 while in Oregon one elector was declared illegal
Compromise
 The South (Democrats) wanted
 The removal of all U.S. military forces from the former
Confederate states.
 The appointment of at least one Southern Democrat to Hayes's
cabinet.
 The construction of another transcontinental railroad using the
Texas and Pacific in the South
 Legislation to help industrialize the South and get them back on
their feet after the loss during the Civil War.
 In exchange, Democrats would peacefully accept Hayes's
presidency.
A truce - not a compromise, but a chance for high-toned gentlemen to
retire gracefully from their very civil declarations of war. By Thomas
Nast in Harper's Weekly, 1877
Primary sources
 In groups of 3-4 students answer ALL questions on the
sheets
Time Line
 1875 Civil Rights Act Passed forbidding discrimination
in hotels, trains, and other public spaces
 1877 Reconstruction ends
 Jim Crow Laws passed and enforced in the South
 Named after a popular minstrel show character
 1883 – Civil Rights Act Declared Unconstitutional by
the Supreme Court.
 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Separate but Equal
Plessy V. Ferguson
 Found constitutionality of a Louisiana law passed in 1890
"providing for separate railway carriages for the white and
colored races.”
 Justice Henry Brown states that the segregation law does
not "discriminate" among legal rights by race, but merely
recognizes a "distinction" between races "which must always
exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other
race by color.”
 Harlan, a former slave owner, issued the sole dissent: "Our
Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates
classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens
are equal before the law.”
 1898 Williams v. Mississippi upheld a Mississippi law
including poll taxes and literacy tests
 In 1896, Louisiana had 130,334 registered black
voters. Eight years later, only 1,342, 1 percent, could
pass the state’s new rules.
 See Here for More History
 1875 Civil Rights Act Passed:
 "Be it enacted, That all persons within the jurisdiction of
the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal
enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages,
facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on
land or water, theaters, and other places of public
amusement; subject only to the conditions and
limitations established by law, and applicable alike to
citizens of every race and color, regardless of any
previous condition of servitude."
 1877 Reconstruction ends
 Jim Crow Laws passed and enforced in the South:
http://www.nps.gov/malu/forteachers/jim_crow_laws.ht
m
 1883 – Civil Rights Act Declared Unconstitutional by
the Supreme Court.
Winslow Homer
The Gulf Stream, 1899
 Of what significance are these features of Homer's The
Gulf Stream:
 the broken mast
 the waterspout and distant ship,
 the swirls of blood, the sugar cane in the boat, and the
man's body stance and expression?
 So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day
rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world-sea…
 Whisperings and portents came home upon the four winds: Lo! we
are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our
voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook
and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism,
saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of
higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man's ballot, by force
or fraud . . .
 So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day
rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world-sea; there is within
and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of
soul; inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings.
--- W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903, Ch. 1: “Of Our
Spiritual Strivings”
 How do these readings and The Gulf Stream
underscore Du Bois's characterization of "the Negro
Problem" as "a concrete test of the underlying
principles of the great republic?" (Souls, Ch. 1)