Segregation and Discrimination

1 286 CHAPTER8 Terms & NamesTerms & NamesMAIN IDEAMAIN IDEAOne American's StorySegregation andDiscriminationWHY IT MATTERS NOWWHY IT MATTERS NOWBorn into slavery shortly before emancipation, Ida B. Wellsmoved to Memphis in the early 1880s to work as a later became an editor of a local paper. Racial justice wasa persistent theme in Wells s reporting. The events of March 9, 1892 turned that theme into a crusade. ThreeAfrican-American businessmen, friends of Wells, werelynched illegally executed without trial. Wells saw lynch-ing for what it PERSONALVOICEIDA B. WELLS Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Lee Stewart had beenlynched in Memphis.

2 [where] no lynching had taken place .. This is what opened my eyes to what lynching really was. An excuseto get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep therace terrorized .. quoted inCrusade for JusticeAfrican Americans were not the only group to experience violence and racialdiscrimination. Native Americans, Mexican residents, and Chinese immigrantsalso encountered bitter forms of oppression, particularly in the American Americans Fight Legal DiscriminationAs African Americans exercised their newly won political and social rights duringReconstruction, they faced hostile and often violent opposition from Americans eventually fell victim to laws restricting their civil rights butnever stopped fighting for equality.

3 For at least ten years after the end ofReconstruction in 1877, African Americans in the South continued to vote andoccasionally to hold political office. By the turn of the 20th century , however,Southern states had adopted a broad system of legal policies of racial discrimi-nation and devised methods to weaken African-American political power. Ida B. Wells poll tax grandfatherclause Segregation Jim Crow laws debt peonageAfrican Americans led thefight against votingrestrictions and Jim , African Americans have thelegacy of a century -long battle forcivil rights. Ida B.

4 Wellsmoved north tocontinue her fightagainst lynchingby writing,lecturing, andorganizing for RESTRICTIONSAllSouthern states imposed newvoting restrictions and deniedlegal equality to AfricanAmericans. Some states, forexample, limited the vote topeople who could read, andrequired registration officialsto administer a literacy test totest reading. Blacks trying tovote were often asked moredifficult questions than whites,or given a test in a foreign lan-guage. Officials could pass orfail applicants as they requirement wasthepoll tax, an annual taxthat had to be paid beforequalifying to vote.

5 Black aswell as white sharecropperswere often too poor to pay the poll tax. To reinstate white voters who may havefailed the literacy test or could not pay the poll tax, several Southern states addedthegrandfather clauseto their constitutions. The clause stated that even if aman failed the literacy test or could not afford the poll tax, he was still entitled tovote if he, his father, or his grandfather had been eligible to vote before January 1,1867. The date is important because before that time, freed slaves did not havethe right to vote. The grandfather clause therefore did not allow them to vote.

6 JIM CROW LAWSD uring the 1870s and 1880s, the Supreme Court failed tooverturn the poll tax or the grandfather clause, even though the laws underminedall federal protections for African Americans civil rights. At the same time thatblacks lost voting rights, Southern states passed racial segregationlaws to sepa-rate white and black people in public and private facilities. These laws came to beknown as Jim Crow lawsafter a popular old minstrel song that ended in thewords Jump, Jim Crow. Racial Segregation was put into effect in schools, hospi-tals, parks, and transportation systems throughout the a legal case reached the Supreme Courtto test the constitutionality of Segregation .

7 In 1896, in , theSupreme Court ruled that the separation of races in public accommodations waslegal and did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision establishedthe doctrine of separate but equal, which allowed states to maintain segregatedfacilities for blacks and whites as long as they provided equal service. The deci-sion permitted legalized racial Segregation for almost 60 years. (See , page 290.)Turn-of-the- century Race RelationsAfrican Americans faced not only formal Discrimination but also informal rulesand customs, called racial etiquette, that regulated relationships between whitesand blacks.

8 Usually, these customs belittled and humiliated African Americans,enforcing their second-class status. For example, blacks and whites never shookhands, since shaking hands would have implied equality. Blacks also had to yieldthe sidewalk to white pedestrians, and black men always had to remove their hatsfor at the Turn of the 20th Century287A This theater in Leland,Mississippi, wassegregated underthe Jim Crow : oneof a troupe ofentertainers inblackfacepresenting acomic varietyshowMAIN IDEAMAIN IDEAAA nalyzingEffectsHow did thePlessyv. Fergusonruling affect thecivil rights ofAfricanAmericans?Some moderate reformers, like Booker T.

9 Washington,earned support from whites. Washington suggested thatwhites and blacks work together for social PERSONALVOICEBOOKER T. WASHINGTON To those of the white race .. I would repeat what I sayto my own race.. Cast down your bucket among thesepeople who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilledyour fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads andcities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of theearth.. In all things that are purely social we can be asseparate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all thingsessential to mutual progress. Atlanta Exposition address, 1895 Washington hoped that improving the economic skillsof African Americans would pave the way for long-termgains.

10 People like Ida B. Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois, howev-er, thought that the problems of inequality were too urgentto Americans and others who did not fol-low the racial etiquette could face severe punishment ordeath. All too often, blacks who were accused of violatingthe etiquette were lynched. Between 1882 and 1892, morethan 1,400 African-American men and women were shot,burned, or hanged without trial in the South. Lynchingpeaked in the 1880s and 1890s but continued well into the20th century . Discrimination IN THE NORTHMost African Americans lived in the segregatedSouth, but by 1900, a number of blacks had moved to Northern cities.