African-Americans during the Gilded Age

1. African-Americans during the Gilded Age • South: conditions were not much better than slavery • Sharecroppers: landless farmers who had to hand over portion of crops to cover cost of rent, seed, tools

2. African-Americans during the Gilded Age • Exodusters – mass migration of African-Americans from the rural South to Kansas • An attempt to escape from the harsh discrimination in the South

3. African-Americans during the Gilded Age • Colored Farmers’ National Alliance • Similar to Farmer’s Alliance • Then joined the Populist Party

4. Voting • 15th Amendment: prohibits states from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” • Did not prevent states from making literacy or ownership of property a requirement to vote. • Effect: Southern states impose restrictions that barred nearly all African-Americans from voting

5. Voting • States required the payment of a poll tax • Literacy tests • Very difficult to pass even if you could read. • Officials were more lenient towards whites. • Grandfather clause: allowed men to vote if he had an ancestor on the voting rolls in 1867.

6. Segregation • Segregation: separation of the races • Happened in north and south • In the south – it was enforced by law • Jim Crow laws: statues enforcing segregation • 1892: Homer Plessy – African-American man arrested for riding in a “whites-only” railroad car • Supreme Court case: Plessy v. Ferguson • Separate but equal is OK

10. Racial Etiquette (south) • No shaking hands with whites • Yield sidewalk to whites • Take hats off for whites • Blacks refer to whites as “Mr.”, “Ms.” or “boss” • Black men were referred to as “Boy,” “Old Man”, etc. • In legal cases, black men were referred to as Negro, then their first name. Ex. Negro John

11. “Rescuers discovered that two women, three men, four children, and five Negroes were killed by the explosion.” -newspaper excerpt

12. Lynching • Executions without proper court proceedings • Usually for someone who violated a racial custom.

13. Lynching

15. Lynching • Ida B. Wells – wrote about the horrors of lynching. • Wrote for newspapers, wrote books.