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African Americans were mainly ignored by the progressive movement. The first movie extravaganza that became a box-office smash in 1915 – D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation – illustrated the depth of the exclusion. “It started people to thinking,” one reviewer wrote. “The people of Chicago saw…the reason the South wants the Negro to ‘keep in his place.’ They saw in it a new conception of southern problems.”
Progressives Did Nothing • Two Reasons: • They shared in general prejudice of their times. • They considered other reforms to be more important because they benefited everyone and not just one group.
Who Was Jim Crow? • The name Jim Crow is often used to describe the segregation laws, rules, and customs which arose after Reconstruction ended in 1877 and continued until the mid-1960s.
“Jim Crow”Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice "Come listen all you galls and boys,I'm going to sing a little song,My name is Jim Crow.Weel about and turn about and do jis so,Eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow."
Rice, and his imitators, by their stereotypical depictions of Blacks, helped to popularize the belief that Blacks were lazy, stupid, inherently less human, and unworthy of integration. • Ironically, years later when Blacks replaced White minstrels, the Blacks also "blackened" their faces, thereby pretending to be Whites pretending to be Blacks. They, too, performed the Coon Shows which dehumanized Blacks and helped establish the desirability of racial segregation.
Daddy Rice, the original Jim Crow, became rich and famous because of his skills as a minstrel. However, he lived an extravagant lifestyle, and when he died in New York on September 19, 1860, he was in poverty.
What was Jim Crow? • A social caste system. • It was more than a series of rigid anti-Black laws. It was a way of life.
A Black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a White male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a Black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a White woman, because he risked being accused of rape. • Blacks and Whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, Whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them. • Under no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the cigarette of a White female -- that gesture implied intimacy. • Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended Whites. • Jim Crow etiquette prescribed that Blacks were introduced to Whites, never Whites to Blacks. For example: "Mr. Peters (the White person), this is Charlie (the Black person), that I spoke to you about." • Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to Blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, Blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to Whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names. • If a Black person rode in a car driven by a White person, the Black person sat in the back seat, or the back of a truck. • White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.
Stetson Kennedy, the author of Jim Crow Guide, offered these simple rules that Blacks were supposed to observe in conversing with Whites: • Never assert or even intimate that a White person is lying. • Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White person. • Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class. • Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence. • Never curse a White person. • Never laugh derisively at a White person. • Never comment upon the appearance of a White female.
During the 1890s, southern states employed several tactics to deny African Americans the vote. • They required voters to own property and pay a poll tax. • They required all voters to pass a literacy test but gave African Americans difficult questions to answer. • They passed laws exempting most whites from voting restrictions.
In the South, society was organized according to the Jim Crow system. • All public places were segregated by law. • The Supreme Court upheld the legality of Jim Crow in Plessy v. Ferguson. • Facilities designed for blacks were always inferior.
Plessy v. Ferguson • The Supreme Court used this case to declare segregation legal so long as facilities provided both races were “separate but equal” in quality. • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas would declare this ruling unconstitutional.
Plessy v. FergusonIn the Supreme Court • Oral Argument: • Monday, April 13, 1896 • Decision: • Monday, May 18, 1896 • Facts of the Case The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy--who was seven-eighths Caucasian--took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested. • Question Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its trains an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment? • Conclusion No, the state law is within constitutional boundaries. The majority, in an opinion authored by Justice Henry Billings Brown, upheld state-imposed racial segregation. The justices based their decision on the separate-but-equal doctrine, that separate facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal. (The phrase, "separate but equal" was not part of the opinion.) Justice Brown conceded that the 14th amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the law. But Brown noted that "in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races unsatisfactory to either." In short, segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination.
Homer A. Plessy 7/8 white" or octoroon
Justice Henry Billings Brown Delivered Majority Opinion Justice John Marshall Harlan Cast Lone Dissenting Vote
What was the issue before the Supreme Court? • What facts of the case were presented to the Court? • What was the decision of the Court? What was the rationale behind it? • What was the effect of the decision?
African Americans responded to discrimination in several ways. • Some advocated black pride and emigration to Africa. • One group founded the NAACP to challenge discrimination in the courts. • Many African Americans self-help groups were established, such as the National Negro Business League and the National Urban League
Identify the role played by each of the following in the turn-of-the-century America. • Lynching – During the post-Reconstruction period, African Americans were the victims of lynchings, and the perpetrators of these horrors were rarely pursued and punished. • de facto discrimination – made life in the North almost as difficult for African Americans as life in the South. • Madam C.J. Walker – a successful entrepreneur who developed products exclusively for African Americans. She hired African Americans and became a political and social activist.
Jim Crow Laws First appeared in Massachusetts in the 1830s Became firmly established in southern states after Reconstruction Declared legal by Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson decision Required the separation of blacks and whites in school, parks, public buildings, and public transportation Battled against by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
