Discrimination in the United States

1. Discrimination in the United States Industrial Revolution

2. Discrimination • Discrimination: being treated unfairly because of a difference • Discrimination has been part of the United States for a LONG time • Native Americans • Chinese Immigrants • African Americans • All Immigrants

3. Reason for the Laws of Discrimination • Designed to keep African Americans and other groups from gaining too much control • Wanted African Americans and other groups to feel and look inferior • Wanted to maintain white supremacy in the South

4. Trouble voting • The 15th Amendment gave all American men the right to vote • Laws were created to prevent certain groups from voting. • Literacy Test: • 1855 • Passed in the NORTH to limit the voting of Irish-Catholic immigrants • Passed in the South to limit African Americans • The Law: Voters must read selections from the Constitution

5. Trouble Voting • Poll Tax: • Began around 1889 • Required to pay between $1.00 and $1.50 to vote • They often had to pay before the harvest. • Farmers and other poor whites/ blacks had trouble finding money • You had to pay ALL back taxes before you could vote • All the years you missed

6. Grandfather Clause • Grandfather Clause: • Created to protect the voting of white Americans • Law: If your grandfathercould vote, before 1870, then you can also vote, regardless of your ability to pay or read. • African Americans could not vote in 1870, so this didn’t help them.

7. Jim Crow Laws • Jim Crow Laws • Passed in the South • Ruled “OK” by the Supreme Court in a case called “Plessy v. Ferguson” in 1896 • Law: Separate facilities are legal as long as they are equal. • This law enforced segregation. • Segregation: the separation of whites from African Americans and other groups

8. Jim Crow Laws • Nearly everything was separate: • Schools • Theaters • Trains • Buses • Water fountains • Neighborhoods • Hotels • Restaurants • Almost ALL public places • The separate part of the law was followed, and the equal part was ignored.

9. Jim Crow Laws • Unfair treatment: • Had little political power • Not treated as “equals” in public or the workplace • Often the last hired and the first fired • Jim Crow Laws were only in the South, but the North also had discrimination. • Everyone was scared to complain. Violence, intimidation, and lynching still occurred. • These laws continued until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.