Segregation and the Disenfranchisement of the South

1. Segregation and the Disenfranchisement of the South

2. Significant Leaders W.E.B. DuBois Booker T. Washington Ida Wells

3. W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) • Born in Massachusetts • Attended school where he excelled academically • Attended Fisk University in Tennessee • 1895 first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard • Supporter of Pan- Africanism the belief that all African Americans should join together and work to conquer prejudice • Taught at the University Level • Protested and fought against injustices of racial discrimination • 1909witht he help of Mary White Ovington they formed the NAACP • Authored several books • 1961 He moved to Ghana Africa , where he spent the remainder of his life as a communist party member.

4. Beliefs • African Americans should be free to pursue a college education in Advanced liberal arts education • African Americans should openly strive for their rights • College educated African American would have the best opportunity to turn the “flood of discrimination”

5. born a slave in Hale's Ford, Virginia, reportedly on April 5, 1856. After emancipation, he worked in salt furnaces and coal mines beginning at age nine an intelligent and curious child, he yearned for an education and was frustrated when he could not receive good schooling locally at 16 his parents allowed him to quit work to go to school. They had no money to help him, so he walked 200 miles to attend the Hampton Institute in Virginia and paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

6. Washington became a teacher. He first taught in his home town, then at the Hampton Institute, and then in 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. • he traveled the country unceasingly to raise funds from blacks and whites both; soon he became a well-known speaker. • In 1895, Washington was asked to speak at the opening of the Cotton States Exposition, an unprecedented honor for an African American. His Atlanta Compromise speech explained his major thesis, that blacks could secure their constitutional rights through their own economic and moral advancement rather than through legal and political changes. • He angered some blacks who feared it would encourage the foes of equal rights, whites approved of his views. • his major achievement was to win over diverse elements among southern whites, without whose support the programs he envisioned and brought into being would have been impossible.

7. In 1901 he was invited to the White house by President Theodore Roosevelt • In addition to Tuskegee Institute, which still educates many today, Washington instituted a variety of programs for rural extension work, and helped to establish the National Negro Business League. Shortly after the election of President William McKinley in 1896, a movement was set in motion that Washington be named to a cabinet post, but he withdrew his name from consideration, preferring to work outside the political arena. • He died on November 14, 1915.

8. Beliefs • that Africans should develop practical vocation skills to acquire property and lead to economic prosperity • Africans could succeed in occupations that whites needed them to fill • African Americans should stop demanding equal rights and through compromise get along with whites

9. Tuskegee Institute • Booker T. Washington’s formula • Economic success • Plus education • Equals = Equality Washington opened what would become Tuskegee Institute in 1881 to train blacks to become teachers.

10. Washington vs. Du Bois Gradually gain rights. Full civil rights now!

11. Booker T. Washington believed that equality would come through vocational education. He accepted social segregation. Du Bois believed education was meaningless without equality. His N.A.A.C.P. was an formed to fight for political equality. He led what was called “The Niagara Movement”. Booker T. vs. W.E.B.

12. Ida B. Wells • daughter of a carpenter • born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862. • Her parents were slaves but they family achieved freedom in 1865. • When she was sixteen both her parents and a younger brother, died of yellow fever. At a meeting following the funeral, friends and relatives decided that the five children should be farmed out to various aunts and uncles. Ida was devastated by the idea and to keep the family together, dropped out of High School, and found employment as a teacher in a local Black school. • 1880-moved to Memphis where she attended Fisk University • She held strong political opinions and she upset many people with her views on Womens rights. When she was 24 she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge." • Ida became a public figure in Memphis when in 1884 she led a campaign against segregation on the local railway. After being forcibly removed from a whites only carriage she successfully sued the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company. However, this was overturned three years later by a ruling from the Tennessee Supreme Court. • 1884 Ida began teaching in Memphis. She also wrote articles on civil rights for local newspapers and when she criticized the Memphis Board of Education for under-funding African American schools, she lost her job as a teacher. • used her savings to become part owner of Free Speech, a small newspaper in Memphis. Over the next few years she concentrated on writing about individual cases where black people had suffered at the hands of white racists. This included an investigation into lynching and discovered during a short period 728 black men and women had been lynched by white mobs. Of these deaths, two-thirds were for small offences such as public drunkenness and shoplifting. She led an anti-lynching crusade and called on the federal government to take action

13. On 9th March, 1892, three African American businessmen were lynched in Memphis. When Ida wrote an article condemning the lynchers, a white mob destroyed her printing press. They declared that they intended to lynch Ida but fortunately she was visiting Philadelphia at the time. • Unable to return to Memphis, Ida was recruited by the progressive newspaper, New York Age. She continued her campaign against lynching and Jim Crow laws and in 1893 and 1894 made lecture tours of Britain. While there in 1894 she helped to establish the British Anti-Lynching Committee.. • In 1894 Ida married Ferdinand Barnett, the founder of the Conservator, the first African American newspaper in Chicago. Ida gave birth to four children: She continued her involvement in politics and wrote pamphlets such as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law and Mob Rule in New Orleans. • In 1901 Ida published her book, Lynching and the Excuse for It. In the book she argued that the main aim of lynching was to intimidate blacks from becoming involved in politics and therefore maintaining white power in the South. • Ida was also one of the founders of the NAACP in 1909. At the first conference of the NAACP she successfully persuaded the organization to resolve to make lynching a federal crime. • An early supporter of women's suffrage, Ida created a stir in 1913 when she refused to march at the back with other black delegates during a demonstration organized by the National American Women Suffrage. • Ida, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, campaigned for racial equality in the United States Army during World War I. This included publicizing the execution of black soldiers for minor offences while fighting for their country. • After her retirement, Ida wrote her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928). • Ida Wells-Barnett died of uremia on 25th March, 1931.

14. Political Rights After Reconstruction • Poll taxes, literacy tests, the understanding and grandfather clauses were all used to deny blacks the right to vote. • The 15th amendment was circumvented.

15. While DuBois and Washington debated how to get equality, much of the country stayed in the grip of “Jim Crow” laws. Jim Crow laws separated the races at movies, ball games, schools, etc. Segregation’s Grip

16. Segregated Drinking Fountain • Routine acts like using a rest room or getting a drink were an exercise in humiliation for blacks. • Blacks who challenged “Jim Crow” laws often met with violence.

17. Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 In addition to the indirect and illegal denial of civil rights blacks encountered legal set backs. The US Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson approved officially segregated facilities.

19. “Separate but Equal” • The court found that states could legally separate the races by providing “separate but equal” facilities. This, according to the S. Court, would not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment • Of course, from schools to waiting rooms at train stations the facilities were not equal.

20. Jim Crow Laws • Laws passed in the South that set up a system of legal separation between the races in public places • Named After a minstrel song-and-dance routine Defacto Discrimination • discrimination resulted in the practice of discrimination, but was not upheld by law

21. Literacy Test Literacy test were used to determine voter eligibility, the following test was given in Alabama in 1965 • In Groups of three you will complete the literacy test from the following site. http://www.ccle.fourh.umn.edu/literacy.pdf • You may not use any resources other than yourself. • Good luck!!!

22. Poll Tax • a capital tax levied equally on every adult in the community. Although no longer a significant source of revenue for any major country, the poll tax did provide large sums for many governments until well into the 1800s. The tax has long been attacked as being an unfair burden upon those less able to pay. In the United States, the poll tax has been connected with voting rights. Poll taxes enacted in Southern states between 1889 and 1910 had the effect of disenfranchising many blacks as well as poor whites, because payment of the tax was a prerequisite for voting. By the 1940s some of these taxes had been abolished, and in 1964 the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution disallowed the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting in federal elections. In 1966 this prohibition was extended to all elections by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that such a tax violated the "equal protection" clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

23. Lynching • A mob’s illegal seizure and execution of a suspected criminal or troublemaker

27. Great Migration 1910-20 • Some blacks “voted with their feet” leaving the South for Northern cities. • While there was racial injustice in the North, there were opportunities too! Cities like New York, Chicago, and Detroit greatly increased their black population.

28. NYC Center of “Harlem Renaissance” • African American artists, writers, and musicians began to congregate in urban centers like Harlem in New York city. • The explosion of art and music produced is sometimes called :The Harlem Renaissance”. Harlem NYC

29. African American Artists • Black artists became internationally famous • Jazz trumpet master Louie Armstrong • Gifted poet and writer Langston Hughes • Elegant musician “Duke” Ellington

30. Little Progress in Area of Civil Rights • There were some economic gains for black Americans in the North. • But the era from 1900 - 1920’s saw a resurgence of the KKK and an increase in lynchings in the South.