Post Civil War African American Experience

1. Post Civil War African American Experience A Quick Survey

2. Amendment Passed After the Civil War 13th Amendment: Officially abolished  slavery in the U.S. Important because started new era in U.S. history.

3. The Reconstruction, 1865-1877 - After the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson pardoned the South. - Instead, a group of Northern Congressmen, nicknamed the Radical Republicans, began the Reconstruction in the South. - The Congressmen sent federal troops into the South to transform the South.

4. The Reconstruction Amendments 14th Amendment: • Requires states to give all citizens due process of law, and gives all citizens equal protection. • Important because states must protect rights of ALL citizens. 15th Amendment: • Gives ALL citizens the right to vote. • Important because African American males had legal right to vote, despite Southern restrictions.

5. Successes of Reconstruction - Expanded access to education for Blacks - Several Black Congressmen and state representatives elected to office - South had roads/railroads built

6. The Failure of Reconstruction - 1877, end of Reconstruction. - President Hayes pulled troops out and Southern governments established a system of segregation. - The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists used terrorist tactics to intimidate Blacks.

10. Lynching Murdering a person without due process of law; a tactic used to keep whites in power. STATISTICS: - 3445 African Americans were lynched since 1882, when records began to be kept. - Lynching was a public affair, handled by a mob of people.

11. Sharecroppers in Arkansas

12. Sharecroppers in the South

13. Definitions: - Jim Crow : The systematic practice of discriminating against and segregating black people in the South. - Segregation To separate, to keep races or ethnic groups apart. Important because Blacks lived under this system of legal segregation from Reconstruction up until the 1960s. (90 YEARS)

14. Voting in the South • Blacks made up majorities in the South; to keep power, whites had to restrict their right to vote • Ways that governments disenfranchised (took the vote away) Blacks: - Grandfather Clause - Poll Tax – economic way to avoid Blacks voting - Intimidation tactics - Literacy Tests

15. Streetcar station, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

16. Restaurant, Lancaster, Ohio

17. Plessy v. Ferguson - Homer Plessy sat in the white section of the railroad car to confront segregation laws. - Instead, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court agreed with segregation’s rules and said it was legal as long as each race got equal treatment. - It took 58 years to overturn this with the Brown v. Board of Ed. case.

20. As a result of the Great Migration North by 1.75 million Blacks in South: Harlem Renaissance - A period in the 1920s when Black achievements in art, music and literature flourished. - Important b/c redefined image of Blacks in the U.S., and gave black communities pride in their own abilities.

21. Harlem in the 1920s

22. Palmer Hayden, Jeunesse (Youth)

23. Archibald Motley, Harlem

24. DUKE ELLINGTON, musician and composer

25. ZORA NEALE HURSTON, poet & author

26. LANGSTON HUGHES, poet

27. Tuskegee Airmen, World War II

28. Some changes started to occur in the 1940s: - 1948, President Truman signed Executive Order desegregating the US military. - The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, founded in 1909, had legislative successes combating Plessy, preparing them for the Brown case.

29. Harlem Langston Hughes, 1951 What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

30. Mass Action vs Legislative Action • In the years before Brown , the Civil Rights movement was mostly focused on legal action, trying to get laws changed through legal means. • The NAACP had been working against discrimination for years, but in a much less public manner. • As the 1960s began, the Civil Rights movement got a different focus. It was made up of mass action by communities against the discrimination they lived through.

31. How to Protest Individual Communitywide

32. Nonviolent Actions Used by the CR Movement Civil Disobedience A group's refusal to obey a law because they believe the law is immoral (as in protest against discrimination); African Americans used this kind of direct action to force a change to the laws. Sit-In A form of civil disobedience that involves one or more persons nonviolently occupying an area to promote political or social change; a primary action used in the Civil Rights movement. Greensboro, South Carolina

33. What does nonviolent resistance mean? Nonviolent Resistance The practice of achieving political goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, and other methods, and without using violence. Primary strategy in the Civil Rights movement.