Industrial Revolution 5-3.2 Explain the practice of discrimination and the passage of discriminatory laws in the United States and their impact on the rights of African Americans, including the Jim Crow laws and the ruling in the Plessy v. Ferguson .
Remember… Slave Codes and Black Codes (keep African Americans under control) Segregation had been growing in the South since removal of federal troops.
Jim Crow Laws Jim Crow Laws were passed by all southern state governments. Laws were designed to keep African American majority under control. Maintain white supremacy by keeping the races socially separated and the African American in a position of social inferiority
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow Laws Made separate facilities for African Americans in schools, housing, theatres, on trains and everywhere else mandatory. Not just separation, but systematic disenfranchisement-with such effective tools such as: Poll tax Literary tax “grandfather clause”
Jim Crow Laws
Poll Tax and Voting Still seen to be a prerogative of the states, so states utilized this technique with a series of state conventions that rewrote state constitutions with measures that systematically excluded African Americans from politics These wrongs were eventfully corrected by the 24th Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Poll Tax and Voting
Plessy v. Ferguson Jim Crow Laws violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment However, Supreme Court ruled in the Plessy v. Ferguson, that separate facilities were okay as long as the facilities were equal. This “separate-but-equal” doctrine validated the Jim Crow Laws in the South for the next six decades. Unfortunately, the “separate” part for the phrase was enforced while the “equal” part was ignored.
Plessy v. Ferguson
Limiting Political Rights of African Americans Southern states established a literacy test for voting that technically did not violate the language of the 15th amendment Voters were suppose to read sections of the Constitution Poll Tax was extremely difficult for poor farmers to pay. Poor white farmers were allowed to vote because of a “grandfather clause” that said if their grandfather could vote, regardless of the literacy or poll tax, so could they.
Tough Times Although African Americans protested their inclusion from public life, violence, intimation, and lynching's by white terrorists effectively silenced their protests.
Your Assignment: You must create a written essay persuading an audience to support your view on the Plessy v Ferguson case. I will assign you a side: Support the doctrine of "separate-but-equal" Reject the doctrine of "separate-but-equal"