Jack Johnson vs. Tommy Burns, Sydney, Australia, 1908

Jack Johnson vs. Stanley Ketchel, Colma, California, 1909

Jack Johnson vs. James Jeffries, 1910

“It comes down, then, after all to this unforgivable blackness. ” – W “It comes down, then, after all to this unforgivable blackness.” – W.E.B. Du Bois

Progressivism: For whites only Most progressives were racists Supported progressive reforms at the same time that they supported Jim Crow laws Some claimed they supported Jim Crow segregation as the only realistic means to protect black people from white violence Supported eugenics sterilization laws Supported city commission and “at large” voting systems to weaken immigrant votes

Ways to stop the voting Poll taxes, 1 or 2 dollars, paid in advance of the election No assistants allowed for illiterate voters Literacy tests requiring elaborate recitation of state constitutions Grandfather clauses (did your grandfather vote before the Civil War?)

Race riot: Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898

Disenfranchisement in the South (by percentage of adult male population eligible to vote) 1876 1900 1912 Alabama 72% 38% 22% Georgia 63% 18% Louisiana 74% 20% Mississippi 80% 17% South Carolina 100%

Booker T. Washington 1881 founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute

Race riot: Atlanta, Georgia, 1906 25 blacks killed 1 white killed 4 blacks beaten to death

Du Bois’ three questions for Booker T. Washington, 1903 How can blacks advance themselves economically if they have no political power? How can blacks have pride in themselves if they are second class citizens? How can blacks maintain good common schools without teachers trained in colleges and universities?

Ida Wells Barnett, 1862-1931, journalist, civil rights activist, feminist

Race riot: Springfield, Illinois, 1908 4000 national guard troops brought in to stop the riot NAACP founded a year later

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) New Orleans black community sends Homer Plessy to test Louisiana train segregation law Supreme Court rules seven to one to uphold the “Separate Car Act” as long as there were equal accommodations for everyone Harlan’s lone dissent: “The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race . . . Is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and equality before the law . . . “

Monroe Trotter, Fredrick McGhee, and the “Trotter group”

The Niagara Movement meeting of 1905 and public concern over the Springfield riot of 1908 resulted in the founding of the NAACP in 1911. Niagara civil rights meeting of 1905

“His was the voice that was calling you to gather here to this cause “His was the voice that was calling you to gather here to this cause.” – Roy Wilkins at March on Washington, 1963

Themes of The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Challenge to Booker T. Washington Challenge to the William Dunning School of Reconstruction at Columbia University “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Argument that Black people possess a “double consciousness” (both American and Black) Call for a “talented tenth” to come forward Questions the extent to which individual self-help and commercial ambitions can help the black community Questions the rural life

C. Vann Woodward’s 1955 book Strange Career of Jim Crow challenged notion of segregated south as natural and eternal. Martin Luther King Jr. called it “the Bible” of the Civil Rights movement.

What does this history mean for us now?