Segregation and Discrimination African Americans led the fight against voting restrictions and Jim Crow Laws.

Voting Restricitons All Southern states created new voting restrictions and denied legal equality to African Americans. Some states limited the vote to people who could read. African Americans trying to vote were often asked more difficult questions than whites during their literacy test. Officials could pass or fail applicants as they wished.

The Poll Tax An annual tax that had to be paid before qualifying to vote. African American and White Sharecroppers were too poor to pay the poll tax. For the White Sharecroppers who failed the literacy test and couldn’t pay the poll tax, the Grandfather Clause was created. They can still vote if their father or grandfather had been eligible to vote before January 1, 1867. The date before slaves were allowed to vote.

Segregation is passed in the South Laws created to separate the African Americans with the whites in public and private facilities. They became better known as “Jim Crow Laws”.

Plessy V Ferguson 1896 the Supreme Court ruled that the separation of races in public accomodations was legal and did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. It created the “separate but equal” which allowed states to maintain segregated facilities as long as they provided equal service. This decision allowed racial segregation for almost sixty years.