Race Relations in the Gilded Age

Resistance and Repression After Reconstruction, most African Americans were sharecroppers Many of them joined the Populist Party, which angered white Democrats who turned to racist tactics to win the support of poor whites By 1890 election officials in the south began using methods to make it difficult for Blacks to vote

Disfranchising African Americans Southern states used loopholes to impose voting restrictions on Blacks Poll taxes Literacy tests Grandfather clause Southern states passed laws that enforced segregation in public places Called “Jim Crow Laws”

Disfranchising African Americans In 1883 the Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875 The Supreme Court ruling in Plessey vs. Ferguson legalized “separate but equal” facilities Violence against Blacks increased Between 1890 and 1899, hundreds of lynchings took place in the south.

Disfranchising African Americans

African American Response In 1892 Ida B. Wells began an anti-lynching crusade She wrote newspaper articles and a book denouncing lynchings and mob violence against Blacks Booker T. Washington urged fellow African Americans to concentrate on achieving economic goals rather than political ones. He explained his views in a speech known as the Atlanta Compromise

African American Response

African American Response W. E. B. duBois challenged the Atlanta Compromise He believed that African Americans had to demand their rights, especially voting rights in order to gain full equlaity