1. African-American responses to Jim Crow
USHC 3.5

2. USHC-3.5
Evaluate the varied responses of African-Americans to the restrictions imposed on them in the post-Reconstruction period, including the leadership and strategies of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

3. African-American Response
Determined to claim the full rights of citizenship in a democracy, African-Americans responded to the restrictions placed upon them by the Jim Crow laws and their loss of the vote through poll taxes and literacy tests.
African-American leaders emerged who were united in their determination to attain full citizenship
but were divided as to the best strategy to pursue
The strategies each advocated depended in large measure on personal background and the audience that each addressed.

4. Booker T. Washington Was born a slave in the South
Raised himself to a leadership position through his hard work and determination to receive an education
He founded the Tuskegee Institute in order to provide vocational training to African-Americans

5. Booker T. Washington (cont.)
George Washington Carver worked at Tuskegee developing new crops to aid the poverty- stricken cotton farmers of the region
Booker T. Washington’s experience in the increasingly segregated South led him to advocate vocational education and opportunities for employment as more important to the well-being of African-Americans than social and political equality

6. Booker T. Washington (cont.)
Although Washington’s ultimate goal was full equality, he knew that African-Americans who were too assertive in advocating for their political and social rights might fall victim to a lynching.

7. Booker T. Washington (cont.)
Southern businessmen opened textile mills throughout the region
Booker T. Washington pleaded with them to hire the hard-working former slaves in his so-called “Atlanta Compromise” speech
The agreement was never written down. Essential elements of the agreement were that blacks would not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against racist behavior, they would tolerate segregation and discrimination, that they would receive free basic education, education would be limited to vocational or industrial training (for instance as teachers or nurses), liberal arts education would be prohibited (for instance, college education in the classics, humanities, art, or literature).

8. Booker T. Washington (cont.)
His public statements suggested that he was willing to accept the second-class citizenship offered by Jim Crow laws and literacy tests and poll taxes in exchange for jobs that would alleviate the poverty of African-Americans.
Yet Washington lobbied behind the scenes for greater social and political rights
He sometimes secretly financed legal challenges to Jim Crow laws

9. Booker T. Washington (cont.)
Although Washington’s strategy was acceptable to the white majority of the South, jobs were not forthcoming
Southern African-Americans revered Washington but northern African-Americans criticized his gradualism and “accommodation”

10. W.E.B. DuBois Born free in the North
Attended prestigious schools on scholarship and earned a PhD from Harvard University
DuBois opposed Washington’s emphasis on vocational education

11. W.E.B. DuBois (cont.)
Argued that all African-Americans should have the opportunity for any education that fit their talents
DuBois promoted the development of a “Talented Tenth” of well-educated African-American leaders

12. W.E.B. DuBois (cont.)
DuBois voiced both his opposition to Washington’s strategy and his own advocacy for full social and political rights for all African-Americans
Expressed through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he had helped to found, and its publication The Crisis, which he edited

13. Reaction to DuBois
DuBois’s militant rhetoric energized his readers, the growing African-American middle class
Was less acceptable to the white community

14. Northern View On Race
Schools, neighborhoods, and public facilities continued to be segregated in the North by practice (de facto)
In the South by law (de jure)
African-Americans were most often the last hired and the first fired (LIFO)

15. In the future …
It would be many years, the 1940s, before the NAACP would be systematically successful in protecting the rights of African-Americans in the courts
Culminating with Brown v. Board of Education [1954] and launching the modern civil rights movement

16. Ida Wells-Barnett
Born a slave in Mississippi shortly before emancipation
She grew up on a plantation where her parents continued to work for their former master
Educated in a Reconstruction-era freedom school, Wells-Barnett took a job as a teacher and later as a newspaper writer

17. Ida Wells-Barnett (cont.)
Ida Wells-Barnett experienced Jim Crow first hand when she was forcibly removed from a railroad car and forced to sit in a colored-only car
She sued the railroad company but her initial victory was overturned on appeal

18. Ida Wells-Barnett (cont.)
She wrote an editorial critical of the segregated schools in Memphis that cost Wells-Barnett her job as a teacher
Wells-Barnett also experienced violent intimidation when a friend was lynched in Memphis
This experience launched her investigation of lynching as a newspaper editor

19. Ida Wells-Barnett (cont.)
She devoted the rest of her life to an anti-lynching crusade
Her outspoken criticisms of lynching met with a violent reaction from whites and she was forced to leave Memphis

20. Her views
Ida Wells-Barnett actively objected to Booker T. Washington’s strategy which she labeled as accommodation
She was a founding member of the NAACP, but left that group when it was not militant enough

21. Her views
She worked with Jane Addams to prevent the Chicago public schools from being segregated
Supported the cause of women’s suffrage
Ida raised awareness of the conditions of African-Americans on both the national and international levels