1. Segregation & Discrimination
Section 4
Chapter 15
Life at the Turn of the 20th Century
Riddlebarger

2. Define: Prejudice

3. Legalized Discrimination
14th Amendment: (1866) Gave full rights & citizenship to all people born in the United States (except Native Americans)
15th Amendment: (1870) Gave African-American men the right to vote
Both meant to guarantee rights of African-Americans
This did not happen
Prejudice persists in USA
Legalized discrimination in the South

4. Restricting the right to vote
Reconstruction ends in 1877 & white Democrats regain control of southern states
Make sure African-Americans can’t vote
How?
Poll Tax
Literacy Test
Grandfather Clause
Most are too poor to afford tax and too poorly educated to pass test

5. Poll taxes & literacy tests also eliminated some poor whites
So...grandfather clauses were instituted
A man could vote if he, his father or grandfather had been voter eligible before Jan
Only white males had the right to vote before that date
So no black man qualified.
Grandfather Clauses

6. Define: Segregation

7. Legalized Segregation
Southern states pass a series of laws designed to create & enforce segregation
Jim Crow laws
By 1890’s many public places & services are segregated
Ex., schools, rail cars
What about Civil Rights Act of 1875?

8. “All persons...shall be entitled to full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.”
Civil Rights Act of 1875

9. Legalized Segregation cont.
In 1883, the Supreme Court declares the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional
Also, 14th Amendment- also guarantees equal protection under the law- only applies to state governments
Congress can keep states from racial policies but not private individuals or businesses
Homer Plessy challenges “equal but separate” accommodations on trains
Arrested for sitting in whites only section; challenges arrest based on 14th Amendment

10. Landmark Supreme Court ruling
Upholds (allows) practice of segregation
Court says “separate but equal” facilities do not violate 14th Amendment
Legal segregation will go on for 60 years
Plessy v. Ferguson
Landmark Supreme Court ruling

12. How do Southern States limit the rights of African Americans?

13. Informal Discrimination
Laws were not the only racial barriers
Racial etiquette governs social & business interactions
African-Americans expected to “know their place”
Must defer to whites in every encounter
Failing to speak respectfully or showing too much pride or defiance will lead to consequences

14. Murder of an individual, usually by hanging, without a legal trial
Lynching

15. Why did African-Americans usually go along with the system of racial etiquette?

16. Prominent Black Leaders
Two different approaches to improving lives of African- Americans emerge:
Booker T. Washington (born a slave)- believed they should accept segregation for now & focus on acquiring farming & vocational skills (self-sufficiency)
Founds Tuskegee Institute (Alabama)
W. E. B. Du Bois- believed in speaking against prejudice & strived for full rights immediately
Helps found National Association for Colored People

17. “Industrial and trade teaching is needed…[but] it is not needed as much as thorough common school training and the careful education of the gifted in higher institutions”
“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem...The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.”
Washington
Du Bois

18. How did the views of Washington & Du Bois differ?

19. Others Suffer Discrimination
Mexican Americans
Many face hostility from whites
Must take menial jobs for little pay
Mines, RR’s; mostly farms
Debt peonage
Asian Americans
Live in segregated neighborhoods and have segregated schools; some state forbid marriage to whites
Native Americans
Continuous government efforts to stamp out way of life
Children sent off to be “Americanized”
Few economic opportunities on reservations
Many not citizens until Indian Citizenship Act of 1924

20. How were the experiences of minority groups similar?