1. Section 3 Segregation and Discrimination
Chapter 8
Section 3
Segregation and Discrimination

2. African-Americans Fight Legal Discrimination
How were the Southern states able to weaken African-American political power?
Voting restrictions
Jim Crow Laws
Plessy v. Ferguson

3. Voting Restrictions Literacy requirements Asked difficult questions
Officials could choose who passed or failed
Poll tax- annual tax before qualifying to vote
Grandfather clause- too poor? Can’t read? You can vote if he, his father, or his grandfather had been able to vote before Jan. 1, 1867

4. Jim Crow Laws
Southern states pass racial segregation laws to separate white and black people in public and private facilities
Also known as Jim Crow laws
Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited. Florida
Cohabitation: Any negro man and white woman, or any white
man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars. Florida

5. Plessy v. Ferguson
In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled that the separation of races in public accommodations was legal and did not violate 14th Amendment
Plessy took a seat in the “Whites Only” section of a train and refused to move. He claimed he was denied equal protection under the law
This case established the doctrine of “separate but equal”
Why does this decision matter? It allowed city and state governments to continue to limit African-Americans’ access to public facilities
How and when was the Plessy case overturned? The NAACP continued to challenge segregation laws in court.
In 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education overturned Plessy and declared “separate but equal” was unconstitutional in public education

6. Turn of the Century Race Relations
Violence – lynching , shootings, burnings without trial for violating racial etiquette
Discrimination in the North
Blacks migrate North for jobs and social equality
However, African- Americans were forced to live in segregated neighborhoods, left out of unions, hired last/fired first

7. How did some African- American leaders fight discrimination?
Ida Wells – fought lynching
Homer Plessy- takes his case to the Supreme Court
Booker T. Washington – vocational education, gradually earn trust and respect, keep apart socially
W.E.B. DuBois – immediate political, economic, social equality, founder of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

8. Discrimination in the West
Mexican Workers – helped to build railroads, mining, agriculture, often forced into
Debt peonage – a system that bound laborers into slavery in order to work off a debt to the employer
Excluding the Chinese – whites fear job competition
Segregated schools and neighborhoods