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The Core of the Gilded Age. Segregation. Following the end of reconstruction the white southerners started to reassert their control over the African Americans Started to take away their voting rights Enacted Jim Crow laws. Limiting Voters rights.
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Segregation • Following the end of reconstruction the white southerners started to reassert their control over the African Americans • Started to take away their voting rights • Enacted Jim Crow laws
Limiting Voters rights • 15th amendment prohibited state governments from denying the vote because of “races, color, or previous conditions of servitude” • Got around this with restrictive measures • Poll Tax – required voters to pay $1 or $2 to vote • Literacy Tests – “understanding” education. • Grandfather clauses - allowed a person to vote as long as his ancestors had voted prior to 1866. • This was impossible for former slaves. • Violence
Impact of voter rights Voter participation plummeted in the south. Registered voters in the Louisiana went from 130,000 to 1,300 from 1894 to 1904. On the eve of WWII only 3 percent of all African Americans in the South Could Vote.
Forced Segregation • Jim Crow Laws became a way of life in the south. • Separated black and white • Separate everything. • Some whites opposed because they thought it would be extreme having everything separate. • Some southern states had separate jury boxes, and bibles and more.
Separate Life • Many southern states had separate • Cemeteries • Hospitals • Schools • Parks • Restaurants • Beaches • And more • Also had restrictions on where people can live and work based on race
Plessy v Ferguson • Supreme court supported Jim crow laws • 1890 Louisiana passed a law that railroads can provide separate but equal facilities. • Homer Plessy, sat in a car reserved for whites and was arrested when he refused to move to the colored car. • Appealed to the supreme court that the separate car act violated the 14th amendment • Supreme court upheld the separate but equal act • Opened the door for more Jim crow laws and furthered segregation in the south.
Racial Discrimination • Didn’t just affect African Americans in the South • On the Pacific Coast, the Chinese were also suffering from extreme segregation • Segregation • Oriental Schools • Limited Employment • Government Chinese Exclusion Act • Prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the country
Chinese Fight for Rights • Yick Woe v. Hopkins • Supreme Court sided with a Chinese immigrant who challenged a California law that banned him from operating a laundry • Court ruled in 1898 that individuals of Chinese descent , born in the US, could not be stripped of citizenship • Upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act and other discriminatory measures.
Mexican Americans fight for Rights • Land became the leading cause for discrimination • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed property rights of Mexicans who lived in the south west prior to the war. • 4 out of 5 lost their land. • Government said that Mexican Americans had to prove it was their land • Land often owned communally so proof was difficult. • New Mexico was not a state so they had no representatives in Washington to fight for them
Mexican Americans fight Back • Many groups fought to maintain their rights • Las GorrasBlancas • Targeted the property of large ranch owners by cutting holes in their fences and burning houses. • “our purpose is to protect the rights and interests of the people in general; especially those of the helpless classes.” • Alianza Hispano-Americana • Formed in 1894 to protect the culture, interests, and legal rights of Mexican Americans
Women’s Rights • Women's rights movements were big prior to the Civil War and continued through the gilded age. • Women’s main goal was to fight for the right to vote • Susan B Anthony • Voted illegally in a New York election • convicted and toured the country giving speeches about suffrage as she awaited trial • “Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?” • Not many listened to her • At the time of her death only 4 western states had granted women a vote • Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho
Women make progress • Education • Women attending college skyrocket • By 1900 one third of all college students, nationwide, were women. • Temperance • Women’s Christian Temperance Union • Fought to ban the sale of alcohol • Also fought for public health reforms and welfare.