Politics and Reform

1. Politics and Reform The Rise of Segregation

2. Learning Targets • Describe the activities of Benjamin “Pap” Singleton • Discover the goals of the Populist party • Explain how the “grandfather clause” in Louisiana was used to keep former slaves from voting. • Know where the term “Jim Crow Laws” came from • Understand the Supreme Court’s role in allowing segregation • Evaluate the role that Plessyv Ferguson played in establishing legal doctrine of “separate but equal” • Know what lynching was and who it was carried out against • Describe the role that Ida B. Wells played in civil rights • Compare and contrast the activities and ideas of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois on how to end discrimination

3. Resistance and Repression • After the Civil War, the living conditions in the south were little better than slavery for black Americans. • Many lived as sharecroppers. • Conditions of poverty. • Sought jobs in southern towns. • Headed west to claim homesteads.

4. Resistance and Repression -Exodus to Kansas • In 1879, 70-year-old Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, himself formerly enslaved, took action to escape the conditions of the rural South. • He organized a mass migration of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to Kansas.

5. Resistance and Repression -Forming a Separate Alliance • The Populist Party formed in 1891. • They hoped that the new People’s Party would unite poor whites and poor blacks to challenge the Democratic Party’s power in the South.

6. Legalizing Segregation • Jim Crow laws. The term probably came from the name of a character popularized by a slavery-era blackface minstrel. • In 1883 the Supreme Court set the stage for legalized segregation by overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1875. • Southern states passed a series of laws that enforced segregation in virtually all public places. • In 1892 an African American named Homer Plessy challenged a Louisiana law that forced him to ride in a separate railroad car from whites. • In 1896 the Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, upheld the Louisiana law and expressed a new legal doctrine endorsing “separate but equal”

7. The African American Response • In 1892 Ida B. Wells, a fiery young African American woman from Tennessee, launched a fearless crusade against lynching. • She reported that three African American grocers lynched in Memphis had been guilty of nothing more than competing successfully against white grocers.

8. The African American Response -A Call for Compromise • Booker T. Washington, proposed that African Americans concentrate on achieving economic goals rather than legal or political ones. • He was founder of Tuskegee Institute.

9. The African American Response -Voice of the Future • W.E.B. Du Bois was particularly concerned with protecting and exercising voting rights. • In the years that followed, many African Americans worked to win the vote and end discrimination.

10. Review Questions • Describe the activities of Benjamin “Pap” Singleton • Discover the goals of the Populist party • Explain how the “grandfather clause” in Louisiana was used to keep former slaves from voting. • Know where the term “Jim Crow Laws” came from • Understand the Supreme Court’s role in allowing segregation • Evaluate the role that Plessyv Ferguson played in establishing legal doctrine of “separate but equal” • Know what lynching was and who it was carried out against • Describe the role that Ida B. Wells played in civil rights

11. Essay Question • Summarize the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois on how to solve discrimination against African Americans.

12. Essay Question and Answer • Summarize the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois on how to solve discrimination against African Americans. • Booker T. Washington proposed that African Americans concentrate on achieving economic goals rather than legal or political ones. In his famous speech known as the Atlanta Compromise, he urged his fellow African Americans to postpone the fight for civil rights and instead concentrate on preparing themselves educationally and vocationally for full equality. • W.E.B. Du Bois challenged Washington’s ideas. He pointed out that white Southerners continued to strip African Americans of their civil rights, in spite of the progress they were making in education and vocational training. Du Bois argued that African Americans could regain that lost ground and achieve full equality only by demanding their rights. Du Bois was particularly concerned with protecting and exercising voting rights.