african americans, 1877-1914 i. segregation and disfranchisement ii.race in the progressive era iii....

African Americans, 1877-1914

I. Segregation and Disfranchisement

II. Race in the Progressive Era

III. Booker T. Washington

IV. W. E. B. Du Bois

V. Marcus Garvey

Key Terms

• Rutherford B. Hayes (1876-1881)

• United States v. Cruikshank (1876)

• Jim Crow• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)• Williams v. Mississippi

(1898)• Grandfather Clause (1898)

• Birth of a Nation (1915)• Tuskegee Institute (1881)• Atlanta Compromise (1895)• Talented Tenth• National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (1909)

• Universal Negro Improvement Association (1919)

I. Segregation & Disfranchisement

Rutherford B. Hayes

The Waite Supreme Court, 1874-1888

United States v. Cruikshank (1876)

The Supreme Court Declared that the Fourteenth Amendment “adds nothing to the rights of one citizen against another.”

“Jim Crow”

1889

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

The Supreme Court wrote that “the under lying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.”

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

“social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the Negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this position. . . . Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.”

“Separate But

Equal”

Devices of Disenfranchisement

• Poll tax

• Property Qualification

• Literacy Test

Williams v. Mississippi (1898)

The Supreme Court approved the Mississippi plan, written into the state constitution, for depriving black citizens of the franchise by means of a literacy test.

Disenfranchisement in the South

African Americans Registered to Vote in Louisiana

130,000

1,342

0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

140,000

18961904

1896 1904

II. Race in the Progressive Era

African American Literacy Rate in 1910

Illiterate34%

Literate66%

African American Literacy

10

30

50

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Percentage of Literate African Americans

1865 1880 1900

African Americans in High School in 1910

970,000

8,000

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

African Americans

High School Aged In High School

Percentage of Southerners in School

2

34

60 62

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Black Children White Children

1860 1880

Percentage of Land Owners in the South

1

2025

80

0

60

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

African American White

1860 1880 1910

Between 1900 and 1914Over 1,100

African Americans were Lynched

Part of the crowd of 10,000 that watched the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas. The word “Justice” is painted on the platform.

Taft on Jim Crow

“The federal government has nothing to do with social equality.”

It is “history written in lightening.”

Inspired by Birth of a Nation, the KKK reformed in 1915

By the mid 1920s the Klan had over Three Million members

III. Booker T. Washington

Home of Booker T. Washington, born in 1856

Students Learning Industrial Skills at the Tuskegee Institute

Tuskeege History Class, 1902

Atlanta Compromise

“In all things that are purely social,” blacks and whites “can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

The Atlanta Compromise

• Sweeping Concessions to Segregation.

• Abandoned Reconstruction demand for Black Equality.

• Emphasized Economic Opportunity, not Political or Civil Rights.

Tuskegee in 1901

IV. W. E. B. Du Bois

Dr. Du Bois (born in 1868) at Atlanta University

The Souls of Black Folk

“So far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, he does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinction, and opposes the higher training and ambition for our brighter minds . . . so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this . . . we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.”

V. Marcus Garvey

Background

• Born in Jamaica in 1887

• Left School at 14

• Read Washington’s Up From Slavery

Garvey and Leaders of the Universal Negro Improvement Association

African American Mother and Children with Burning Ku Klux Klan Cross in the Background

Who had the best plan?