Michael Quiñones, NBCTwww.socialstudiesguy.com

MACRO CONCEPTS

Conflict-problem or issue hard to solve without compromise.

 Power-Authority usually of a

government to pass laws and control its citizens.

 Leadership-the ability of a

person to set an example to be followed.

 Equality-the concept that

citizens have the same rights and freedoms.

 Reform-the concept of

improving lives of citizens by government action.

MICRO CONCEPTS

Civil rights-basic freedoms and rights of citizens such as voting and religion.

 

Segregation-separating citizens in public life based on their gender or skin color.

 

Suffrage-the right of a citizen to vote.

Background information

Louisiana law allowed for separate train cars for whites and blacks.

A “justice” committee with members who were both white and black decided to protest the law because it was unfair and racist according to them.

The “justice” committee found a man named Homer Plessy, who was very, very light and could “pass for white” so he would be allowed to buy a ticket in the “white section.” They also raised money and got a lawyer to challenge the law just in case Plessy was arrested.

After Plessy boarded the train he announced that he was black and was told to go the “black car.” He refused and was arrested.

He was found guilty in court and fined

$100 [a lot of money at the time].

• Because Homer Plessy believed his conviction and $100 fine were wrong he appealed his case which went all the way because the issues at stake were so important.

• According to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution all U.S. citizens had equal protection under the law.

• The Court ruled against Plessy because it said the Louisiana law provided public facilities such as trains that were separate but equal.

• The Court’s ruling reinforced the legal concept of de jure segregation.

• De jure is a Latin term for according to or by law.

• So basically the U.S. government allowed racism from that point on.

• In the late 1800s Wilmington, N.C. was the most populated North Carolina city and was also majority black.

• On November 10, 1898 hundreds of heavily armed racist white supremacists decided to overthrow the black-controlled local government.

• Using Gatling machine guns on top of wagons and lynching [illegal hanging].

• Probably over 100 blacks were murdered during the riot and the city government was overthrown by coup d’etat.

• White supremacist candidates won elections in Wilmington and 2 years later a racist named Charles B. Aycock was elected North Carolina’s governor in 1900.

• Washington was born a slave to an enslaved mother and rich white planter father in Virginia.

• Washington was freed as a young boy.

• He became trained in trades such as carpentry and masonry and learned to read.

• He became a teacher at a well known black school in Virginia [Hampton] and later led his own school in Alabama.

• The Tuskegee Institute in Alabama was led by Washington for more than 20 years.

• He gave a famous speech called the Atlanta Compromise that asked blacks to work hard and partner with whites to “get ahead.”

At Tuskegee has made friends with rich white men who gave the school millions of dollars.

Black students were educated and trained in trades such as teaching, plumbing and construction.

He believed it was important for students to be able to “pay their bills” by their own labor and self-reliance.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was different than Booker T. Washington in many ways.

He was born free in Massachusetts to black parents who were also free.

He was highly educated becoming the first black person to earn a Ph.d in 1895.

He studied in the North, South and overseas in Germany where he had many opportunities to develop his intellect.

• During the first few years of the 1900s he joined with other educated and motivated blacks to form the Niagara Movement to find ways to legally improve the conditions of blacks in the United States. The groups was originally forced to travel to Canada for hotel rooms because American hotel owners would not accept them.

• In 1909 he was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP].

• He was the editor of The Crisis magazine of the NAACP which detailed stories about everything from politics to poetry.

• He believed blacks were entitled to equality immediately. He became frustrated and moved to Ghana in Africa.

Ida Wells was a Mississippi born and educated journalist [newspaper writer].

She traveled all over the South investigating hate crimes and wrote extensively on the practice of lynching.

Lynching is when someone accused of wrong doing is captured by an angry mob and hanged from a tree or pole until death. While execution is legal in many states you must have a trial and be found guilty of murder.

Wells wrote dozens of anti-lynching stories and spoke out for women’s suffrage.

Disenfranchisement is the act of limiting or prohibiting someone’s suffrage [right to vote].

All over the South tactics designed to discourage black suffrage [poor uneducated whites too].

The Poll Tax a fee for voting was usually just high enough to prevent poor blacks from being able to vote. This policy was later outlawed.

Another voter discrimination tactic used in the South was the so-called literacy test.

Before voters could cast their ballot [vote] they had to take a multi-page test.

Many blacks in the South were poorly educated and had limited reading ability so they usually did not pass the test [sometimes they were also tricked].

This practice limited black suffrage rights.

Southern states charges poll taxes [a voting fee] because they knew most blacks were too poor to afford the fee.

Southern states also passed laws called Grandfather clauses which banned voting for people whose grandfathers could not vote because they were slaves.

• Because of rampant racism, lynching, terror tactics by the K.K.K. and Jim Crow laws millions of blacks from 1910 to 1970 left the South.

• Big cities such as Los Angeles, Kansas City, Detroit, Chicago, Boston and New York gained black migrants to work in factories producing military weapons, cars, trains, ships and machinery.

• Every major city had large black population however they mostly lived in segregated communities.

In order to preserve the worst parts of the Southern culture [way of life] racist laws were passed to segregate [separate] blacks and whites in public places.

Blacks who tried to use public facilities such as water fountains, buses and schools could be fined, arrested or lynched [hanged without trial by an angry mob of people].

Because these were segregationist laws they were also examples de jure segregation.

Jim Crow Laws

Students are too create an 8-panel cartoon strip describing how fair/correct or unfair/wrong at least 3 of the topics/people you’ve learned about are [must have images and text].

or

You may write a letter to the Governor of North Carolina or President of the United States explaining what’s going on around you based on what you learned [must use specific examples].