The Rise of

Segregation in

America

Reconstruction

• After the Civil War the North occupied the South. Reconstruction was a program that was started in order to rebuild the South and enforce the new laws.

The 13th Amendment

Time-Line:

Passed in Congress January 31, 1865

Appomattox Courthouse April 9, 1865

Lincoln Assassinated April 14, 1865

States Ratified December 6, 1865

Tennessee July 24, 1866

Freedman’s Bureau

The Freedmen’s Bureau was established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of former black slaves and poor whites in the South

in the aftermath of the Civil War.

The Freedmen’s Bureau provided

• food

• housing

• medical aid

• established schools

• and offered legal assistance to newly “freed men”.

Freedman’s Bureau

It also attempted to settle former slaves on land confiscated or abandoned during the war.

However, the bureau was prevented from fully carrying out its programs due to a shortage of funds and personnel, along with

the politics of race and Reconstruction.

Thaddeus Stevens

• Thaddeus Stevens was a congressman from Pennsylvania and a dedicated Abolitionist.

• He proposed that the government give all freedmen some land.

Thaddeus Stevens

• He proposed that the government give all freedmen some land. He used the example that a Russian ruler set when he freed 22 million serfs in Russia. This Russian ruler required all owners of the former serf give each freed serf some land on the farms that they had worked on for years.

Thaddeus Stevens

• President Johnson did not support this plan. Johnson believed that

1) It would not be fair to the families that the land belonged to

2) A person does not appreciate the value of anything given to him and charity discourages people to from working for themselves.

“Taking land from one group and given it to another is no better than robbery” ~Andrew Johnson

Sharecropping

• After Reconstruction, many African Americans were very poor and lived under great hardship.

• Most were sharecroppers, or landless farmers.

• They worked the land and turned over a large part of their crop to the landlord to pay for rent and supplies.

Sharecropping

Most freed slaves remained on their former plantations and became sharecroppers. Sharecroppers had to sign contracts for their land and had very little freedom.

SharecroppingUnder the sharecropping system, a family rented a share of a large plantation owned by a white landowner. In order to efficiently farm the land, sharecroppers had to acquire tools, fertilizer and seeds. These were loaned by the same white landowners who demanded even larger portions of the harvest as repayment for the debt. Many sharecroppers fell deeper and deeper into debt, barely able to produce enough from the land to feed themselves and their families. Some had been better off as slaves.

Sharecropping

• A sharecropper does not own his own:

– Farm

– House

– Mule

– Tools

Sharecropping

• A landowner allows a sharecropper to farm about 10 acres of land in exchange for 1/3 profit of their crops.

• For another 1/3 profit of the crops, the landowner provides seeds, tools, and a mule.

• The landowner usually determined what was to be planted (usually cotton or tobacoo) and could prevent the sharecropper from planting vegetables for his family or further produce to sell.

Sharecropping

• A landowner allows a sharecropper to farm about 10 acres of land in exchange for 1/3 profit of their crops.

• For another 1/3 profit of the crops, the landowner provides seeds, tools, and a mule.

• The landowner usually determined what was to be planted (usually cotton or tobacco) and could prevent the sharecropper from planting vegetables for his family or further produce to sell.

Sharecropping

• Under this system, freedmen rarely got out of debt. If fact, they usually became increasing further in debt each year to their landowner.

– The seeds were bought in the spring when prices were high.

– Their goods were sold in the fall when prices were low.

– They had to pay interest on costs they could not cover with what was sold from the previous fall.

U.S. Statistics

– In the 1860’s almost all African-Americans worked as either a farmer or a house servant.

– In the 1890’s 56% of African-Americans were farmers and 26% were house servants.

– In the 1930’s only 1 out of every 10 African American who was a farmer owned the land he worked.

Freedom After the Civil War

Southern states began passing laws that indirectly kept Freedmen from having the same rights as white men.

In history, these are referred to as black codes.

If you have ear buds, click here for a 10

minutes video.

One way for whites to weaken black political power was to restrict their voting rights. Southern states began requiring literacy tests and poll taxes in order to vote.

.

Poll Tax A tax charged at the polling place before a citizen

could vote. Most blacks could not afford the tax

and therefore could not vote.

Literacy TestA test requiring voters to prove

they could read or write in order to

vote. Most blacks had not been educated and

could not pass.

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In fact, many poor white

men were afraid that

they would not be able

to pass the test either.

To help these men still

have the right to vote,

the law stated that if

you grandfather or

father had the right to

vote, your right to vote

would not be taken

away if you could not

pass the literacy test.

This is known as a

“grandfather clause”.

Amendments

To stop states from imposing laws that had the intent of discriminating against freedmen, the 14th and 15th amendments were ratified.

Jim Crow Laws

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Jim Crow Laws

In addition to voting laws, Southern states and towns passed numerous “Jim Crow” laws. In some ways, these were similar to the old black codes. However, instead of just controlling African Americans, Jim Crow laws created a system of segregation (racial separation)across the South.

The following pages offer examples of Jim Crow laws and images of the society they created. Remember, this is only a small sampling of the types of laws that existed during the period between Reconstruction and the 1960’s.

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Jim Crow Laws

“Separate but equal”. This was the motto of the south.

Southern states began to create segregation laws. As long as things were separate but equal, they determined that they were obeying the Constitution.

Education

• Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school. Missouri

• Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. North Carolina

• Any instructor who shall teach in any school where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than ten dollars ($10.00) nor more than fifty dollars ($50.00) for each offense. Oklahoma

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Entertainment• It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in

company with each other at any game of pool or billiards. Alabama

• It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers. Alabama

• It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race…Georgia

• It shall be unlawful for colored people to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the benefit, use and enjoyment of white persons... Georgia

• All circuses shall provide two ticket offices, and two entrances to the performance, the ticket offices shall not be less than twenty-five (25) feet apart. Louisiana

• Every public theatre, or any place of public entertainment, shall set apart certain seats to be occupied by white persons and certain seats to be occupied by colored persons. Virginia

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Restaurants

• All restaurants, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license. Georgia

• It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are separated by a solid wall extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each section. Alabama

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• It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void. Georgia

• Any person...who shall rent any part of a building to a negro or a negro family when the building is already occupied by a white person or family, shall be punished by a fine or be imprisoned not less than 10, or more than 60 days, or both. Louisiana

• The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race. Louisiana

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Miscellaneous

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Legalizing Segregation

• Two Supreme Court decisions set the stage for legalized segregation. In other words, these decisions helped assist Southern states to keep and increase the “separate but equal” concept.

Legalizing Segregation

• In 1883, he Court overturned the Civil Rights act of 1875.

• This confirmed that Fourteenth Amendment covered only state actions, so private businesses such as hotels or railroads could legally practice segregation.

– In Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), the court ruled that “separate but equal facilities were legal.

• Separate facilities were often far from equal.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 18961890: Louisiana passed a law ordering “separate but equal” railroad cars for

the races.

1892: Homer Plessy (1/8 African American) decided to test the law by sitting in the white car. Plessy was arrested and found guilty. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the ruling.

1896: Plessy’s appeal reaches the U.S. Supreme Court. Plessy argues that the 13th and 14th Amendments protect African Americans discrimination of this sort. Therefore, segregation should be illegal.

And the decision is….

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Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 The Ruling

• In the majority opinion, Justice Henry Brown wrote that…

– The 14th Amendment only enforced equality before the law NOT social equality.

– Segregation laws don’t mean one race is superior or inferior. Equality is not destroyed by these laws.

– State legislatures can follow local custom and the need for public peace when making laws.

– Laws that create segregation are constitutional as long as the conditions are “separate but equal”

• Homer Plessy lost his case and the Supreme Court gave Constitutional support to segregation.

• The “separate but equal ruling” gave no description of what “equal” meant. For the next 60 years, segregation would create two very separate—and very different—worlds. 36

Lynching’s

• African Americans increasingly faced mob violence or lynching's.

• These executions by mobs occurred without proper court action.

• In 1892, Ida B. Wells, an African American woman from Tennessee, started a campaign against lynching.

• She published a book condemning mob violence. Wells called for a fair trial for those accused of crimes.

• The number of lynching's decreased in the 1900s due in part to her work.

Rise of the KKK

In the first two years after the Civil War it is estimated that whites murdered about 5,000 blacks.

An secret organization that was founded by Southern whites was called the Ku Klux Klan.

It started as a group of men that would get together and talk politics, mainly the politics of Reconstruction. The Klan’s first focus was to break the political power of the Republican’s who were pushing their agenda for Reconstruction.

Rise of the KKK

Eventually the Klan redirection their goal to maintain white supremacy in the South by using threats and violence to prevent blacks from voting.

Members of the KKK were angered at seeing former slaves in position of power.

These men would use white robes and committed many of their crimes at night to prevent their identify from being known.

Rise of the KKK

Their Tactics:

o Terrorism

o Violence

o Intimidation

o Cross Burning

o Lynching-hanging

o Burning black schools

o Burning black churches

o Murder

Congress did declare the KKK as a terrorist group April 20th 1871.

Reconstruction Ending

• Congress attempted to remove Johnson from office stating he violated the Tenure of Office Act.– Johnson, claiming the Tenure of Office Act was

unconstitutional, fired the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (a friend of the Radical Republicans).

• The Tenure of Office Act said the president could not dismiss a member of the Cabinet without the Senate’s approval (remember checks and balances???)

– The House of Representatives did impeach Johnson with a 126 yea to 47 nay vote.

– The Senate was unable to remove Johnson from Presidency. They were one vote shy of the 2/3 vote needed for removal.

Reconstruction Ending

• Following Johnson’s four years of presidency he did not run for the position in 1868.

• The election of 1868 was won by Republican Ulysses S. Grant. He served for two terms as President of the United States during Reconstruction.

• Following his two terms as President, President Rutherford B. Hayes took over the position which ended the Reconstruction Era in 1877.