Tommy's Notes Repository

7 4 - 7 Segregation and Discrimination

3 min read

Segregation and Discrimination

Essential Question

  • How did violence intimidation and discrimination affect the lives of African Americans post reconstruction

The Great Migration

  • The mass movement of more than 6 million African Americans from the South to cities in the following areas:
    • The North
    • The Midwest
    • The West
  • Many migrated for the following reasons:
    • Opportunities for Jobs
    • Violence & Intimidation
    • Segregation

Disenfranchisement

  • Denying the right to vote
    • 15th Amendment
  • African Americans faced their right to vote being revoked in the following ways:
    • Poll Taxes
    • Literacy Tests
    • Grandfather Clause
    • Violence and Intimidation

NAACP

  • Nation Association of the Advancement of Colored People
  • Founded in 1909
  • Formed from the Niagara Movement
    • Comprised of African American intellectuals seeking equal rights
  • Used the courts system to gain rights for African Americans
    • Focus
      • Abolish Segregation
      • Increase educational opportunities for African Americans

W.E.B Dubois

  • 1st African American to earn a degree from Harvard
  • One of the founding members of the NAACP
  • Argued that African Americans should strive for higher education and equal rights
  • Believed in the “Talented Tenth”
    • The best of the race must be educated in order to lead the rest

Booker T. Washington

  • Critic of W.E.B Dubois
  • Was born enslaved
  • He advocated for vocational for African Americans in order to achieve economic independence
    • Belief that African Americans can’t reach political and social equality until there is a secure economic base
  • Founder of the Tuskegee institute
    • Initial Focus on
      • Farmers
      • Mechanics
      • Domestic Servants
  • “While they want the same thing, their methods for reaching it are different”

Segregation

  • De Jure vs. De Facto
    • De Jure:
      • Segregation by Law
        • Example: Plessy vs. Ferguson
    • De Facto:
      • Segregation by Practice
        • Example: White Only Neighborhoods

Plessy v. Ferguson Case

  • Landmark Supreme Court Case in 1896
  • Established the constitutionality of “Seperate but Equal ” - Racial Segregation

Background on Plessy v. Ferguson

Background:

  • 1892
    • Homer Plessy sat in a vacant seat in the “whites only” section and refused to sit in the railroad car for “Blacks only”
    • Was Arrested and jailed
    • Plessy claimed that this violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment right
  • Supreme Court declared that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights not “social rights”

Lynching

  • is defined as “To put to death as by hanging by mob action without legal approval or permission”
    • Used as an intimidation tactic against the African American Community
    • Had existed before slavery but it gained traction during Reconstruction when African Americans started to established communities, businesses, running for office and voting.
    • Were marketed as public events in the newspapers
      • Big spectacle events where people would bring their families