1. UNIT #3 – URBANIZATION LESSON #4 – Politics of the Gilded Age and Rise of Segregation (128-137)

2. New Plan for Composition Book:
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
15. What is the role of our Government?
16. What should happen to government people if they are found to be corrupt?
NEW VOCABULARY
Spoils system (128)
Sherman Anti-Trust Act (130)
Populism (130)
The Grange (130)
Segregation (135)
Discrimination (135)
Jim Crow Laws (135)
Plessy vs. Ferguson (135)

3. Spoils System If you help me, do you deserve special privileges?
If you do something special for someone, do you expect something in return?
Read p. 128, second paragraph – define SPOILS SYSTEM.
Do you think this system made our government run better, or more inefficient?
Elected politicians reward supporters with government jobs
Most Americans today think it’s bad, and should be punished

4. President Garfield
On July 2, 1881, President James A. Garfield was about to board a train, when a man stepped forward and shot him twice. One bullet grazed his arm, and a second bullet lodged in his back.
The assassin was Charles Guiteau, a deluded man who was convinced he was owed a government position with the diplomatic corps. Guiteau had no real basis for his claim. However, after Garfield’s election, Guiteau spent weeks writing letters to the president about the job he was owed. Being rebuffed, he decided he must “remove” the president.
The wound Garfield received was painful but not life threatening. However, doctors could not find the bullet. Probing after it with unsterilized instruments led to an infection that the medicine of the time could not cure. Garfield died on September 19, 1881.
What do you think Americans now thought of spoils system?

5. Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Power of large corporations concerned some Americans
1890, passed the SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT (top of p. 130)
Why?
What would it change?
To curb (decrease) the power of the large business combinations known as trusts
It prohibited any combination (Trusts) in the US

6. Populism
What two issues did farmers have to deal with, with post-Civil War technology? (130)
What is Populism?
New Technology (produced crops so efficiently, that prices fell)
High Tariffs (tax on imports: made it harder to sell crops overseas
A political movement to increase farmer’s political power, and to pass laws that would benefit farmers

7. Segregation – post Reconstruction
After reconstruction ended, most former slaves reverted to sharecropping
Most lived in poverty
Populism became popular with these black farmers
Democratic party needed votes from poor white farmers
Democrats appealed to racism
Democrats supported laws that would restrict rights for former slaves – became known as JIM CROW LAWS
Read p. 134 – what were some of the restrictions?
Voters must pay a $2 poll tax (a huge sum for a farmer)
Voters must take a literacy test (designed to be impossible for black Americans)

8. Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) What did Adolph Plessy do? (135)
What “doctrine” did this lead to? (136)
He was a partially black man (1/8 black, and very light skinned) who took a seat on a train in a car designated just for whites
The doctrine was known as “separate but equal,” and led to legal discrimination in the South that lasted for more than 50 years