Striving for Equality Topic 3.3

Voting Restrictions Concerns = too much political power for African Americans if they vote 1890s: voting restrictions emerge Property requirement, Poll tax, Literacy tests, and Grandfather clauses

Segregation De facto Segregation that simply results from tradition. It exists in fact, but not in law. African Americans were treated like second class citizens

Segregation De jure In the south segregation was required by statutes called Jim Crow Laws Jim Crow laws required segregation in schools, parks, hospitals, theaters, restrooms, other public buildings. African American facilities were inferior

Lynching The murder of an accused person by a mob w/out a lawful trial. Sometimes included a mock trial. Sometimes victims were mutilated before being killed Estimated 1,200 African Americans were lynched between 1882-1892

Northern Migration Many African Americans moved north-escape violence and legal segregation De Jure  De Facto Schools, housing, employment Job competition in N. cities creates fear. RACE RIOTS! NYC, 1900 Springfield, Illinois, 1908

It becomes LEGAL. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 Homer Plessy buys a first-class train ticket from New Orleans. He refuses to sit in the black only car. He is arrested. Case reaches the Supreme Court.

Plessy Decision RULING: Segregation is legal as long as the separate facilities were equal to the whites’ facilities. “Separate but Equal” The 14th Amendment was “not intended to give social equality but only political and civil equality.”

2 famous African American college graduates: Booker T. Washington W.E.B. Du Bois 2 very different perspectives

Booker T. Washington Founded Tuskegee Institute (Alabama, 1881) Focus: Building economic security & vocational skills Put aside their desire for political equality for now and focus on building economic security by gaining vocational skills Popular w/ whites

Booker T. Washington “To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition… I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are’ …No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem”

W.E.B. Du Bois Graduated from Fisk University Became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard (1895) Argued that the brightest African Americans had to step forward to lead The Talented Tenth Liberal arts (not vocational) Quest for political and social equality and civil rights

W.E.B. Du Bois In writings such as The Souls of Black Folks Urged African Americans not to define themselves as whites saw them but to take pride in both their African and African American heritages

Niagara Movement-1905 Called for: Led to the formation of NAACP Du Bois helped found Met on Canadian side of Niagara Falls Called for: Full civil rights End to racial discrimination Never to accept “inferiority” Never to bow to “oppression” Never to apologize “before insult” Led to the formation of NAACP

NAACP Founding of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Purpose was to abolish segregation and discrimination, oppose racism, and gain civil rights By 1914 50 branches w/ 6,000 members Worked through the court system