Chapter 17: Daily Life in the Gilded Age Entertainment, the Growth of Schools and Universities, African American Discrimination and the Plessy V. Ferguson Decision

Objectives for Chapter 17  Find what forms of Entertainment that the U.S. people found in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s  Determine why and how the school system became standard for the average student through looking at the statistical increases in enrollment within public schools.  Discover the first Universities and Colleges that were opened to females and African Americans.  Draw Conclusions upon what the Jim Crow Laws were and how they were made completely permissible by the Plessy V. Ferguson Supreme Court Decision in  Research the N.A.A.C.P. and two important African American figures- Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and find their differing beliefs upon what African Americans need to do to better themselves.

Entertainment in the Gilded Age

Gilded Age Entertainment- Baseball

Sports of the late 1800’s  Baseball- developed during the Civil War, perhaps with the help of Abner Doubleday, a Union General, as the story tells. After the Civil War, the sport went mainstream in society as Firefighting companies and Teachers, and Police corps had their own teams. Eventually larger teams were created representing an entire city, the first professional team being the Cincinnati Reds. From the 1940’s onto 1950, African Americans were segregated out of the pros until Jackie Robinson was signed and became a star with the Brooklyn Dodgers

Sports of the late 1800’s  Women started Figure Skating as a sport, along with bicycling, and basketball  -James Naismith created Basketball in 1891 as a sport that would allow his gym class to stay in shape during winter, Walter Camp took rugby and created football in the 1880’s

Schooling during the Civil War  By the time of the Civil War, more than half of American children attended public schools and public schools were an attraction for immigrants as they were an opportunity for a free education, which they were not offered in their former countries.  In 1870, only 2 percent of all 17 year-olds had graduated from high school or were still enrolled and on the path of graduation.

How did America begin requiring students to attend school?  In order to protect children from dangerous workplaces and also encourage education, 32 of the 42 U.S. states by 1900 had required children from age 8 to 14 to attend school.  By 1910, more than 60 percent of American children now attended school and more that a million students were enrolled in high schools.  Even some immigrant adults attended school in order to learn English and Civics, in order to be able to become U.S. citizens. These adults would attend during the nighttime.

African American Heroes- Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington  Born into Slavery in 1856  became free following the Civil War and later attended Hampton Institute in Virginia in  He later went on to help create his own institution named Tuskegee Institute, which he founded in Alabama in 1881 and became the first president of.  Booker T. Washington’s beliefs were that African Americans had to better themselves with education and then go on to economic prosperity before they could gain political power.  Statement from Booker T. Washington: “To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition… I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are’- cast it down… in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions… No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem…. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

W.E.B. DuBois  Born in Massachusetts, DuBois became the first African American to gain a Ph.D. from Harvard.  He taught economics, history, and sociology at Atlanta University and helped found the Niagara Movement, which was a group of African Americans that pushed for full civil liberties and an end to racial discrimination.  W.E.B. DuBois did not agree with Washington and he believed that the smartest and most educated African Americans needed to step forward and lead other African Americans in the fight for civil liberties and rights. He did not believe that it was okay for African Americans to just go into any job, they had to attain great and respectable jobs, not farmers or factory workers but doctors, professors, lawyers.  DuBois attempted to encourage African Americans to take pride in their heritage and strive for more in writings such as The Souls of Black Folks  DuBois later became the publications director for the NAACP and became a leader in this organization and the African American struggle for civil liberties

Discrimination following Reconstruction  Despite the fact that most African Americans attempted to better themselves in schools, which was the advice of Booker T. Washington, the voting restrictions made it impossible for most African Americans to vote in the South after 1870 due to the Poll Tax and then the Grandfather Clause. Amazingly, the Southern states were allowed to keep their Poll Taxes and Grandfather Clauses as law until the 24th Amendment was passed in 1962 outlawing poll taxes and Grandfather Clauses were outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1915.

Discrimination following Reconstruction  Other than voting restrictions, Southern states began placing Jim Crow laws on public facilities and private facilities. This Jim Crow law was named after a popular African American song and dance routine and became a form of legal segregation after the Plessy V. Ferguson decision backed them in 1896.

Plessy V. Ferguson  In 1890, the State of Louisiana had passed a law that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars. Concerned, several black and white citizens in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to the repeal of that law. They persuaded Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth African, to test it. In 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway from New Orleans. Once he had boarded the train, Plessy informed the train conductor of his actual racial lineage, and after Plessy had taken a seat in the whites section he was asked to vacate it and sit instead in the "blacks only" section. Plessy refused and was immediately arrested.

Plessy V. Ferguson  Eventually the case made its path to the U.S. Supreme Court. Plessy built his case on from abridging the "privileges and immunities" of United States citizens, or denying those citizens due process or the equal protection of the law. Albion Tourgee, a lawyer representing Plessy, argued that the Louisiana railroad segregation law implied the inferiority of African- Americans. The Supreme Court went on to decide that separate facilities were acceptable as long as the facilities are equal in quality, upholding the beliefs of many white southerners.

Plessy V. Ferguson  The Backlash from the Plessy v. Ferguson decision made it so that schools, dining areas, bathrooms, water fountains, railroad cars, public parks, hospitals, theaters, and many other facilities were made separate in society.  The Plessy V. Ferguson decision was not reversed until the Brown V. Board of Education decision in 1954, where it was decided by the Supreme Court that Separate definitely was not equal.