1. A History of African Americans

2. The New South / Segregation 1877-1950
• From the situation for African Americans in America only got worse
• ~1982 the low point of African American history has been reached
• during the 1890s and early 1900s, lynchings² increased, racial segregation became law, and African American citizens didn't have the right to vote
• system of sharecropping³ (“the new slavery“)
Nadir: not 1982, but around 1882, actually
1896: Plessy vs Fergusson: Supreme Court decision makes segregation legal

3. The New South / Segregation 1877-1950
• “Jim Crow“ laws¹
• interracial movements / all-black towns
• promised land
• Northern Metropolises movement
• in the 1930s and 1940s people believed in their hope
• highest umemployment rate of black workers
• “Double Victory“ during the 2nd World War
Who is Jim Crow?
People believed in their hope???? = not clear

4. Booker T. Washington:
“During the interracial movements he called on Southern black
folk to “cast down their buckets where they are“ and carve out a
life on the land“
Ida B. Wells:
“Believed that blacks should cast down the gauntlet and punch
it out with white supremacists. Wells, one of many leading black
women activists of that era, declared war on lynching and
sexual violence against black women.“
=>The period from 1945 to 1970 might be described as a protracted war for freedom
Who is Booker T. Washington?

5. Harlem Renaissance
A blossoming (c – 37) of African American culture, particularly in the
creative arts, centred in Harlem in New York City.
As a literary movement, it laid the groundwork for all later African American
literature and had a significant impact on black literature and consciousness
worldwide.

6. Ku Klux Klan A secret society organized in the South after the
Civil War to reassert white supremacy by means
of terrorism.
After the Civil War, lynching became particularly
associated with the South and with the first
Ku Klux Klan, which was founded in 1866.

7. Glossary “Jim Crow“ laws¹: laws that forced racial segregation
Lynching²:
Lynching is the illegal execution of an accused person by a mob.
Lynching was originally a system of punishment used by whites against African
American slaves.
However, whites who protested against this were also in danger of being lynched.
After the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 the number of lynching of African American increased dramatically.
Sharecropping³:
Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use
the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e.g., 50% of the crop)

8. A short presentation created by Hendrik S. , Robert W. , Mariann L
A short presentation created by Hendrik S., Robert W., Mariann L., Anna R.