Download Others Suffer Discrimination

Segregation and Discrimination
The Main Idea
The United States in the 1800s was a place of great change—
and a place in need of even greater change.
Reading Focus
• What kinds of legalized discrimination did African Americans
endure after Reconstruction?
• What informal discrimination did African Americans face?
• Who were the most prominent black leaders of the period, and
how did their views differ?
• In what ways did others suffer discrimination in the late 1800s?
Legalized Discrimination
Restricting the vote
• Once white Democrats had
regained control over their
state legislatures, they
passed poll tax and literacy
requirements to prevent
African Americans from
voting.
• Most African Americans were
too poor to afford the poll
tax, and many had been
denied the education needed
to pass the literacy test.
• Some poor or illiterate white
men could not meet the
requirements, but they were
given a grandfather clause
allowing them to vote.
Legalized segregation
• Designed to create and
enforce segregation, Jim
Crow laws were passed in
the South.
• African Americans filed
lawsuits, wanting equal
treatment under the Civil
Rights Act of 1875.
• In 1883, the Court ruled the
Act to be unconstitutional,
determining the 14th
Amendment applied only to
state governments.
• Congress had no power over
private individuals or
businesses.
Plessy v. Ferguson
• Thirteen years later, another key case came before the
Supreme Court. The matter involved a Louisiana state law
requiring railroads to provide “equal but separate
accommodations for the white and colored races.”
• Homer Plessy sat in a whites-only train compartment to test
the law and was arrested. He appealed based on the 14th
Amendment.
• In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the court upheld the practice
of segregation, with only Justice John Marshall Harlan
dissenting.
• The Court ruled that “separate but equal” facilities did not
violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The Plessy decision
allowed legalized segregation for nearly sixty years.
Informal Discrimination
Racial
etiquette
Lynching
Strict rules of behavior, called racial etiquette,
governed social and business interactions. African
Americans were supposed to “know their place” and
defer to whites in every encounter.
If an African American failed to speak respectfully or
acted with too much pride or defiance, the
consequences could be serious.
The worst consequence was lynching, the murder of
an individual usually by hanging, without a legal
trial.
Between 1882 and 1892, nearly 900 lost their lives
to lynch mobs. Lynchings declined after 1892, but
continued into the early 1900s.
Prominent Black Leaders
With the turn of the century, two different approaches
emerged for improving the lives of African Americans.
Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington believed that
African Americans should accept segregation for the
moment. Farming and vocational skills were the key to
prosperity, and he founded the Tuskegee Institute to teach
practical skills for self-sufficiency.
W.E.B. Du Bois, a Harvard-trained professor, believed in
speaking out against prejudice and striving for full rights
immediately. African Americans should be uplifted through
the “talented tenth,” their best educated leaders. Du Bois
launched the Niagara Movement to protest discrimination in
1905. Later, he helped found the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Others Suffer Discrimination
Mexican
Americans
Asian
Americans
Native
Americans
They encountered hostility from white Americans,
often not speaking English well and taking the most
menial jobs for little pay. Debt peonage tied many
of them to their jobs until they could pay off debts
they owed their employer.
Chinese and Japanese Americans had to live in
segregated neighborhoods and attend separate
schools. Housing was difficult, because most house
owners did not want Chinese tenants. Several states
also forbade marriage with whites.
Native Americans faced continuous government
efforts to stamp out their traditional ways of life.
Children were sent away from their parents to be
“Americanized.” Reservation life held little
opportunity for economic advancement.