1.8 The Position of African-Americans Flashcards
What did the Hayes Compromise mean for African-Americans?
With the removal of all federal troops from the South, the laws passed to protect African-American rights were no longer enforced. Many black people were disenfranchised (deprived of the right to vote) and many people faced restrictions on their legal rights.
What employment problems did African-Americans face?
Freedmen faced terrible difficulties economically in finding worthwhile employment: for many it was necessary to live and work as a sharecropper, and they were not much better off than before emancipation.
What was a sharecropper?
An agricultural labourer who worked land as a tenant farmer but was subject to discrimination; in return the landowner received a share to what the labourer produced.
What violence did African-Americans face?
Lynchings were a common occurrence, along with widespread incidents of low-level intimidation.
What was an internal tension between African-Americans?
There were uncomfortable social tensions between ‘blacks’, those who had been slaves until 1865, and ‘browns’, better-off people who had gained their free status earlier.
In what ways did African-Americans choose to use their new freedom?
Many demonstrated their new independence by moving away from their previous home districts. They chose new surnames and insisted on being called ‘mister’ or ‘miss’. They exercised their right to marry, set up churches, and to open small businesses serving the needs of African-American customers.
What advancement were there to black education?
There was a strong commitment to black education, encouraged by the Freedmen’s Bureau and by some state government. Wealthy Northern philanthropists also set up charities and donated money to found schools and universities. Thousands of new public schools were opened. Between 1866 and 1868, 3 universities specifically for African-American students were opened: Fisk University, Howard University, and the Hampton Institute.
What limitations were there to black education?
Racially-mixed schools were discouraged. It is estimated that more than half of African-Americans in the South were illiterate in 1890.
Who was Booker T. Washington?
He had been born into slavery and was 9 years old when slavery was ended. He became an educationalist, trained at the Hampton Institute, who became a spokesman for African Americans. He was head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama from its founding in 1881 until his death in 1915. He was an advocate of moderation and compromise.
What did BT. Washington do?
He built up the ‘Tuskegee machine’, a network of institutions promoting racial accommodation and self help, controlling many organisations and black newspapers.
What were attitudes and opinions of Booker T. Washington?
He gained a high reputation among Northern liberals. In his later career, he was attacked by more radical black voices for being too accommodating to white supremacy, but in the years before 1890 he was a powerful influence.
How did the distribution of African Americans change?
Most remained rural people, still dependent on the cotton fields of the South, but after 1877 many began to leave. The drift from the land to the towns and cities gathered pace as urbanisation began to take effect, and many African-Americans were tempted to look northwards.
What Supreme Court case was significant to the lives of African Americans in 1896?
Plessy v. Ferguson
What was the background to the Plessy v. Ferguson case?
There was an incident in 1892 when an African American passenger refused to sit in a car for Black people, arguing his constitutional rights were violated.
What was the verdict of the Plessy v. Ferguson case?
It defined the constitutionality of racial segregation as “separate but equal”.
