AAs Gilded Age

Question 1

Negative view

Answer 1

This was a very negative era for African American Civil Rights.
Rights actually regressed and segregation, discrimination, violence and lynching became more prevalent.
There was little challenge to this from any quarter

Question 2

Verny highlights the rampant

Answer 2

“electoral fraud, violence and intimidation”

Question 3

Date of segregated transport beginning

Answer 3

1881, when Tennessee enacted a segregated railway law, and continued with every Southern state following suit

Question 4

Leadership issues on segregation

Answer 4

Blacks like Booker T. Washington also favoured segregation, however he was split with Du Bois

Question 5

Judgement supporting segregation

Answer 5

Plessy v. Ferguson judgement of 1896, which reinforced the idea of ‘separate but equal’

Question 6

De facto northern segregation

Answer 6

In Chicago 5,000 African Americans were concentrated in one restricted area
Harlem effectively became a separate district for New York’s 23,000 blacks

Question 7

Effect of exclusion from voting

Answer 7

African American voters had become a powerless minority by 1895

Question 8

First Grandfather Clause

Answer 8

Introduced by Louisiana in 1898

Question 9

Judgement supporting registration laws

Answer 9

Supreme Court upheld changes to the Mississippi Constitution in Williams vs. Mississippi 1898 ($2 poll tax)

Question 10

Last black congressman

Answer 10

In 1901 the last remaining African American congressman, George H. White, retired, leaving no African American congressional representation

Question 11

System of violence and lynching

Answer 11

The punishment of violence and lynchings for minor offences created a system whereby the law was deliberately ignored in much of the South, in favour of mob rule.

Question 12

Lynchings in 1890s

Answer 12

Around 190 lynching/year

Question 13

False arrests

Answer 13

There were notorious numbers of false arrests and imprisonment, with disproportionate numbers of African Americans prisoners in chain gangs and labour camps

Question 14

Vicksburg riots

Answer 14

In 1874 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, rampaging whites killed about 300 blacks and terrorised thousands of potential voters

Question 15

SC - slaughterhouse decision

Answer 15

Slaughterhouse decision (1873) - 14th Amendment protects only the rights of national (as opposed to state) citizenship

Question 16

SC - Reese

Answer 16

US v. Reese (1875) - threw out indictment of Kentucky officials who had barred blacks from voting

Question 17

SC - Cruikshank

Answer 17

US v. Cruikshank (1876) - rules that the 14th Amendment bars states, but not individuals, from encroaching on individual rights

Question 18

SC - ruling on Civil Rights Act

Answer 18

In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1875 Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional

Question 19

Compromise effect

Answer 19

The ‘Compromise of 1877’ essentially removed federal supervision of Southern states

Question 20

Proportion of southern farms sharecropped

Answer 20

In some southern states, as many as 80% of farms were sharecropped (Georgia particularly bad)

Question 21

Racial differences in value of output

Answer 21

In 1880 the average value of output for a black sharecropper was $160 compared to $200 for whites

Question 22

Racial differences in land owned

Answer 22

Even black farm owners tended to have less land - in Georgia in 1890, the average white owner held 290 acres compared to 70 acres for blacks

Question 23

Mixed view

Answer 23

There was a mixed picture of civil rights in this era; while segregation and discrimination was very entrenched in the South, it was less so in the West and North

Question 24

African American cowboys

Answer 24

Significant progress from westward expansion - up to a quarter of ‘cowboys’ on Western ranches were African Americans

Question 25

Western AA jobs

Answer 25

Trappers, farmers, miners and shopkeepers

Question 26

Number of AAs moving West

Answer 26

Up to 40,000 African Americans moved West

Question 27

Limits to Western numbers of AAs

Answer 27

The bulk of African Americans lacked the capital or expertise to travel westwards to create new homes away from prejudice

Question 28

All black towns

Answer 28

Many all-black towns, including Dearfield, Colorado

Question 29

Bass Reeves

Answer 29

African American lawmen like Bass Reeves (1838-1910), who was a Deputy US Marshal who arrested thousands of criminals and shot 14 outlaws

Question 30

Afro-American league

Answer 30

Some blacks challenged segregation with some success - the Afro-American league was formed in 1890.

Question 31

Afro-American league - inaugural meeting

Answer 31

The league’s inaugural meeting in Chicago attracted 100 delegates from 23 states

Question 32

Afro-American league limit

Answer 32

Short-lived, had ceased to exist by 1893

Question 33

Positive view

Answer 33

It is wrong to characterise this period as a negative one for civil rights. African Americans were able to make de facto progress, for example economically, and in this period the foundations were laid for later advancements.

Question 34

Schweikart and Allen

Answer 34

Emphasise the emergence of the “elite eight” black universities to rival the Ivy League and how blacks used buying power to combat racial prejudice and challenge white business.

Question 35

Black businesses

Answer 35

AAs set up their own insurance and banking companies and formed their own all-black unions

Question 36

Georgia AAs - schools

Answer 36

Georgia blacks built 1,544 schools that educated more than 11,000 students

Question 37

AA universities

Answer 37

Universities included Howard (1867) and Tuskegee (1881)

Question 38

Constitutional guarantees

Answer 38

African Americans had achieved constitutional guarantees, even if they were not enforced, and in the industrial age it was possible for them to own businesses.

Question 39

Political progress in North Carolina

Answer 39

North Carolina in 1894, Populist-Republican cooperation got 1000 blacks into office

Question 40

Booker T Washington

Answer 40

The support given to Booker T. Washington by Alabama for his institute, and the success of many educational establishments laid the basis for a great deal of civil rights agitation later on.

Question 41

Literacy increases

Answer 41

Literacy increased from 1 in 20 to 1 in 2 (1865-95)

Question 42

AA professionals

Answer 42

By 1900 there were some 47,000 African American professionals including doctors, lawyers, teachers and artists (however out of a population of 8 million)