African-American – Key Events Flashcards
Lincoln’s assassination
On 14 April 1865, Lincoln went to Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC, with his wife and friends. During the third act, an assassin, John Wilkes Booth, enter the president’s box and shot him in the back of the head. Booth sympathised with the Confederate cause and resented Lincolns policy towards confederate rebels. Lincoln died in the White House the following morning. Booth was hunted down and probably shot by union troops, although it has been suggested that he may have shot himself. Eight others were charged with plotting the president’s death and four were hanged for the crime including Mary Surratt, the first woman in US history to be executed.
Formal ending of the Civil War
This occurred on 9 April 1865 when Commander Robert E Lee surrendered to northern military chief Ulysses S Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia
The Civil Rights act of 1866
This should have granted legal equality to blacks but more radical Republicans were worried that White Southerners were already planning to undermine the position of African-American voters. For instance the act could well face a legal challenge on the grounds that it was unconstitutional because it infringed states’ rights. This is why civil Rights supporters in Congress decided on the 14th amendment in 1867, thus helping to remove any doubts about the legality of equal treatment for African Americans.
Military districts
The south was divided into five regions under the leadership of US Army generals who would decide who was qualified to vote (including African-Americans) and set up new state governments. States would only be readmitted to representation in Congress and be able to form their own state governments again when they had accepted all the changes involved in reconstruction.
Impeachment of President Johnson
And impeachment is a trial of somebody in authority for the serious offence involving ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’. It is normally the only way of removing a President from office. The house of representatives act as the prosecutor, the Senate as the jury. The chief justice of the Supreme Court chairs the proceedings. When Johnson dismissed his Able and successful war secretary Edwin Stanton, Republicans felt Johnson was trying to sweep away any opposition to using his powers as commander in chief and impose his own policies by force. Johnson was acquitted by one vote.
The slaughterhouse case
In judging a case concerning a meet Monopoly, the federal Supreme Court decided that the rights of citizens should stay under state rather than federal control. It ruled that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution protected a person’s individual rights but not his or her state civil rights, that is right granted at the discretion of the civil government, the state. In the future these latter rights would be eroded. This was the first of a number of victories advocates of state rights that would impede the granting of civil rights to African Americans.
Atmosphere of racial hostility and terror
The activities of the KKK reflected the tense inter-racial atmosphere prevalent in the south during the time of reconstruction. In Memphis in May 1866 there were three days of violence after a collision between two horse-drawn carriages with black and white drivers. 46 were killed and five women raped. In New Orleanians the following July, African American soldiers travelling to vote were attacked: 34 people were killed and over 100 injured: these were merely the worst examples.
US vs Cruickshank (1876)
Following a riot in Louisiana which left 70 African Americans and two white people dead, over 100 white men were arrested by federal authorities. They were freed when the Supreme Court ruled that the enforcement act empowered enforcement officers to take action only against states and not against individuals.
Development of black parallel businesses
The North Carolina mutual life assurance company was a language business founded by seven African-Americans in Durham, North Carolina in 1898. This company has succeeded because whites would refuse to offer life insurance African Americans all would do so I’m very unfavourable terms. By 1915 there were 30,000 businesses owned by black people in the south.
Plessy V Ferguson 1896 as a legal precedent
Homer Plessy was a light skinned mulatto (person of mixed race), legally classed as black who sued after being denied a seat in an all white railway carriage. The justices decided 8–1 against him that segregation was constitutional. They ruled that separation in itself did not imply inferior treatment. Only Justice John Harlan dissented. His argument that ‘our constitution is colourblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens’ was confined (for the moment) to the realms of legal theory. The Plessy case created a situation whereby some cases would look to this preceding case as it’s illegal guideline. Thus, in Cumming v the Board of Education in 1899 the separate but equal principle was extended to schools, even though hear the greater amount spent on white schools made a mockery of true equality.
Mississippi v Williams
Black defendant Henry Williams argued that the jury which convicted him was unconstitutionally selected since blacks had been excluded from the electoral register from which the Juries were selected. The court rejected Williams case on the grounds that the exclusion of blacks from the voting register may have been the effect of state legislation but was not its intention.
The Springfield riot 1908
Began when there was a violent attack on the black community after allegations of an attempted rape of a white woman by a black man. The police refused to hand over the accused man to the rioters and some of the white residents took their revenge by attacking and burning black homes and businesses. Most blacks fled the city. 84-year-old African-American William Donnegan was lynched: his only crime was to have been married to a white woman for 32 years. What made the dreadful event especially distressing was not (sadly) the degree of violence, which was not unprecedented, but the poignancy of the location. Springfield was where Abraham Lincoln has lived and was buried. Furthermore, Donnegan, a retired cobbler, was rumoured to have made shoes for the great man himself.
National conference of the Negro
The following statement was issued: ‘often plundered of their just share of the public funds, robbed of nearly all part in the government, segregated by common carriers, some murdered with impunity, all treated with open contempt by officials they are held in some states in practical slavery.’
Chicago race riots July 1919
A teenage Blackboy accidentally drifted towards the ‘whites only’ section on Lake Michigan beach. He was stoned, then drowned. 13 days of sporadic violence followed when Irish and Polish workers attacked the cities black ghettos, leaving 23 black and 15 white people dead and 1000 mainly black, families homeless. This frenzied reaction indicated that race hatred could be just as virulent in the north and was not confined to those of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Garvey left the USA
In 1925 he was arrested and imprisoned for mail fraud. He claimed (possibly with some justification) that the charges against him had been trumped up by his enemies. On his release in 1929 he was deported back to Jamaica where he became briefly involved in the islands politics. Though UNIA continued, Garvey never returned to the US and their conferences in 19 36–38 held just over the Canadian border. He died in England in 1940.
The tragedy of Elaine, Arkansas 1919
It began with a meeting of black people, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, who were demanding better money for their cotton crops. Two white officials who arrived at the meeting (and may have been trying to break it up) were shot in disputed circumstances. One was wounded and one killed. As a result, mobs of whites attacked the local black community. Police arrested all Blacks at the meeting and numerous others, claiming a black insurrection for which there was no evidence. Many blacks were wrongfully convicted of affray. There were many African-American fatalities but the death toll estimates vary from 20 to 250. The NAACP successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to get the African Americans convictions overturned.
Scottsboro boys trial
Two white women claimed that nine young African Americans had raped them on the train. Despite lack of corroborative or medical evidence all were sentenced to death in a hastily organised and farcical trial. Two were under 14, one was severely disabled and another almost blind – these 4 where eventually released after over six years in jail. The other five spent many years in prison, one not being released until 1950. The case caused outrage over the whole country and was assigned the attitudes were changing.
New deal
This was a set of initiatives and programs led by Roosevelt after he took office in 1933, to try and stimulate economic growth and employment after the depression which followed the Wall Street crash in 1929
Public protest
Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her membership of the daughters of the revolution in protest at their action in banning Marian Anderson. In a visible act of defiance big giant, multi racial crowd attended an open air concert given by Miss Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial.
