African Americans (1877-1890)

Question 1

African American Employment

Answer 1

• 1870-1900: Black population almost doubled from 4.4 million to 7.9 million
• AAs generally went south and west from border states, seeking higher income jobs, e.g. Louisiana, Mississippi
• Found employment in farming, building railroads, making turpentine and lumbering
• Most AAs in the South were tied to farming
• Sharecropping was common, gave many freedmen a living but was labour intensive

Question 2

Northern Migration

Answer 2

• Black population doubled from 460,000 to 910,000
• More AAs began to move north during the Gilded Age, intensified white Northern Americans negative reactions/awareness
• 1880s: first ghetto developed in Harlem, NYC by a small group of AAs, subject to poor quality housing
• De Facto segregation: North didn’t legally enforce segregation but it was socially present, frequently experienced discrimination
• Affected employment opportunities, quality of housing/education and effective confinement to specific areas, quality of life didn’t significantly improve
• Strong black culture developing

Question 3

Education

Answer 3

• 1882: Senator Henry Blair, New Hampshire, introduced an education bill that would have provided millions of dollars to southern black and white schools, bill rejected by Congress
• 1877-1887: Number of black students doubled
• Only 2/5 of eligible black children enrolled
• Schools, mainly rural areas, were often dirt-floored log houses without desks and blackboards
• When schools existed, may stay open for 1/2 months then closed so children could pick cotton
• White schools had more financing
• 1890s: segregated schools were slowly disappearing

Question 4

Rise of Jim Crow (segregation)

Answer 4

• Segregation in the South developing before Reconstruction ended
• White Southerners worried that AAs might start demanding equality
• Perception of AAs being the ‘underclass’ reinforced by popular theories of racism, e.g. Social Darwinism asserted hierarchy of the races
• White Southerners persuaded that separation would reduce racial tensions, separating facilities

Question 5

Denial of the Right to Vote

Answer 5

• Politics after Reconstruction showed a rapidly declining interest in AAs in the Republican Party
• President Arthur had little interest in AAs, Cleveland being a Democrat also contributing to the diminishing enthusiasm for black equality
• Southern whites were determined to limit the political rights of AAs
• 15th Amendment outlawed voting discrimination on grounds of race
• Southern states devised complex rules/additional voting requirements
• Poll Tax: voters pay certain amount of tax
• Literacy Tests: voters had to prove their ability to read and write, white officials decide if their allowed or not
• Grandfather Tests: no man could vote if his ancestor couldn’t before 1865

Question 6

Gilded Age Lynching

Answer 6

• Often encouraged and carried out by the KKK
• 1882-1899: over 2,500 men and women were lynched
• Accusations of rape attacks on white women, occasionally murder, were the usual excuses for lynching
• Ida B. Wells defended black males against a rape charge, wrote an article about it, exposed lawlessness of lyniching and was run out of town for it

Question 7

Plessy vs Ferguson (1896)

Answer 7

• New Louisiana law: ‘equal but separate accommodations for white and coloured races’
• New Orleans community tested this
• June 7th 1892: Homer Plessy agreed to be arrested for refusing to move from a white’s seat
• Judge Ferguson upheld the law, case slowly moved to ‘Supreme Court’
• May 18th 1896: Supreme Court ruled segregation in America constitutional
• ‘Separate but equal’ facilities