Introduction And Background Flashcards
Describe the Jim Crow Laws
Named after a character in a plantation song that the black slaves used to sing. Allegedly had a white girlfriend which made him a hated figure in the south. The laws:
Segregation (buses, trains, theatres, hospitals and churches)
Stopped black people from voting by making them pay an unaffordable poll tax, making them complete virtually impossible literacy tests or intimidating and using violence
Describe the KKK (6)
Predominantly in the southern states, established after the Civil War in 1865
Ensure that white people stayed supreme, despite northern laws that freed black people (equal, allowed to vote)
Only White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who promised to defend the USA from black people, immigrants, Jews, communists and socialists could be members
Paraded in white robes and hoods (symbolising white supremacy and purity) and carrying torches
Any black person who tried to improve/ ‘rise above their place’ was beaten, tarred and feathered, raped or murdered. The Klan left a burning cross, most terrifying punishment: lynching (execution without trial by a mob)
Difficult to find a jury that wouldn’t convict Klansmen
1924: 5 million members
What was the NAACP? (6)
National association for the advancement of coloured people
‘Fight’ the rights of black people through peaceful protest
Aims:
1) abolish segregation
2) end lynchings
3) get black people the right to vote (in practise)
4) get equal education opportunities
Did so through sit ins, petitions, discussion, freedom rides and through education. Most famous member MLK
Describe the migration of the 1920s
In the 1920s many black people moved North of America
1) to escape Jim Crow Laws, the KKK and terrible living and working conditions
2) to get better jobs and a better way of life. Encouraged by the economic boom of the 1920s in the Northern industrial cities, plenty of jobs and no segregation
3) given the poorest jobs and housing, free from constant threat of murder and torture from the KKK
Describe what share cropping was (4)
System designed to keep black workers as virtual slaves after the Civil War
‘Rented’ their farms, farming equipment, seeds etc off white landowners at extortionate rates
When harvest came in the black farmer got money for part of his crops- a half or third, rest to white landowner
Once the cost of the farm, equipment seeds etc was deducted, the black family ended up in permanent debt to the white landowner; virtual slavery
Describe life in the North (8).
Still given the poorest paid jobs and lived I the worst housing. They also suffered private discrimination ie being banned from clubs
No official segregation allowed in any of the northern states and a black middle class began to emerge eg small business men like shopkeepers. First black uni established Many talented black musicians and entertainers 'discovered' by white patrons who funded them from the poverty and squalor of the 'ghettos' in the northern cities like Harlem in NY. Black jazz became popular and played in white homes 'black/ Harlem Renaissance' (irony: often black musicians entertained white audiences and black people were banned through private discrimination)
Describe the work of the NAACP (4)
called for federal anti-lynching laws and coordinated a series of reforms in public schools, an effort that led to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional. NAACP retained a prominent role within the movement, co-organizing the 1963 March on Washington, and successfully lobbying for legislation that resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Act.
