The Quest for Civil Rights Flashcards
What percentage of the US population were African American in 1917?
10%
What were sharecroppers?
White landowners provided the land, black sharecroppers provided the land and they shared the profit.
What percentage of African Americans lived in the south in 1917?
90%
What percentage of African Americans were sharecroppers?
45%
What was Jim Crow?
An early 1830s comic, black-faced minstrel character developed by a white performing artist and popular with white audiences. When Southern states introduced laws that legalised segregation in the years following the Civil War and Reconstruction, these were called Jim Crow laws.
What is segregation?
Separation on the ground of race, ethnicity, religion or culture.
What were poll taxes?
Tax levied on would-be voters that made it difficult for blacks to vote because they were usually poor. Mostly adopted by Southern states and in force from the late 19th century to 1964 (24th amendment)
What was the great migration?
Between 1910 and 1970 over 6 million black Americans migrated from the South to the North or West.
What were ghettos?
Areas inhabited mostly or solely by (usually poor) members of a particular ethnicity, nationality or religion.
What was the Klu Klux Klan?
Racist organisation established by Southern whites after the American civil war. It declined in the face of federal government disapproval in the late 19th century but was revived in 1915, when it added Catholics and Jews to its hate list.
Who was the first black American elected to the House of Representatives and when?
Oscar DePriest in 1920
What was the notable ghetto in NYC?
Harlem
What was the membership of the KKK in 1921 and 1924?
1921 = 100,000 1924 = 4 million
