US3 Racial Tension

Question 1

When was slavery abolished in the USA?

Answer 1

1865
by this time there were more black people than White in the south

Question 2

What were the laws called, put in place by white politicians that tried to keep African Americans segregated?

Answer 2

Jim Crow Laws

Question 3

What were some of the examples of the things African Americans were stopped from doing?

Answer 3

Using the same:
- restaurants
- hotels
- swimming pools
- cemeteries
As well as:
- being stopped to vote
- being segregated in the military
- some states banned mixed race marriages

Question 4

Why did African Americans not expect to receive justice from the legal system?

Answer 4

Because many judges, sheriffs and police upheld the Jim Crow Laws

Question 5

Where did African Americans head to when they left the south?

Answer 5

Headed north attracted by better pay and opportunities in new industries

Question 6

How much did the African American population of Chicago and New York increase in the early 1900s?

Answer 6

More than doubled

Question 7

How did racism still manifest itself in the north?

Answer 7

• African Americans were often the last to be hired and the first to be fired
• they occupied the worst housing in the poorest areas of the cities
• some factories only employed white workers or paid black workers the lowest
• there were occasional race riots

Question 8

What caused a race riot in 1919 in Chicago?

Answer 8

Black youths accidentally entered a ‘whites only’ beach and one was killed by a white beachgoer who threw rocks at them. He was hit and drowned. This triggered a riot that lasted a week.

Question 9

What was ‘The Black Renaissance’?

Answer 9

Term for the African American communities in Harlem that became a centre for creativity, black culture and black pride

Question 10

What types of people gathered in Harlem in the black Renaissance

Answer 10

Black poets writers, artist and musicians

Question 11

What attracted white customers to areas like Harlem?

Answer 11

The excitement and liveliness of new nightclubs and jazz bars

Question 12

Who was William Edward Burghardt Du Bois?
WEB du Bois

Answer 12

• The great grandson of an African American slave
• set up the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Question 13

What did the NAACP set out to do?

Answer 13

• Improve the rights of African Americans
• for example campaigning for the right to vote

Question 14

What was the KKK?

Answer 14

• Ku Klux Klan
• a racist terror group with a membership of around 5 million people in 1925

Question 15

What were the aims of the KKK?

Answer 15

• Maintain white supremacy over African Americans and immigrants
• ‘keep them in their place’

Question 16

How did the KKK start?

Answer 16

• founded in the southern states in 1860s to terrorise African Americans
• black people were beaten up or even killed in the hope that they would be too scared to register to vote

Question 17

When did the original KKK decline?

Answer 17

Towards the end of the 19th century

Question 18

What triggered a revival of the KKK and when?

Answer 18

• the movie ‘The Birth of a Nation’
• 1915

Question 19

Why did a movie spark the resurgence of the KKK?

Answer 19

• the movie showed klansmen saving white families from violent black criminals
• it glorified the Klan as an organisation that protected decent law abiding citizens
• it attracted huge audiences and sparked a revival

Question 20

How many members did the KKK have by 1925?

Answer 20

5 million

Question 21

What type of people made up most of the kkk?

Answer 21

Poor, white people mainly from rural areas of southern and western states

Question 22

Why did people join the kkk?

Answer 22

• poor people looked for someone to blame for their poverty
• They turned on African Americans, Jewish people, catholics and immigrants
• the secrecy with its coded language, menacing hooded costume and strange rituals were part of the appeal

Question 23

What did klan members believe African Americans and immigrants were doing?

Answer 23

• the klan was against anyone who was not like them - white and Protestant. They saw themselves as defenders of their Protestant religion and against what they saw as a decline in moral standards
• they felt that black and immigrant workers willingness to work for lower wages took jobs from white people
• they also attacked drunks and gamblers to ‘clean up’ society

Question 24

What were some of the KKK’s methods of intimidation and violence?

Answer 24

• dressed in white sheets and white hoods
• whipping
• branding with acid
• kidnapping
• castration
• lynching

Question 25

What triggered the decline of the klan in the 1920s?

Answer 25

• in 1925 a popular local klan leader was convicted of the brutal rape, and murder of a young woman.
• at his trial he exposed many secrets of the kkk
• within a year membership had fallen from 5 million to 300,000