The Beginning of

the Progressive
 The Progressive Era: A
Review of what you read
The History of Segregation
 Roots of Racism in the
Gilded Age
Failures of
• Failures of
Reconstruction
allow racism to
expand in the
post-Civil War
South…
– Sharecropping
– Voting restrictions
– Violence of the KKK
• African Americans
move west looking
for opportunity,
 Jim Crow Laws
•

The concept of ‘Jim

•

Crow’ came into

existence by a white
entertainer, Daddy
Rice, who used to
paint his face black
while playing and
dancing to traditional
“black” music. It
came to stand, in
1900, for segregation
laws in the South in
regard to:
• Education
• Health Care
• Entertainment http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/history.htm
• Free Speech
Disfranchising African
Americans
• Ways to prevent African
Americans from voting:
– Poll Tax
– Grandfather Clause
– Literacy Test
Homer Plessy, a man who
•

was 1/8 black, was jailed

because he sat in a “white”
railroad car. He refused to
sit in the “colored” car and
was immediately arrested.
•

•When his case was taken

to court it established the
infamous “separate but
equal” doctrine...
http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/post-civilwar/plessy.html
 Racism in North and
South
• System of segregation
continues until the Civil Rights
period and are “enforced” by
state authorities as well as
groups like KKK
• More than 2,500 African Americans
lynched between 1885 and 1900
• While segregation is not legal,
racism is also present in the
Resistance to racism
Efforts to achieve
equality for
African Americans
emerged in late
19th century,
inspiring civil
rights leaders for
years to come
– Ida B. Wells (1862-
1931)
– Booker T.
 Washington vs. DuBois
Booker T. Washington
– Born into slavery
– Became teacher after Civil
War; founded Tuskegee
Institute (1881) in Alabama
to help African Americans
learn trades
– Did not openly challenge
segregation
– Believed “self help” was the
key to equality, even if it
meant doing so in a separate
community
W.E.B. DuBois
– Born after slavery into middle
class family
– Harvard-educated scholar
– Encouraged African Americans
to reject segregation
– Believed educated African
Americans (a.k.a. the “Talented
Tenth”) should lead fight for
equality; established NAACP in
1909 to lead reform movement

What similarities and differences existed between Booker T.

Washington and W.E.B. DuBois in their fight for equality?