Monday October 6

th
, 2014
Weekends
Agenda
Notes 8-3
Worksheet
Plessy
SEGREGATI ON AND DI SCRI MI NATI ON
Chapter 08 Section 03
Letsbreak it down!
Main Idea: African Americans lead the fight against
voting restrictions and Jim Crow laws.
Why it matters now: Today, African Americans
have the legacy of a century-long battle for civil
rights.

Introduction to Reconstruction Legislation
13
th
Amendment Ends Slavery
14
th
Amendment Deals with Citizenship
15
th
Amendment Deals with Voting

See Pages 98-100 for specifics
African Americans Fight Legal Discrimination
Voting Restrictions
For at least 10 years after Reconstruction, Southern blacks
can vote
By 1900, all Southern states restrict voting, deny equality
Some limit vote to those who can read; officials give
literacy tests
Some have poll tax that must be paid annually to vote
Some add grandfather clause to constitution to let poor
whites vote
can vote if self, father, grandfather voted before 1867
Jim Crow Laws
1870s, 1880s, Supreme Court allows poll tax, grandfather
clause
Racial segregation laws separate races in private, public
places
Segregation laws called Jim Crow laws after old minstrel
song
Plessy v. Ferguson
1896 Plessy v. Fergusonsegregation legal in public
places
Allows separate but equal doctrine if provide equal
service
How did voting rights for African Americans change in the late 1800s?
Plessy v. Ferguson
The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required
separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892,
Homer Adolph Plessy -- who was seven-eighths
Caucasian -- took a seat in a "whites only" car of a
Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved
for blacks and was arrested. Was Louisiana's law
mandating racial segregation on its trains an
unconstitutional infringement on both the
privileges and immunities and the equal
protection clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment?
The Ruling: Separate but Equal
The court ruled that the Louisiana state law is within
constitutional boundaries and upheld state-imposed racial
segregation. The justices based their decision on the separate-
but-equal doctrine, that separate facilities for blacks and whites
satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal.
(The phrase, "separate but equal" was not part of the opinion.)
Justice Brown conceded that the Fourteenth Amendment
intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the
law. But Brown noted that "in the nature of things it could not
have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or
to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a
commingling of the two races unsatisfactory to either." In short,
segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination.
Significance
The courts ruling in Plessy v Ferguson launched the
era of Jim Crow in the United States -- legal
segregation resulting in terrible inequalities for
African Americans.
http://www.historynow.org/04_2008/inter5.html
Above source for the 2 previous slides as well.
Turn-of-the-Century Race Relations
Opposing Discrimination
Racial etiquetteinformal rules for black-white relations
enforce second-class status for blacks
Moderate reformers, like Booker T. Washington, get
white support
W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells think problems too urgent
to postpone
Born a slave, Ida B. Wells becomes teacher, newspaper
editor
campaigns for racial justice
Violence
African Americans who do not follow etiquette are
punished, lynched
more than 1,400 killed 18821892
Discrimination in the North
Many blacks migrate North for better paying jobs, social
equality
Are forced into segregated neighborhoods
Rejected by labor unions; hired last, fired first by
employers
Competition between blacks, working-class whites
sometimes violent
Name at least two expectations of African Americans at the end of the 1800s?
Racial Etiquette Examples
Blacks and whites never shake hands
Blacks yield the sidewalk to a white person
Black men always remove their hat in the presence
of a white person, even children
Blacks were expected to refer to white males in
authority as Boss or Capn
Blacks were never referred to as Mr. or Mrs.
Black men were referred to as Boy, Uncle, or
Old Man regardless of age.
Black women were referred to as Auntie or Girl
(examples taken from The Americans and Racial Etiquette
by Ronald L.F. Davis, Ph. D.)

Discrimination in the West
Mexican Workers
More Mexicans build railroads in Southwest
than other ethnic groups
forced to work for less than other groups
Mexicans major force in Southwest
agricultural industries
Some Southwest Mexicans, African
Americans forced into debt peonage:
system of slavery to work off debt to employer
1911, Supreme Court declares unconstitutional
Excluding the Chinese
Whites fear job competition, push Chinese to
separate areas, schools
Opposition to Chinese immigration leads to
Chinese Exclusion Act
How were Mexicans discriminated against in the West? Chinese?
Explain how this cartoon relates to debt peonage?
Essential Question:
Did turn of the century advances improve the lives of
Americans?