African-American History ~ Jim Crow

Jim Crow

Black farmers generally farmed as sharecroppers. White tenants were allowed to rent. With falling wholesale cotton crop prices, both fell into debt.

Sharecropping

“Furnishing merchants” charged interest & higher rates for credit customers. In return, they:• received a “lien” on the crop• insisted that debtors grow cotton

Factors1. 1894 crop double of that in 1873, but the prices were 1/3. 2. Competition from cotton grown in Egypt, India & Brazil.3. Renters & croppers got caught in a system of falling crop prices as

worldwide supply increased. • To make ends meet, they grew less of their own foodstuffs• Bought food & supplies at inflated prices on credit• Fell into a cycle of “debt peonage”: couldn’t afford to move &

couldn’t climb out of debt

Crop-Lien System

Jim Crow

Swept across the South between 1890 & 1905

Consisted of1. Racial Segregation2. Political Disenfranchisement3. Public Degradation

Upheld by Supreme Court4. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

“separate but equal” not a violation of 14th Amendment

5. Williams v. Mississippi (1898) poll taxes & literacy tests do not violate 14th Amendment

Legal UnderpinningsJim Crow was undergirded by reactionary Supreme Court decisions that rolled back civil rights gains made during Reconstruction:

1) Slaughterhouse Cases

2) U.S. v. Reese (1875)

3) U.S. v. Cruikshank (1875)

4) Civil Rights Cases (1883)

5) U.S. v. Santa Clara Railroad (1886)

6) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Racial Segregation

1) Laws requiring separation in public accommodations

2) Laws that required separation in public places

3) Corporate & individual acts of discrimination

4) Miscegenation Laws5) Self-segregation by the black

community

Separate But Equal?

Segregation

Self-Segregation?

Disenfranchisement

Black voting rates in the South dropped: from 60-70% in the 1870s to less than 5% by 1910

Methods of Disenfranchisement1) Poll Taxes2) Literacy Tests3) Residency Requirements4) Property Requirements5) Grandfather Clauses

Map of Disenfranchisement

Racial Degradation

1) Customs that applied unequally to blacks in practice

2) Second-class accommodations3) Economic Discrimination4) Racial Epithets5) Vagrancy & Debtor Laws6) Black Stereotypes7) White Supremacy8) Lynching

Convict Labor

Lynchings, 1882-1965

Function of Lynching

Between 1882-1930: 2805 confirmed lynchings across the South87.7% Black97.2% Male

Southern whites’ claimed:• Lynching was only protection against black criminal behavior

47.1% of victims accused of murder or nonsexual assault

33.6% accused of violating sexual norms

Purpose of Lynching• Take care of dangerous blacks (per Southern claims) • State-Sanctioned Terror Giving Whites Leverage Over Blacks• Target Black Competitors for Social, Economic or Political Power• Affirm White Racial Unity & Superiority

Lynching of Jesse Washington

Accommodationism

Booker T. Washington:

Atlanta Exposition Speech (1895):

"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.“

1) Eschewal of Politics2) Focus on Economics3) Vocational Education4) Self-Segregation

Civil Rights Struggle: NACW

Niagara Movement & NAACP

W.E.B. DuBois, Niagara Movement Leader, Mary Church Terrell, NACW Founder, NAACP Charter Member NAACP Charter Member