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Slide 1
Jim Crow and Civil Rights The African American Experience
Slide 2
Guiding Questions: What difference did the rise of Jim Crow
policies make in the day-to-day lives of African Americans at the
turn of the century? How did African Americans respond to the
racial hostility they experienced in the Jim Crow era?
Slide 3
What was Jim Crow? The legal and extralegal forms of racial
segregation A system of racial domination
Slide 4
When and where did the Jim Crow system exist? 1880s-1900s
codification of the separation of blacks and whites De jure
segregation vs. de factor segregation North and South
Slide 5
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, "segregation
would have been impractical under slavery Discuss this statement
For additional reading see http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/solguid
e/VUS08/essay08c.html http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/solguid
e/VUS08/essay08c.html
Slide 6
Why race relations worsened in the late 1880s and 1890s is a
hotly contested question. it reflected the collapse of the cotton
economy, which led many whites to search for scapegoats. also
related to a fear among many southern whites that a new generation
of African Americans which had been born after the Civil War and
not been subjected to slavery would not defer to white authority. a
reaction against the increasing economic independence of southern
blacks. From 1880 to 1900, black farm ownership increased from 19.6
to 25.4 percent, while sharecropping, declined from 54.4. to 37.9
percent.
Slide 7
A System of Racial Domination Economics Politics Social
Slide 8
Jim Crow Must help students understand that Jim Crow was more
than a series of strict anti-black laws. It was a way of life. List
of typical Jim Crow laws Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as
a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia). Blind Wards. The
board of trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on
separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support
of all blind persons of the colored or black race (Louisiana).
Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be
buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the
burial of white persons (Georgia). See What Was Jim Crow? by Dr.
David Pilgrim at www.jimcrow.orgwww.jimcrow.org
Slide 9
Jim Crow etiquette A black male could not offer his hand (to
shake hands) with a white male because it implied being socially
equal. Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they
did eat together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of
partition was to be placed between them. Whites did not use
courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for example,
Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, blacks were called by
their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring
to whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.
If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black
person sat in the back seat or the back of a truck. White motorists
had the right-of-way at all intersections.
Slide 10
Race and Place
Slide 11
Social Jim Crowism: Segregated Transportation Challenges
against Segregated Transportation (see All the Women were White)
Niagara Movement (see next slide) The Niagara Movement was
organized in 1905 by W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, Ida
Wells Barnett, and other middle-class but militant Black
intellectuals. It was a repudiation of the conservative and
stifling leadership of Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee
Machine. (see The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles at
http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1152.htm ) NAACP The NAACP was
formed in 1909 through the merger of two organizations: the Niagara
Movement and the National Negro Conference.
Slide 12
The black laws / speech of Hon. B.W. Arnett of Greene County,
and Hon. J.A. Brown of Cuyahoga County, in the Ohio House of
Representatives, March 10, 1886. Members [of the Ohio House of
Representatives] will be astonished when I tell them that I have
traveled in this free country for twenty hours without anything to
eat; not because I had no money to pay for it, but because I was
colored. Other passengers of a lighter hue had breakfast, dinner
and supper. In traveling we are thrown in "jim crow" cars, denied
the privilege of buying a berth in the sleeping coach. This monster
caste stands at the doors of the theatres and skating rinks, locks
the doors of the pews in our fashionable churches, closes the
mouths of some of the ministers in their pulpits which prevents the
man of color from breaking the bread of life to his fellowmen. This
foe of my race stands at the school house door and separates the
children, by reason of color, and denies to those who have a
visible admixture of African blood in them the blessings of a
graded school and equal privileges...We call upon all friends of
Equal Rights to assist us in this struggle to secure the blessings
of untrammeled liberty for ourselves and prosperity.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aapprot.html
Slide 13
Excerpt of The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles
(1905) Protest: We refuse to allow the impression to remain that
the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under
oppression and apologetic before insults. Through helplessness we
may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million Americans must
never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as America
is unjust. Color-Line: Any discrimination based simply on race or
color is barbarous, we care not how hallowed it be by custom,
expediency or prejudice. Differences made on account of ignorance,
immorality, or disease are legitimate methods of fighting evil, and
against them we have no word of protest; but discriminations based
simply and solely on physical peculiarities, place of birth, color
of skin, are relics of that unreasoning human savagery of which the
world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed. "Jim Crow" Cars: We
protest against the "Jim Crow" car, since its effect is and must be
to make us pay first-class fare for third-class accommodations,
render us open to insults and discomfort and to crucify wantonly
our manhood, womanhood and self-respect.
Slide 14
Economic Jim Crowism
Slide 15
Sharecropping System the dominate form of labor relations What
did black farmers want? What did white planters want? Cycle of debt
fixing the books settlin time Debt peonage Credit system Vagrancy
laws Convict lease system Involuntary servitude
Slide 16
Sharecropper Contract, 1882 To every one applying to rent land
upon shares, the following conditions must be read, and agreed to.
To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to furnish the team, plow, and
farming implements... The croppers are to have half of the cotton,
corn, and fodder (and peas and pumpkins and potatoes if any are
planted) if the following conditions are complied with, but-if
not-they are to have only two-fifths (2/5)... All must work under
my direction.... No cropper is to work off the plantation when
there is any work to be done on the land he has rented, or when his
work is needed by me or other croppers.... Every cropper must feed
or have fed, the team he works, Saturday nights, Sundays, and every
morning before going to work, beginning to feed his team (morning,
noon, and night every day in the week) on the day he rents and
feeding it to including the 31st day of December....for every time
he so fails he must pay me five cents. The sale of every cropper's
part of the cotton to be made by me when and where I choose to
sell, and after deducting all they owe me and all sums that I may
be responsible for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the
net proceeds. Work of every description, particularly the work on
fences and ditches, to be done to my satisfaction, and must be done
over until I am satisfied that it is done as it should be. SOURCE:
Grimes Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in Robert D. Marcus and David Burner,
eds., America Firsthand (1992), pp. 306308.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/sharecropper.pdf
http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/mapcontractquestions.pdf
Slide 17
Sharecropping: Continuity or Change?
http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/planta3.htm
Slide 18
Frustrated Sharecroppers Robert Curtis Smith (turn of the
century) in Litwack, Trouble in Mind, p. 134 If you make a crop and
dont clear nothin and you still wound up won on your sharecrop and
on your furnish and you try to move, well the police be after you
then all right. But if youre clear well mostly, you cant go too far
because of the money. If you move, or if you try to move, they know
if they like the way you work they make you pay somethin just for
holdin the house up. If, after you pay that you want to move, well
you cant go too far becauseyou gonne need money to carry you on to
the place where you can get work. And if you caint get work at one
place you go to the next place, but you caint go too far, because
you aint got enough in hand to go that far.
Slide 19
Sharecropping in Virginia http://www.mcps.org/ss/5thgrade/Sh
areCropTN.pdf http://www.mcps.org/ss/5thgrade/Sh areCropTN.pdf
Slide 20
How did African Americans respond to the limits of Southern
labor systems? Maintain self-sufficiency Tenancy A tenant owned the
crop he produced, the sharecropper did not Black womens labor
Slide 21
Housing In the rural South, blacks lived in the same housing
that had been built for slaves. What did this housing look like?
When did housing improve? How?
Slide 22
Housing 1895-1896, U.S. Department of Agriculture report on
housing in the Tuskegee region of Alabama: Practically all the
negroes live in cabins, generally built of logs, with only one or
at most two rooms. The spaces between the logs were either left
open, admitting free passage of the wind in winter as well as in
summer, or were chinked with earth or occasionally with pieces of
board. The roofs were covered with coarse shingles or boards and
were apt to be far from tight. The windows had no sash or glass,
but instead, wooden blinds, which were kept open in all weather to
admit the light.
Slide 23
W. E. B. Du Bois (1908) As cooking, washing and sleeping go on
in the same room an accumulation of stale sickly odors are manifest
to every visitorA room so largely in use is with difficulty to kept
clean. .animals stray into the house; there are either no privies
or bad ones; facilities for bathing even the face and hands are
poorThe average country home leaks in the roof and is poorly
protected against changes in the weather. A hard storm means the
shutting out of all air and light; cold weather leads to
overheating, draughts, or poor ventilation; hot weather breeds
diseases.
Slide 24
Georgia farm operator (turn of the century) The original
plantation houses of the South, I regret to say, were mostly 1-room
affairs, 20 or 25 feet square, and those were mostly of logs. The
modern house is a frame house, boarded and sheathed with 3 rooms a
general family room, which is used only to put the family bed in
and then a separate bedroom, and a kitchen. The general modern
tenant house is a 3-room house.
Slide 25
1901, Georgia commissioner of Agriculture Landlords have been
forced to build better tenant houses and provide them with modern
systems that are adapted all around, in order to retain and keep
the best labor. That is really the way that a great many of our
best people succeed in keeping their labor, and the better class of
labor, by making everything around them as comfortable as
possible.
Slide 26
Slide 27
Sharecroppers cabin
Slide 28
The Politics of Jim Crow Disfranchisement and Political
Intimidation
Slide 29
Disfranchisement 2 Parts Disfranchisement I: The Politics and
Culture of Violence Use of violence to suppress black political
action Disfranchisement II: Literacy Requirements, property
qualifications, Poll Taxes, Grandfather Clauses, and Understanding
Clauses Disfanchisment Laws had to be carefully crafted to avoid
15th amendment, they could not explicitly use race as a barrier to
voting.
Slide 30
The Culture of Violence and Intimidation Chain Gangs Convict
Lease System
Slide 31
Taken from the third chapter of "The Reason why the colored
American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition," published in
1893 the convicts are leased out to work for railway contractors,
mining companies and those who farm large plantations. These
companies assume charge of the convicts, work them as cheap labor
and pay the states a handsome revenue for their labor ..[The]
reason our race furnishes so large a share of the convicts is that
the judges, juries and other officials of the courts are white men
who share these prejudices. They also make the laws. It is wholly
in their power to extend clemency to white criminals and mete
severe punishment to black criminals for the same or lesser crimes.
The Negro criminals are mostly ignorant, poor and friendless.
Possessing neither money to employ lawyers nor influential friends,
they are sentenced in large numbers to long terms of imprisonment
for petty crimes. Every Negro so sentenced not only means
able-bodied men to swell the state's number of slaves, but every
Negro so convicted is thereby disfranchised.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fredouconlea.html
Slide 32
"We found [in the hospital section] twenty-six inmates, all of
whom have been lately brought there off the farms and railroads,
many of them with consumption and other incurable diseases, and all
bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and brutal
treatment. Most of them have their backs cut in great wales, scars
and blisters, some with the skin pealing off in pieces as the
result of severe beatings. Their feet and hands in some instances
show signs of frostbite, and all of them with the stamp of manhood
almost blotted out of their faces.... They are lying there dying,
some of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones
almost come through their skin, many complaining for the want of
food.... We actually saw live vermin crawling over their faces, and
the little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and stiff
with filth. As a fair sample of this system, on January 6, 1887,
204 convicts were leased to McDonald up to June 6, 1887, and during
this six months 20 died, and 19 were discharged and escaped and 23
were returned to the walls disabled and sick, many of whom have
since died." http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm
Jackson Weekly Clarion, printed in 1887 the inspection report of
the state prison in Mississippi:
Slide 33
Why the convict lease system? no black crime spree Southern
governments wanted to control the black population. The system used
by the planter class and industrialist to intimidate black
sharecroppers and provide workers for the Souths growing industry.
The system reaffirmed white feelings of racial superiority Helped
maintained racial hierarchy of southern society.
Slide 34
Other Helpful Websites: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/ Especially see sections on Jim
Crow Laws, Lynching and Riots, and Jim Crow Stories. The lesson
plans and activities are also useful.
Slide 35
Disfranchisement Almost all southern states passed statutes
restricting suffrage in the years from 1871 to 1889 But, it was in
the 1890s that a formal movement for disfranchisement emerged in
full force. Why the Delay? The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited
states from depriving a citizen of his vote due to race, color, or
condition of servitude. Four main ways disfranchisement was
accomplished Poll Tax, Literacy requirements, Property
requirements, Residency requirements
Slide 36
Escape clauses designed so that poor and illiterate whites
could still qualify to vote. (1) Understanding clause Literacy and
educational requirements
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_0 2/Vote172.shtml LA
Literacy Test http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_0
2/Vote172.shtml Grandfather clause Could not vote if grandfather
could not have voted prior to 1867
Slide 37
Slide 38
African-American Responses to Jim Crow Politics Booker T.
Washington The Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895 (see
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for document)
http://historymatters.gmu.edu The Washington-DuBois Debate Of Mr.
Booker T. Washington and Others published within The Souls of Black
Folk (1903) (see http://historymatters.gmu.edu for document)
http://historymatters.gmu.edu
Slide 39
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. 1903.Chapter III: Of
Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others it has been claimed that the
Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington
distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the
present, three things, First, political power, Second, insistence
on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth, and
concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the
accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This
policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over
fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a
result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return?
In these years there have occurred: The disfranchisement of the
Negro. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority
for the Negro. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for
the higher training of the Negro. These movements are not, to be
sure, direct results of Mr. Washingtons teachings; but his
propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier
accomplishment. The question then comes: Is it possible, and
probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in
economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a
servile caste, and allowed only the most meagre chance for
developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any
distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No.
Slide 40
Racist Publications and Black Response
Slide 41
How are African Americans represented in these photographs?
http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/menu.htm
http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/menu.htm
Slide 42
Do you see any similarities to depicting people as inferior and
the use of violence against them? Negative images used to justify
discrimination and segregationist system
Slide 43
Slide 44
Defending black identity Henry M. Turner A man must believe he
is somebody before he is acknowledged to be somebodyRespect Black.
(Litwack, Trouble in Mind, p. 462)
Slide 45
Black Progress/Black Resistance
Slide 46
The Quest for an Education Discussion starter: Ask students
what the importance of education is to them. How significant is it
in their lives?
Slide 47
The Value of an education Elderly black woman, deer fesser,
please accept this 18 cents it is all I have. I save it out of my
washing this week. God will bless you. Send you more next week. A
teachers diary, Aunt Hester gave a pound of butter and a dime.
Grandma Williams a chicken. Effie McCoy, a cake and five cents;
Bessie a dress. See Richard Wormser, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,
p. 49
Slide 48
The value of an education: from another perspective Montgomery
Alabama Lawyer, It is a question of who will do the dirty workIf
you educate the Negroes they wont stay where they belong; and you
must consider them as a race, because if you let a few rise it
makes the others discontented. Unknown, It tends to make the negro
unwilling to work where he is wanted and desirous of working where
he is not wanted See Litwack, Trouble in Mind, p. 95
Slide 49
The Quest for Education Why were students afraid? One Virginia
county man, down in my neighborhood they are afraid to be caught
with a book. Caroline Smith, 1871, Georgia They would not let us
have schools. They (KKK) went to a colored man there, whose son had
been teaching school, and they took evry book they had and threw
them into the fire; and they said they would dare any other [negro]
to have a book in his house
Slide 50
Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois Identify significant
differences in the early lives of Washington and Du Bois. Where was
each man born? Who was born a slave? Where did they go to school?
What early experiences played a role in shaping their differing
philosophies on elevating African-Americans in American society?
Contrast the educational theories of both men. What did each man
believe should be the purpose of education for African
Americans?
Slide 51
Booker T. Washington Washington was "born a slave on a
plantation in Franklin County, Virginia..." (Up From Slavery) in
1856. After emancipation, he and his family moved to Malden, West
Virginia. The nearby Kanawha Sapines salt furnaces provided wage
work for many freed slaves in West Virginia, including members of
Washington's family. A prominent white family, the Ruffners, hired
the young Washington as a domestic. Washington later said the
lessons he learned from them were "... as valuable to me as any
education I have gotten anywhere since." see
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/tuskegee/bt woverview.htm
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/tuskegee/bt
woverview.htm
Slide 52
from "Nineteenth Annual Report of the Principal of the Tuskegee
Normal and Industrial Institute" by Booker T. Washington
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aapindus.htmlBooker T. Washington
The chief value of industrial education is to give to the students
habits of industry, thrift, economy and an idea of the dignity of
labor. But in addition to this, in the present economic condition
of the colored people, it is most important that a very large
proportion of those trained in such institutions as this, actually
spend their time at industrial occupations. Let us value the work
of Tuskegee by this test...Our students actually cultivate every
day, seven hundred acres of land, while studying agriculture. The
students studying dairying, actually milk and care for seventy-
five milch cows daily...and so I could go on and give not theory,
nor hearsay, but actual facts, gleaned from all the departments of
the school.
Slide 53
from "The Primary Needs of the Negro Race" by Kelly Miller
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphigh.htmlKelly Miller The first
great need of the Negro is that the choice youth of the race should
assimilate the principles of culture and hand them down to the
masses below. This is the only gateway through which a new people
may enter into modern civilization...The Roman youth of ambition
completed their education in Athens; the noblemen of northern
Europe sent their sons to the southern peninsulas in quest of
larger learning...The graduates of Hampton and other institutions
of like aim are forming centers of civilizing influence in all
parts of the land, and we confidently believe that these grains of
leaven will ultimately leaven the whole lump.
Slide 54
W. E. Burghart Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth," September 1903
The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its
exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must
first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of
developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away
from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and
other races. .. How then shall the leaders of a struggling people
be trained and the hands of the risen few strengthened? There can
be but one answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be
schooled in the colleges and universities of the land. We will not
quarrel as to just what the university of the Negro should teach or
how it should teach it I willingly admit that each soul and each
race-soul needs its own peculiar curriculum. But this is true: A
university is a human invention for the transmission of knowledge
and culture from generation to generation, through the training of
quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no other human
invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools.
Slide 55
The Niagara Movement and the NAACP Niagara Movement 1905 NAACP
1909 Heirs to the 19 th century abolitionist movement NAACP mission
to ensure that African Americans be physically free from peonge,
mentally free from ignorance, politically free from
disfranchisement, and socially free from insult. Booker T.
Washington declined to join, so did Ida B. Wells
Slide 56
Discussion Question Do you think that you could have lived as a
black person in the Jim Crow South? How would you have coped? What
would you have done to survive? What would have been the most
difficult thing for you as a young black person to have accepted or
coped with in Virginia at the peak of Jim Crow? Answer the same
questions from the perspective of a young white person.
Slide 57
Going North The Great Migration Two phases Phase 1 1900-1915
Phase 2 WWI to 1930
Slide 58
The Chicago Defender, April 7, 1917
Slide 59
Albert Alex Smith, "They Have Ears But They Hear Not," The
Crisis, XXI (November, 1920), p. 17.
Slide 60
Great Migration One Way Ticket (Langston Hughes) I pick up my
life, And take it with me, And I put it down in Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, Scranton, Any place that is North and East, And not Dixie.
I pick up my life And take it on the train, To Los Angeles,
Bakersfield, Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake Any place that is North
and West, And not South.
Slide 61
Slide 62
Slide 63
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and
Prints DivisionSchomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
Photographs and Prints Division The Chicago Commission on Race
Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a
Race Riot (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1922)The
Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study
of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1922)
Slide 64
For Images and Maps about Migration North see
http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrat ions/landing.cfm
http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrat ions/landing.cfm Great Migration
lesson plan -- http://artsedge.kennedy- center.org/content/2247
http://artsedge.kennedy- center.org/content/2247
Slide 65
Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/
odonnell/w1010/edit/migration/migra tion.html
Slide 66
"Interview of Jacob Lawrence" from African American Frontiers:
Slave Narratives and Oral Histories Alan Govenar ABC-CLIO (Santa
Barbara, 2000) @ http://www.inmotionaame.org/texts/?migration
http://www.inmotionaame.org/texts/?migration My family was a part
of the migration. That is, my mother, my sister, and my brother. My
father and my mother were separated. I was born in Atlantic City,
New Jersey. They were moving up the coast, as many families were
during that migration. And I was part of that. We moved up to
various cities until we arrivedthe last two cities I can remember
before moving to New York were Easton, Pennsylvania, and
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And then we finally settled in New York
City. So that was my upbringing. My young years were spent just
doing that: traveling as part of the migration, and that was it. I
was aware of people moving, older people like my mother's peersI
would hear them talk about how another family has arrived. And
these were the people who would mention the fact that they had been
here a few years and they were seeing the new migrants coming in
and settling or moving on. And I didn't realize what it was at the
time, of course; it's only in later years that I realized what was
going on.
Slide 67
The Music of the Great Migration
http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroo m/defmigration.html
http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroo m/defmigration.html Harlem
Music lesson Plan-- http://artsedge.kennedy-
center.org/content/2258 Harlem childrens games lesson plan -
http://artsedge.kennedy- center.org/content/2249
Slide 68
Times Is Gettin Harder: Blues of the Great Migration Times is
gettin' harder, Moneys gettin' scarce. Soon as I gather my cotton
and corn, Im bound to leave this place. White folks sittin' in the
parlor, Eatin' that cake and cream, Niggers way down to the
kitchen, Squabblin' over turnip greens. Times is gettin' harder,
Moneys gettin' scarce. Soon as I gather my cotton and corn, Im
bound to leave this place. Me and my brother was out. Thought wed
have some fun. He stole three chickens. We began to run. Times is
gettin' harder, Moneys gettin' scarce. Soon as I gather my cotton
and corn Im bound to leave this place. (find at Historymatters.gmu
see also:"Sir I Will Thank You with"Sir I Will Thank You with All
My Heart": seven Letters from the Great Migration
Slide 69
What life was like for African Americans in the Jim Crow North
in the early the 20th century?
Slide 70
PROMISE LAND? Chicago, Illinois, July 1941 LOC Prints and
Photographs Division
Slide 71
Chicago Housing Chicago, Illinois, July 1941 LOC Prints and
Photographs Division
Slide 72
Torched school in New Jersey from Scott Nearing, Black America
(New York: The Vanguard Press, 1929)
Slide 73
The New Negro
Slide 74
African American Responses: Organized Protest National Urban
League --1910 in New York City Churches Universal Negro Improvement
Association -- 1914
Slide 75
African American Responses: WWI Complex factor: WWI W.E. B.
Dubois Returning Soldiers May 1919 We are returning from war! The
Crisis and tens of thousands of black men were drafted into a great
struggle. For bleeding France and what she means and has meant and
will mean to us and humanity and against the threat of German race
arrogance, we fought gladly and to the last drop of blood; for
America and her highest ideals, we fought in far-off hope; for the
dominant southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington, we fought in
bitter resignation. For the America that represents and gloats in
lynching, disfranchisement, caste, brutality and devilish insultfor
this, in the hateful upturning and mixing of things, we were forced
by vindictive fate to fight also. But today we return! We return
from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us
to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America
squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This
country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and
dreamed, is yet a shameful land.
Slide 76
Red Summer If We Must Die (1919) Claude McKay If we must die,
let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at
our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our
precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we
defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen we
must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us
brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though
before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous,
cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Slide 77
The Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro paintings by Jacob
Lawrence and Aaron DouglasJacob Lawrence Aaron Douglas sculptures
by Augusta SavageAugusta Savage picture quilts by Faith
RinggoldFaith Ringgold Poetry by Langston HughesLangston Hughes
Lesson plan -- http://artsedge.kennedy-
center.org/content/2248/
Slide 78
More websites Portrait of Place, Portrait of a Family
http://artsedge.kennedy- center.org/content/2259 Portrait of Place,
Portrait of a Family http://artsedge.kennedy-
center.org/content/2259
Slide 79
Between the Wars Direct Action during the Depression contrasted
sharply both quantitatively and qualitatively with the history of
such tactics during the entire preceding century A. Meier and E.
Rudwick Increase in Black Political Awareness Newspaper circulation
doubled NAACP membership increased Increased militancy Marcus
Garvey UNIA Dont Buy Where You Cant Work (1929-1941) Harlem Riot-
1935
Slide 80
The Fight for Civil Rights: Toward a Social Movement
(pre-Brown) Focus: The early twentieth-century civil rights efforts
of African American with particular attention on individual acts
and local organization such as church groups, and national
organizations (i.e. NAACP, NUL and CORE). Goal: Help students
understand that long before the African American struggle for
rights became a mass movement, local resistance in black
communities took many forms.
Slide 81
Rising Black Militancy Langston Hughes (1931) Tired I am so
tired of waiting, Arent you For the world to become good And
beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife And cut the world in two
And see what worms are eating At the rind.
Slide 82
World War II and the Rise of African-American Protest Politics
A.Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement B.The
president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a primarily
black union, was A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979). March 1941,
Randolph proposed a new civil rights strategy: a massive march on
Washington D. C. Three demands: The immediate end to segregation
and discrimination in federal government hiring. An end to
segregation of the armed forces. Government support for an end to
discrimination and segregation in all American employment.
Slide 83
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Est. 1942 on the University
of Chicago campus. The creation of CORE marked the beginning of a
mass movement for civil rights. CORE PHILOSOPHY Interracial
founders committed to Gandian techniques of nonviolent direct
action Their tactics provided an important example for later civil
rights activists. strikes, demonstrations, boycotts Dont Buy Where
You Cant Work (1929-1941) Sit-ins by Howard Univ. students
(1943-1944
Slide 84
Jackie Robinson: Civil Rights Advocate The first black man to
"officially" play in the big leagues, First game with Dodgers in
1947 http://www.archives.gov/education/lesso
ns/jackie-robinson/
Slide 85
Barbara Johns and Beyond: Rising Expectations, 1951-1959
1.Barbara Johns, April 23, 1951 2.Brown v. Board of Education, May
1954 3.Montgomery Bus Boycott, December 1955 4.Central High School,
Little Rock, Arkansas, September 1957 Key Point: Students took the
initiative in seeking to transform legal rights into tangible
racial advances.
Slide 86
The Brown Decision Immediate Reaction to the Decision:
Comparing Media Coverage
http://www.landmarkcases.org/brown/reaction.html
http://www.landmarkcases.org/brown/reaction.html Compare and
contrast different regions newspaper reportage. How did Virginia
newspapers report the decision? Get Local Were Loudoun County
schools segregated? Was segregation de jure (by law) or de facto
(in fact)? Make sure the students understand that even if schools
were not legally segregated (de jure), they could have been
segregated in fact (de facto) because people of color were excluded
from moving into certain neighborhoods and communities, and the
segregated communities created segregated schools. How and when did
the schools become integrated?
http://www.balchfriends.org/Glimpse/EssUnderstanding.ht m
Slide 87
African Americans in Montgomery Protest Segregation
Transportation Half a century before the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus
Boycott African Americans in the city had conducted a two-year
boycott when the city council enacted a trolley-car segregation
bill. Like the bus boycott of 1955-1956, the Montgomery streetcar
boycott of 1900-1902 was part of a larger regional black protest
against Jim Crow urban transit. ( August Meier and Elliott Rudwick,
The Boycott Movement Against Jim Crow Streetcars in the South,
1900-1906, Journal of American History, 55, 4 (March 1969), 756.
(pdf) ( August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, The Boycott Movement
Against Jim Crow Streetcars in the South, 1900-1906, Journal of
American History, 55, 4 (March 1969), 756. Slide from presentation
by Elsa Brown, 2002
Slide 88
Known Streetcar Boycotts Atlanta, 1892-1893 Augusta, 1898
Savannah, 1899 Atlanta and Rome, 1900 Augusta, 1900-1903
Jacksonville, 1901 Montgomery, 1900-1902 Mobile, 1902 New Orleans
and Shreveport, 1902-1903 Little Rock, 1903 Columbia, 1903 Slide
from presentation by Elsa Brown, 2002 Houston, 1903-1905 Vicksburg
and Natchez, 1904 San Antonio, 1904-1905 Richmond, 1904-1905
Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, 1905 Jacksonville and
Pensacola, 1905 Nashville, 1905-1906 Danville, Lynchburg,
Petersburg, and Norfolk, 1906 Newport News, 1906-1907 Savannah,
1906-1907
Slide 89
Who are these Women? March 2, 1955December 1, 1955
Slide 90
Montgomery Bus Boycott Mary Louis Smith, Claudette Colvin Who
were they? http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/montgom
ery_bus_boycott.htm http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/montgom
ery_bus_boycott.htm Montgomery Bus BoycottOrganizing Strategies and
Challenges Activity at
http://civilrightsteaching.org/lessonshandouts/h andouts.htm
http://civilrightsteaching.org/lessonshandouts/h andouts.htm Jo Ann
Robinson Who was she? Women's Political Council (WPC) of
Montgomery, Alabama May 21, 1954 letter to Mayor INTERVIEW:
http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/filmandmedi
a/pdfs/ROBINSON-JO%20ANN.pdf
http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/filmandmedi
a/pdfs/ROBINSON-JO%20ANN.pdf
Slide 91
Slide from Slide from presentation by Elsa Brown, 2002
Slide 92
Flyer announcing boycott Slide from presentation by Elsa Brown,
2002
Slide 93
Teaching the Bus Boycott Toni Morrissons Remember
http://houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/morris
on_remember.shtml
http://houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/morris
on_remember.shtml
http://www.teachingforchange.org/busboycott/busboyco tt.htm
http://www.teachingforchange.org/busboycott/busboyco tt.htm
Teaching With Documents: An Act of Courage, The Arrest Records of
Rosa Parks
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/
Slide 94
Student Activism and the Emergence of a Mass Movement,
1960-1965 Focus: College students developed new strategies and
revitalized old ones that help to escalate the civil rights
struggle and broaden its base. Their tactics included sit- ins,
freedom rides, jail-ins, boycotts, voter registration drives, and
marches. Goal: To help students understand how/why the involvement
of college students brought transformed the movement.
Slide 95
Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement Sweet Chariot: The
Story of the Spirituals
http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Freedom/civil.cfm MUSIC OF THE CIVIL
RIGHTS ERA, 1954-1968 http://www.learningtogive.org/lessons/unit53/
Eyes on the Prize Lesson
http://www.tolerance.org/teach/resources/songbook/pdf/010_eyesprize.pdf
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings http://www.folkways.si.edu/ Search
for Sing For Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement
Through Its Songs and Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black
American Freedom Songs 1960-1966. There are audio clips for both
CDs available online.
Slide 96
EYES ON THE PRIZE Paul and Silas bound in jail Had no money for
to go their bail Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on Paul and
Silas thought they was lost Dungeon shook and the chains come off
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on Freedom's name is mighty sweet
And soon we're gonna meet Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on I
got my hand on the gospel plow Won't take nothing for my journey
now Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on Hold on, hold on Keep your
eyes on the prize, hold on Soozie! Only chain that a man can stand
Is that chain o' hand on hand Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
I'm gonna board that big greyhound Carry the love from town to town
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on Hold on, hold on Keep your
eyes on the prize, hold on
Slide 97
Sit-ins Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-in (1960) Bigger Than a
Hamburger and A Conference on the Sit-ins [see handout] Consider
the following statement by journalist Louis Lomax, "They [the
sit-ins] were proof that the Negro leadership class, epitomized by
the NAACP, was no longer the prime mover in the Negro's social
revolt. The demonstrations have shifted the desegregation battles
from the courtroom to the marketplace. See Greensboro Sit-ins:
Launch of a Civil Rights Movement at
http://www.sitins.com/index.shtml. Site contains photographs,
documents, and audio clips from Greensboro participants and civil
rights leaders.http://www.sitins.com/index.shtml
Slide 98
Ella J. Baker (June, 1960) Bigger than a Hamburger The Student
Leadership Conference made it crystal clear that current sit-ins
and other demonstrations are concerned with something much bigger
than a hamburger or even a giant-sized Coke. Whatever may be the
difference in approach to their goal, the Negro and white students,
North and South, are seeking to rid America of the scourge of
racial segregation and discrimination - not only at lunch counters,
but in every aspect of life. By and large, this feeling that they
have a destined date with freedom, was not limited to a drive for
personal freedom, or even freedom for the Negro in the South.
Repeatedly it was emphasized that the movement was concerned with
the moral implications of racial discrimination for the "whole
world" and the "Human Race."
Slide 99
Ella Baker SNCC Ella Baker 1940s (NAACP);1950s (SCLC); 1960s
(SNCC) Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit- ins. She
wanted to help the new student activists and organized a meeting at
Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April
1960. From that meeting SNCC was born. Different leadership style
than MLK Baker believed in group centered leadership vs
leadership-centered group
Slide 100
A Movement in Transition: SNCC SNCC went through three stages.
First: 1960 to 1963 (Sit-ins and Freedom Rides) Second: 1963 to
1964 (Freedom Summer) A time of transition which sparked a
reconsideration of nonviolence Nearly 1,000 volunteers worked in
Mississippi that summer. During those months, 6 people, were
killed, 80 beaten, 35 churches burned, and 30 other buildings
bombed. Third: 1965 to 1967. A trip to Africa by several SNCC
leaders, discussions with and about Malcolm X, and growing
alienation between blacks and whites inside SNCC was capped by the
Watts riot in August, 1965. The following June, "Black Power"
became SNCC's battle cry in a march led by James Meredith in
Mississippi.
Slide 101
Freedom Rides Define: The Freedom Riders left Washington DC on
May 4, 1961. They were scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May
17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown decision. The Freedom
Riders never made it to New Orleans. Outcome: led to the end of
segregation in interstate bus travel in a ruling, -- took effect in
September 1961. Website: African American Odyssey-Library of
Congress See http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aoint
ro.html http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aoint ro.html
especially the Civil Rights Era section.
Slide 102
Birmingham: Project C ('Confrontation Birmingham' ) New
campaign in Birmingham. Goal: to activate the black community and
to force complete desegregation of all the city's facilities.
Letter from Birmingham City Jail Written in response to a letter in
the local paper, the Birmingham News by eight white Alabama
clergymen. The clergymen stated that the demonstrations by
"impatient" "outsiders" was "unwise and untimely". They thought
that the civil rights movement should wait and give Birmingham
citizens a chance to reform their city on their own. MLK Perhaps it
is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of
segregation to say, Wait. comes a time when the cup of endurance
runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the
abyss of despair. I hope sirs, you can understand our legitimate
and unavoidable impatience For more information about the letter,
listen to the following NPR radio report:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20010305.me.14.ramhttp://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20010305.me.14.ram
Slide 103
ALABAMA CENTENNIAL, by Naomi Long Madgett They said, "Wait."
Well, I waited. For a hundred years I waited In cotton fields,
kitchens, balconies, In bread lines, at back doors, on chain gangs,
In stinking "colored" toilets And crowded ghettos, Outside of
schools and voting booths. And some said, "Later." And some said,
"Never!" Then a new wind blew, and a new voice Rode its wings with
quiet urgency, Strong, determined, sure. "No," it said. "Not
'never,' not 'later." Not even 'soon.' Now. Walk!" And other voices
echoed the freedom words, "Walk together, children, don't get
weary," Whispered them, sang them, prayed them, shouted them.
"Walk!" And I walked the streets of Montgomery Until a link in the
chain of patient acquiescence broke. Then again: Sit down! And I
sat down at the counters of Greensboro. Ride! And I rode the bus
for freedom. Kneel! And I went down on my knees in prayer and
faith. March! And I'll march until the last chain falls Singing,
"We shall overcome." Not all the dogs and hoses in Birmingham Nor
all the clubs and guns in Selma Can turn this tide. Not all the
jails can hold these young black faces From their destiny of
manhood, Of equality, of dignity, Of the American Dream A hundred
years past due. Now!
Slide 104
Birmingham: cont On Sept. 15, 1963, the all-Black Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church was bombed. Sunday school was in session. See
Ballad of Birmingham Websites:
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi
/lesson.plans/05/02/church.bombing/ Includes Lesson Plan
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi
/lesson.plans/05/02/church.bombing/
Slide 105
Ballad of Birmingham "Mother dear, may I go downtown Instead of
out to play, And march the streets of Birmingham In a Freedom March
today?" "No, baby, no, you may not go, For the dogs are fierce and
wild, And clubs and hoses, guns and jails Aren't good for a little
child." "But, mother, I won't be alone. Other children will go with
me, And march the streets of Birmingham To make our country free."
"No, baby, no, you may not go, For I fear those guns will fire. But
you may go to church instead And sing in the children's choir." She
has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, And bathed rose petal
sweet, And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, And white
shoes on her feet. The mother smiled to know that her child Was in
the sacred place, But that smile was the last smile To come upon
her face. For when she heard the explosion, Her eyes grew wet and
wild. She raced through the streets of Birmingham Calling for her
child. She clawed through bits of glass and brick, Then lifted out
a shoe. "O, here's the shoe my baby wore, But, baby, where are
you?"
Slide 106
The Militant Years, 1966-68 Focus: The changing face of the
civil rights movement. Goal: Help students understand why the
expectations created by the civil rights movement met with
frustration in the mid-1960s and how their disappointment and
frustration aroused a new urgency among black civil rights
activist.
Slide 107
A NEW KING Have students identify the ways in which Martin
Luther King, Jr. is portrayed in the mass media, and specifically,
which of his ideas are communicated to the public. Have students
read and discuss a range of Kings ideas almost completely unknown
to most of the public today. Homework: Read excerpts of Kings
speeches and writings. Identify lines that stand out as
interesting, deep, meaningful, moving or surprising.
Slide 108
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON ON MARTIN LUTHER KING Martin Luther King,
Jr., kept getting up morning after morning, knowing they [the FBI
and other government agencies] were after him, knowing they were
possessed of this zealous intensity that was illegal and immoral!
And so he was a danger to America. Why? Because he loved democracy
so much he wanted to see it become real. He wanted to march
democracy from parchment to pavement. He wanted to see it become a
reality in this nation. Thats why he had a dream. But America has
frozen him. Now they freeze King in this posture of dreaming before
the sunlit summit of expectation at the height of his national fame
in Washington, D.C., where he said, I have a dream. He said more
than that. We ought to have a moratorium on that speech for the
next ten years. I dont want to hear it no more! And if youre gonna
play the speech, play the other parts of the speech: We have come
to the nations capital to cash a check marked insufficient funds.
[In other words,] Wheres my money?! Thats the part we ought to
play. Right? We ought to play the part where King says, The
foundations of this nation will continue to shake. He said, The
whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of this
nation until the Negro is granted his full citizenship rights. Play
that part, too!
Slide 109
MLK ON NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION Letter from Birmingham Jail,
April 16, 1963: The purpose of our direct-action program is to
create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open
the door to negotiation My friends, I must say to you that we have
not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and
nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that
privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarilyWe
know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily
given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Slide 110
A PART OF I HAVE A DREAM THAT WE DONT USUALLY HEAR Speech to
the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice, August 28, 1963:
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the
colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds
of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation
until the bright day of justice emerges.
Slide 111
MLK on Poverty Speech to Teamsters and Allied Trade Councils,
New York City, May 2, 1967: Today Negroes want above all else to
abolish poverty in their lives, and in the lives of the white poor.
This is the heart of their program. To end humiliation was a start,
but to end poverty is a bigger task. It is natural for Negroes to
turn to the Labor movement because it was the first and pioneer
anti-poverty program... I am now convinced that the simplest
approach will prove to be the most revolutionary. The solution to
poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed
measure: the guaranteed annual income. We are likely to find that
the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the
elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is
first abolished
Slide 112
MLK ON THE POOR PEOPLES MARCH ON WASHINGTON, PLANNED FOR SPRING
1968 From Inconvenient Hero (1997), by Vincent Harding: He was
planning to bring the poor of every color, to stand and sit with
the poor where they could not be missed. MLK said, Weve got to camp
in put our tents in front of the White House Weve got to make it
known that until our problem is solved, America may have many, many
days, but they will be full of trouble. There will be no rest,
there will be no tranquility in this country until the nation comes
to terms with our problem.
Slide 113
MLK on a REVOLUTION OF VALUES "Beyond Vietnam," Address,
Riverside Church, New York, April 4, 1967: I am convinced that if
we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a
nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly
begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented
society. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the
glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. A true revolution of values
will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of
settling differences is not just." Our only hope today lies in our
ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a
sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty,
racism, and militarism.
Slide 114
For more on MLK see http://urbandreams.ousd.k12.ca.us/l
essonplans/mlk2/materials_s3.html
http://urbandreams.ousd.k12.ca.us/l
essonplans/mlk2/materials_s3.html
Slide 115
Lessons Learned: The Walk Away Points 1. African Americans have
suffered great challenges to realizing full freedom and equality.
2. They have a long history of resisting oppression and racism 3.
Individuals can make a difference/students can make a
difference
Slide 116
Please note this presentation is for workshop purposes only.
Please address all source inquiries to the presenter: Wendi N.
Manuel-Scott