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The Politics of Segregation: Jim Crow and Disenfranchisement

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Title: The Politics of Segregation: Jim Crow and Disenfranchisement


1
The Politics of Segregation Jim Crow and
Disenfranchisement
2
The Election of 1876
  • The Election of 1876 virtually ended in a tie.
  • Democrat Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York,
    narrowly won the popular vote but, with several
    states still in dispute, remained one vote shy of
    winning the electoral college vote.
  • Republican Rutherford B. Hayes needed twenty
    votes, a sweep of the disputed states, to win the
    election.
  • As the term of President Grant was set to expire,
    a compromise was reached that handed Hayes the
    White House. In exchange, Hayes ended
    Reconstruction and returned the former
    Confederate states to home rule.
  • As a practical matter, this ended federal
    supervision of race relations and ushered in the
    political and social system of white supremacy
    known as Jim Crow.

3
The Election of 1876
4
  • Robert Smalls was an African American man, born a
    slave, who, after the Civil War, was elected to
    the House of Representatives five times from
    South Carolina.
  • This excerpt decries the sorts of fraud practiced
    against Republicans in the state. Southern whites
    voted overwhelmingly Democratic while Southern
    African Americans voted heavily Republican.
  • When Smalls speaks of measures designed to
    discourage Republican voters, this would
    disproportionately impact black voters.
  • In the coming years, many of these same
    techniques were refined beyond party affiliation
    and concentrated exclusively on race.
  • The brutality and fraud of the Democracy in the
    campaign and election of 1876 and the
    determination of its result were only equaled,
    but not excelled, by the Kuklux outrages which
    aroused the just indignation of the entire North.
    Republicanism was in that year overthrown by
    murderous gangs called rifle clubs, who, acting
    in concert, terrorized nearly the entire State,
    overawing election officers and defying the
    courts.

5
The Racist Climate of 19th Century America
  • Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Century
    were accustomed to thinking of life in racial
    terms.
  • Europeans and persons of European descent saw
    their society as being far more advanced and
    sophisticated than other world societies.
  • Social philosophers, such as Herbert Spencer,
    combined this observation along with a
    misapplication of the new study of evolution to
    compose an understanding of the world built on
    racial characteristics.
  • Since these studies were conceived to demonstrate
    the supremacy of white Anglo Saxon Europeans,
    that is exactly what they found. All other races
    were deemed inferior and were treated as such.

6
Below are a selection of products,
advertisements, and packaging from the 19th
Century from popular culture demonstrating
prevalent racial attitudes.
7
Lynching
  • Lynching was a common act of violence and
    terrorism used in 19th and 20th Century America.
  • The victim, typically a black man accused of a
    sexual or violent crime, was usually taken from
    the jail, courthouse, or his home by a mob,
    beaten, tortured, and murdered.
  • A number of people were burned alive. Between
    1882 and 1968, 4,743 people were lynched in
    America.
  • Every state experienced at least one lynching,
    though they were most common in the South.

8
  • On 28 September 1919, Willie Brown, accused of
    sexually assaulting a white woman, was lynched
    outside of the Douglas County Courthouse in
    Omaha.
  • Brown was hanged and shot repeatedly. When the
    mayor attempted to intervene, he was hanged from
    a tree, though a policeman was able to cut him
    down before he was seriously injured.
  • Browns body was dragged behind an automobile
    through downtown Omaha and, eventually, burned at
    the intersection of 17th and Dodge Streets.
  • The burning of Willie Browns body is the
    photograph presented.

9
(No Transcript)
10
Plessey v. Ferguson
  • Plessey v. Ferguson was an 1896 Supreme Court
    decision allowing separate facilities on the
    basis of race.
  • Court Opinion
  • In determining the question of reasonableness,
    it is at liberty to act with reference to the
    established usages, customs, and traditions of
    the people, and with a view to the promotion of
    their comfort, and the preservation of the public
    peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we
    cannot say that a law which authorizes or even
    requires the separation of the two races in
    public conveyances is unreasonable, or more
    obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment than the
    acts of congress requiring separate schools for
    colored children in the District of Columbia, the
    constitutionality of which does not seem to have
    been questioned, or the corresponding acts of
    state legislatures.
  • Justice Harlan dissent
  • I am of opinion that the state of Louisiana is
    inconsistent with the personal liberty of
    citizens, white and black, in that state, and
    hostile to both the spirit and letter of the
    constitution of the United States. If laws of
    like character should be enacted in the several
    states of the Union, the effect would be in the
    highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an
    institution tolerated by law, would, it is true,
    have disappeared from our country but there
    would remain a power in the states, by sinister
    legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment
    of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil
    rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of
    race, and to place in a condition of legal
    inferiority a large body of American citizens,
    now constituting a part of the political
    community,

11
"Pitchfork" Ben Tillman
  • Pitchfork Ben Tillman was the governor and,
    eventually, a Senator from South Carolina.
  • He received the nickname after he threatened to
    impale President Grover Cleveland on the farm
    implement in a dispute over monetary policy.
  • Tillmans time as governor was marked by his use
    of racial tensions for his own political
    purposes.
  • While campaigning, he boasted that if a black man
    were accused of raping a white woman he, as
    governor, would be the first in the lynch mob.
  • In 1895, Tillman presided over the South Carolina
    Constitutional Convention that disenfranchised
    African Americans in the state.

12
  • "Tillman on Lynch Laws" is a section of an
    exchange between Tillman and Wisconsin Senator
    Spooner in which Tillman justifies racial
    violence and explains the motivation behind the
    Jim Crow laws.
  • I realize that there are millions of good
    negroes, if they are let alone and not taught
    heresies and criminal thoughts and feelings and
    actions. I should like to see this good, easy,
    good-for-nothing people given a chance to live.
    Give them justice give them equal rights before
    the law enable them to get property and keep it,
    and be protected in its enjoyment give them
    life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
    provided their happiness does not destroy mine.
  • A statue of Tillman stands before the South
    Carolina capitol.

13
Jim Crow Laws
  • Based upon the racial understanding of the time,
    the protection of white political power and
    bloodlines became paramount.
  • White people of the time could not conceive
    subordination to what they considered a lesser
    race nor the dilution or tainting of their white
    blood.
  • Therefore, Jim Crow laws were constructed to
    insure white power and govern relationships
    between the races.

14
  • These laws were built on the constitutional
    precedent of Plessey v. Ferguson.
  • However, the "separate but equal" standard from
    Plessey was no more than a legal fiction as these
    laws were heavily tilted to the advantage of
    white people.

15
  • Jim Crow Laws Nebraska
  • Close Although Nebraska outlawed segregation of
    all public facilities beginning in 1885, the
    state passed four miscegenation laws between 1865
    and 1943.
  • 1865 Miscegenation StatuteDeclared marriage
    between whites and a Negro or mulatto as illegal.
    Penalty Misdemeanor, with a fine up to 100, or
    imprisonment in the county jail up to six months,
    or both.
  • 1885 Barred public accommodations segregation
    StatuteAll persons entitled to equal access to
    inns, public transportation, barber shops,
    theaters, and other places of amusement. Penalty
    Misdemeanor, fined between 10 and 25, and court
    costs paid.
  • 1893 Barred public accommodations segregation
    StatuteAmended 1895 law to include
    restaurants. Increased penalty from 25 to 100,
    and payment of court costs.
  • 1911 Miscegenation StatuteMarriages between a
    white and colored person declared illegal. Also
    noted that marriages between whites and those
    persons with one-quarter or more Negro blood were
    void.
  • 1929 Civil rights protection StatuteOutlawed
    racial discrimination. PenaltyCriminal
    prosecution
  • 1929 Miscegenation StatuteForbid marriages
    between persons of the Caucasian race and those
    persons with one eighth or more Asian blood.
  • 1943 Miscegenation StatuteProhibited marriage
    of whites with anyone with one-eighth or more
    Negro, Japanese or Chinese blood.
  • 1957 Barred National Guard segregation
    StatuteProhibited discrimination within
    National Guard.

16
Tom Watson
  • Tom Watson was a populist politician from Georgia
    in the later part of the 19th Century.
  • Though he would later be known for his stridently
    racist and anti-Semitic writings, he was
    instrumental in the 1913 lynching of Leo Frank, a
    Jewish factory owner accused of murder, he began
    his career urging conciliation between the races.
  • In The Negro Problem in the South, Watson
    argued that poor people in the South share common
    interests regardless of race and that, if they
    could be persuaded to set aside their racial
    animosities, they could become a potent political
    force.
  • A statue of Watson stands in front of the Georgia
    capitol.

17
Ida B. Wells
  • Ida Wells was a journalist living in Memphis,
    Tennessee who wrote a series of editorials
    following the lynching of three of her friends.
  • Following the publication, the newspaper office
    was ransacked.
  • Wells moved to New York and became an
    anti-lynching advocate.
  • In 1895, published the first statistical analysis
    of lynching.
  • For nearly twenty years lynching crimes.have
    been committed and permitted by this Christian
    nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the
    United States of America do men, possessing all
    civil and political power, go out in bands of 50
    and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to
    death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely
    powerless.

18
Jack Johnson
  • Jack Johnson was the first black man to become
    heavy weight champion of the world.
  • In 1908, after overcoming a conspiracy among
    title holders to deny the belt to a black
    fighter, Johnson defeated Tommy Burns to win the
    championship.
  • Johnson took advantage of all that his title
    offered him spending vast amounts of money,
    dressing extravagantly, buying expensive
    automobiles, and, unpardonably in his time, he
    married, at various times, four white women

19
  • This was too much for turn of the century
    America.
  • Newsreels of Johnsons fights were censored for
    fear of sparking race riots, and Johnson was
    convicted of a violation of the Mann Act, taking
    an unmarried woman across state lines for immoral
    purposes, due to his affinity for prostitutes.
  • It was said that Johnson integrated more brothels
    than any man alive.
  • Before he could be sentenced however, Johnson
    fled the country for France.
  • Johnson returned to America bankrupt after losing
    the title in Cuba.
  • He served one year in prison on the Mann Act
    charge. After his release from prison, Johnson
    wrote his memoirs, "Mes Combats," in French.
    Johnson died in a car accident in 1946.

20
Early Civil Rights Movement Booker T. Washington
and W.E.B. DuBois
  • Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois were the
    two most significant early leaders in the modern
    Civil Rights movement.
  • This being said, they were very different men
    with very different approaches.
  • Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee
    Institute, believed that Jim Crow was the reality
    and that, for the time being, African Americans
    should focus on self improvement through
    education and economic strength separate from
    whites.
  • In one of his most famous speeches, Washington
    used the metaphor of a hand, saying that whites
    and blacks could be as separate as the fingers
    but, when needed, as united as a fist.

21
  • DuBois, the first African American to receive a
    PhD from Harvard, believed that Jim Crow should
    be opposed with every means available.
  • To this end, he was one of the founders of the
    NAACP, which offered legal challenges to the Jim
    Crow system.
  • Although seeking the same ends, Washington and
    DuBois shared a rivalry through the early part of
    the twentieth century.
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