Transcript Segregation and Discrimination

Expanding Higher Education
Fighting Discrimination
Turn-of-the-Century Race Relations

After the Civil War, many African Americans
pursued higher education
◦ Excluded from white institutions
◦ Founded African-American universities
 Howard, Atlanta Fisk
 Funded by private donors—could not support enough
students

Booker T. Washington
◦ Believed Blacks needed to develop
useful skills to be economically
independent
 This would make them more accepted
in society
◦ Did not believe African-Americans
should actively fight for civil rights
◦ Head of the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute
 Taught African-Americans agricultural,
domestic, and mechanical work
◦ Invited to the White House by
Roosevelt
 Still caused uproar

W. E. B. Du Bois
◦ First African-American to get a
doctorate from Harvard
◦ Disagreed with Washington about
how to achieve equality in society
◦ Founded the Niagara Movement
 African-Americans should seek a
liberal arts education to have welleducated leaders within the black
community
 The “Talented Tenth” (top 10% of
blacks) would achieve inclusion into
the white community and would help
draw the rest of their race up

Reconstruction ended in the South in 1877
◦ During Reconstruction, African Americans won several
political and social rights, but still faced violent
discrimination

After the end of Reconstruction, southern states
developed several legal policies that made
discrimination official policy

Many restrictions were put into place to keep
African Americans from voting
◦ Literacy tests
◦ Poll taxes

These restrictions would have also limited
poor whites from voting
◦ Grandfather clause—a man was still entitled to vote
if his father or grandfather could vote before
January 1, 1867

Many Southern states passed laws creating an
official policy of racial segregation
◦ Known as Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow laws took their name from a
minstrel song

In addition to legal segregation, social norms
made African Americans second-class
citizens
◦ If African Americans did not follow the expected
racial etiquette, they were often met with violence

Lynching became more frequent
◦ Peaked in the 1880s and 1890s
 From 1882-92, 1,400 African Americans were lynched
in the South
 Still continued into the 20th Century

The Ku Klux Klan was organized just after the
end of the Civil War by a group of
Confederate veterans in Tennessee
◦ Their primary aim was to intimidate African
Americans and keep them from voting or trying to
obtain social or political power

The Civil Rights Act of 1871 (aka the Ku Klux
Klan Act) tried to limit the KKK’s terror tactics
and protect the civil rights of African
Americans

African Americans in the North also faced
segregation and discrimination
◦ Segregated neighborhoods
◦ Discriminated against in workplace
 Not included in many unions

Riots in Northern cities
◦ NYC race riot—1900
◦ Chicago race riot—1919
◦ Detroit race riot—1943

People of many different
ethnic backgrounds lived in
the West
◦ Native Americans
◦ Asian & Mexican Immigrants

Debt peonage—laborers were
bound into slavery until they
worked off a debt to their
employer
◦ 1911—the Supreme Court
declared the practice
unconstitutional (against the 13th
Amendment)

Homer Plessy tested a Jim Crow law in
Louisiana by riding in the “whites only”
section of a train
◦ The Supreme Court ruled that separate-but-equal
facilities for blacks and whites did not violate the
Constitution

Plessy v. Ferguson would eventually be
overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of
Education.
Goals of the Movement
Women’s Reform
Create Economic
Reform
Reform
Government
Protect Social
Welfare
Foster Efficiency
Promote Moral
Improvement
Goals of
Progressivism

An early 20th century reform movement
◦ a reaction to the changes in society that came with
industrialism, immigration, urbanization

General goals of Movement included:
◦ Protecting Social Welfare
 Help the poor, immigrants
 YMCA, Salvation Army
◦ Promote Moral Improvement
 Prohibition – 18th Amendment
 Women’s Christian Temperance Union

General goals of Movement included:
◦ Economic Reform
 American Socialist Party
 Muckrakers-journalists finding corruption & abuse in gov’t & Biz
 Foster efficiency in workplace
 Scientific management
 Fredrick Winslow Taylor
 Henry Ford - $5 day

Reforming Government
◦ Return control of gov’t to the people
State Level
 Initiative
◦ A bill that originates with the people rather than
lawmakers

Referendum
◦ A vote on an initiative

Recall
◦ Voters can hold another election to remove an
elected official before his term is up
Federal Level

17th Amendment
◦ Direct election of senators by voters, not state
legislators

Jobs:
◦ By the late 19th century, many women worked
outside the home
 In 1900, 1 out of 5 women had a job.
 Mostly lower-class women who needed the wages
◦ Many types of jobs:
 Farm work
 Industrial work
 25 % of working women held a manufacturing job—
particularly in the garment industry
 Jobs in offices, schools, stores, etc.
 “Pink collar jobs”
 Domestic work

Women pushed for access to higher
education
◦ The Seven Sisters—seven colleges that were
traditionally women’s colleges

Women became leaders in reform-groups



Suffrage—the right to vote
Susan B. Anthony was a leading advocate of
women’s suffrage
Many women were angered that the 14th and
15th amendments made no mention of giving
voting rights or equal protection to women
◦ The issue divided women’s rights groups

All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States and of the
State wherein they reside. No State shall make
or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
the laws.

The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude

Three part strategy to achieve suffrage:
◦ Convince state legislatures to grant women the vote
◦ Carry out court cases testing the 14th amendment
 Women should be included as citizens
◦ Push for a national constitutional amendment
giving women the right to vote
 Eventually—19th Amendment (1920)
The Jungle
Theodore Roosevelt


Pointed out unsafe conditions
in meat packing industry
Leads to gov’t regulation of
food industry
◦ Meat Inspection Act
◦ Pure Food and Drug Act

Teddy Roosevelt was first Vice President
under McKinley
◦ Had been governor of NY, but political bosses
found him hard to control so they urged him to run
◦ When McKinley was assassinated, Roosevelt became
the youngest president at 42

Roosevelt was very active
◦ Reputation as a Rough Rider in the Spanish
American War
◦ Horseback riding, hunting, etc

Used the presidency as the “bully pulpit”
◦ Influential in the news media

Square Deal
◦ Progressive reforms under Roosevelt




16th
17th
18th
19th
Income Tax
– Direct election of senators
– Prohibition
– Women’s Suffrage – right to vote