AfAm History Midterm
Compare and contrast Du Bois and Booker T. Washington's ideas about advancing the race.
They sharply disagreed on strategies for black social and economic progress. Their opposing philosophies can be found in much of today's discussions over how to end class and racial injustice, what is the role of black leadership. the 'conservative' supporters of Washington and the 'radical' critics of Du Bois. Booker T. Washington, educator, reformer and the most influentional black leader of his time (1856-1915) preached a philosophy of self-help, racial solidarity and accomodation. He urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. He believed in education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift. This, he said, would win the respect of whites and lead to African Americans being fully accepted as citizens and integrated into all strata of society. W.E.B. Du Bois, a towering black intellectual, scholar and political thinker (1868-1963) said no--Washington's strategy would serve only to continue white oppression. Du Bois advocated political action and a civil rights agenda (he helped found the NAACP). In addition, he argued that social change could be accomplished by developing the small group of college-educated blacks he called "the Talented Tenth:" The Du Bois philosophy of agitation and protest for civil rights flowed directly into the Civil Rights movement which began to develop in the 1950's and exploded in the 1960's.Du Bois maintained that education and civil rights were the only way to equality, and that conceding their pursuit would simply serve to reinforce the notion of blacks as second-class citizens. Du Bois published a work titled The Souls of Black Folks, in which he directly criticized Washington and his approach and went on to demand full civil rights for blacks.
Explain limitations of a "Harlem Renaissance" framework for examining artistic and literary achievement during the New Negro Movement.
Tried to show the humanity of African Americans through music. Wanted to show racial pride. Prove that African Americans are as intelligent and artistic as whites. Reclaim culture and identity. Blacks are humans and want to be respected.
Anna Julia Cooper provides us with an astute observation about the importance of "truth" as a measure for literature and artistic activity. Why does she argue that white northern writers have in past failed at this high standard for artistic achievement in their effort to capture African American and Southern white life in the South?
Truth is very important when explaining history as Julia Cooper points out in her writing. She has the ability to point out contradictions and she brings up why no one will answer the negro questions. Many writers have failed to capture and record the truth of the past because people are ashamed of the past. Many cover up the truth by modifying events to make them seem more humane. For example, lynching is still not talked about or is glossed over to make it seem less harsh. However, it is an important part of history, and people should be aware of what really happened. Cooper criticizes many works because writers have continued to create hide the truth. It's not true art and literature that these white northern writers have created if it is false.
How did Reconstruction end? How effective was Reconstruction in assisting black people to make the transition from slavery to freedom? How effective in restoring the southern states into the Union?
With the compromise, the Republicans had quietly given up their fight for racial equality and blacks' rights in the south. In 1877, (compromise of 1877) Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the south, and the bayonet-backed Republican governments collapsed, thereby ending Reconstruction. The initial goal of reconstruction was giving free slaves some basic protection and helping them transition from slavery to freedom. Accomplishments: blacks granted the right to vote and all the privileges of being a US citizen through 14th and 15th amendment. Union league built schools and churches. Not very effective because: black codes (laws designed to regulate affairs of emancipated blacks and aimed to ensure a stable and subservient labor force, forbade blacks to serve in a jury, imposed burdens on finding work and shelter). Jim crow laws that separated blacks and whites and created discrimination. Sharecropping made blacks perpetually in debt to owners, not much different from slavery. Lincoln wanted to bring the south back into the Union. President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states' rights. In Johnson's view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or other questions at the state level. Under Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the freed slaves by the army or the Freedmen's Bureau. Reconstruction was not super effective in bringing all southern states back to the Union. It took the entire reconstruction period to restore all southern states.
Plessy v. Ferguson
- In 1892, passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car. He was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court for New Orleans, who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. - The purpose of the 14th Amendment, the Court said, was "to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law.... Laws ... requiring their separation ... do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race." -This 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine. -Restrictive legislation based on race continued following the Plessy decision, its reasoning not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. -In this case, the Court set forth its famous separate but equal doctrine, which stated that segregation in itself did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, provided the facilities for blacks and whites were equal.
Zora Neal Hurston
-(1891-1960) -Published more books than any other black woman in America during her time. Became very important after she died. -Was largely sheltered from racism until her teens. -Didn't finish high school but excelled at Howard University, became a central figure in Harlem Renaissance. -Became famous for storytelling talents. -Studied anthropology at Barnard, received a fellowship to collect oral histories and folklore in her home state. Also studied voodoo in Haiti. -Collaborated with Langston Hughes on the play Mule Bone. -First novel: Jonah's Gourd Vine -Book: Their Eyes Were Watching God was criticized at the time. -Work was uplifting and joyful despite her financial struggles. -Work was revived in the 1970s.
Redeemers
-A group in the 1870s that attempted to restore the old order of the South. -An electric group of wealthy businessman, farmers, and merchants. -An all white pro-Democratic Party group who disagreed with Republicanism and rights of African Americans. -They wanted to limit the power of state governments. -Redeemers crippled education systems by reducing/eliminating spending on black education and creating financial penalties against blacks, and eliminating black voting standards/rights. -Redeemers succeeded in taking control of the South through what domestic terrorist groups such as the Rifle Club, Red Shirt, and the Ku Klux Klan that made it difficult for federal government to ensure the success of the Reconstruction programs.
Compare and contrast NAACP, National Urban League, and UNIA.
-All 3 main goals were to end discrimination and provide better opportunities. NAACP founded by mostly white people and was concerned about the lynchings. The National urban league is a civil rights organizations, similar to NAACP. Ended up merging with the woman league. -UNIA dedicated to racial pride, economic self-sufficiency, and the formation of an independent black nation in Africa. its influence reached multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic, and it proved to be a forerunner of black nationalism -The mission of the Urban League movement is to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights.
Niagara Movement
-An organization for social and political change. Led by African American scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois and supporters on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. -List of demands: end to segregation and discrimination in unions, the courts, and public accommodations, as well as equality of economic and educational opportunities. -Had little impact on legislative action or popular opinion but its ideals led to the formation of the NAACP. -Movement began from Du Bois book. -They drafted a list of their demands in 1905 at a meeting.
Anna Julia Cooper
-Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was a writer, teacher, and activist who championed education for African Americans and women. Born into bondage in 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina, she was the daughter of an enslaved woman, Hannah Stanley, and her owner, George Washington Haywood. -In 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, Anna began her formal education at Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute, a coeducational facility built for former slaves. There she received the equivalent of a high school education.
Compromise of 1877
-As a result of the compromise of 1877, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic once again. This marked the end of the reconstruction era. -Before the election many decision had limited the Reconstruction era laws which allowed African Americans citizenship and the right to vote. -Democrat candidate: Samuel B Tilden. Republican candidate: Rutherford B. Hayes. who said he would enforcement the 14th and 15th amendment. -Democrats won on election day. The only remaining states in the South with Republican governments were Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. They accuse Democrats of bribing African Americans to vote their side. -Democrats agreed to accept a Hayes Victory and to accept the rights given to African American's during that time if Republicans would withdraw all federal troops from the South -The compromise of 1877 effectively ended the Reconstruction era. Southern Democrats promises to protect civil and political rights of blacks were not kept.
Analyze the role of black women in organizing and agitating for racial uplift in the 1890s and the first two decades of the 1900s.
-Black women began creating clubs and organizations years before the NAACP and the Urban League were formed. Local groups began forming in the 1870s and 80s: Bethel Literary and Historical Association in Washington DC: focused on cultural religious and social matters. The New Era Club in 1893 published the magazine Woman's Era: included articles on fashion and health and family life -clubs sought to confront the problems black people encounter in urban areas as rural Southerners migrated by the thousands. they worked to get rid of poverty and racial discrimination. Aided orphans, assisted working mothers, and provided health care. -created many organizations to help them through hard times. -role played by women as writers, artists, performers, patrons, supporters and social activists. In the 1920s and 30s African American women were more active and influential than in any other period since the days of the 19th anti-slavery struggle. The New Negro period was thus the age of the New Negro woman. -Both in and outside New York, key women leaders (e.g. Mary McCleod Bethune and Mary Talbert for example) were important in the anti lynching movement and the establishment of organizations and educational institutions that changed the course of Black American history.
Mary Church Terrell
-Born 1863: Terrell became an educator, political activist, and the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. Terrell understood the value of education. -Mary Church Terrell wrote how African-American women "with ambition and aspiration [are] handicapped on account of their sex, but they are everywhere baffled and mocked on account of their race." She fought for equality through social and educational reform. -one of the first American women of African descent to graduate from college- Oberlin -she became active in the suffrage movement, speaking out for women's right to vote, particularly on behalf of African-American women. -Terrell and other black women leaders formed the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896, an organization that would support black women's groups throughout the country -disagreed with Ida B. Wells sometimes over tactics (Terrell found Barnett too uncompromising, Barnett found Terrell too calming) both committed to racial justice and woman's rights
James Weldon Johnson
-Born in Jacksonville, Florida (1871-1938) -Civil rights activist, writer, composer, politician, educator, and lawyer, leader in creation and development of Harlem Renaissance. -Graduated from Atlanta University, first black to pass the bar exam in Florida. -Wrote song (Lift Every Voice and Sing) became the official anthem of the NAACP). -Worked as principal of a grammar school, founded a newspaper (The Daily American), published works (The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and God's Trombones). -Became chief executive of the NAACP in 1920, leading figure of African American artistic community. -Wrote hundreds of stories and poems.
Langston Hughes
-Born in Joplin, Missouri (1902-1967) -Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose African-American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. -Published first poem in 1921, attended Columbia University, published first book in 1926 -Wrote countless works of poetry, prose and plays, and popular column for the Chicago Defender. -Poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" published in the Crisis magazine and highly praised. -Among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his work.
Exodusters
-Exodusters was a name given to African Americans who migrated from states along the Mississippi River to Kansas in the late nineteenth century, as part of the Exoduster Movement or Exodus of 1879. It was the first general migration of blacks following the Civil War. Why did the Exodusters move west? To claim and settle lands as provided by the Homestead Act and escape racial segregation and intimidation in the South. -Why did the Exodusters move to Kansas? Kansas was associated with freedom because of the Anti-slavery activists during the Bleeding Kansas era and the fame of John Brown. -How many Exodusters were there? The number of Exodusters who migrated to Kansas exceeded 30,000 -Where did the Exodusters settle? The first migrants settled in "Singleton's Colony" and Dunlap Colony in Kansas -Where did the Exodusters come from? All the southern states, particularly Mississippi and Louisiana that bordered the Mississippi River
Ku Klux Klan
-Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. -Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal-the reestablishment of white supremacy-fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s. -A group including many former Confederate veterans founded the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. -burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, blacks and organized labor, bombings of black schools and churches and violence against black and white activists in the South. -White Republicans (derided as "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags") and black institutions such as schools and churches—symbols of black autonomy—were also targets for Klan attacks.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
-Founded in 1909 by a group of white and black intellectuals as one of the earlier and most influential civil rights organizations in the U.S. -Adopted many of the goals of the Niagara movement and hired Du Bois as the director of publicity and research and editor of their journal Crisis. -Focussed on strategies to confront the critical civil rights issues of the day -Called for federal anti-lyching laws, attempted to stop state-sponsored segregation in public schools -Led to the declaration of the doctrine of "separate but equal" to be unconstitutional. -Co-organized the 1963 March on Washington -Lobbied for legislation that resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Act. -Attacked segregation and racial inequality through courts and won supreme court decision against the grandfather clause and the all white primary.
Who made up the membership base of the NAACP? How did this membership base influence decisions made about how best to agitate for black equality?
-Founded in 1909 by black and white progressives in New York City. Was a militant organization dedicated to racial justice. White contributors financed them. -Black leaders most involved: Lillian Wad, Jane Addams, Joel E. Spingarn, Clarence Darrow, Moorfieldo Storey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells, Mary Terrell -Du Bois was the most prominent black figure associated he wrote that he would not tolerate silence and -Du Bois influenced decisions made by disagreeing with Washington's methods. He believed civil rights and education were key. Attempted to continue these methods and avoid Washington's methods. Many prominent members were civil rights activists and agreed with Du Bois.
Wade Hampton
-Governor of South Carolina in 1877 -Used violence and intimidation to confront the African American voting majority.
Why did Marcus Garvey and the UNIA have such a wide appeal to African Americans in the 1910s and 1920s?
-He was leader in the black nationalist movement. He applied the economic ideas of pan-Africanist to the immense resources available in urban centers. Founded the Negro World newspaper. He concluded that the growing black communities in the north could provide the wealth and unity to end both imperialism in Africa and discrimination in the us. -Proclaiming a black nationalist "Back to Africa" message, Garvey and the UNIA established 700 branches in thirty-eight states by the early 1920s. -Garvey's philosophy and organization had a rich religious component that he blended with the political and economic aspects. -Garvey's movement was the first black attempt to join modern urban goals and mass organization.
Ida B. Wells-Barnet
-Ida B. Wells was an African-American journalist and activist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. -Radical and revolutionaries -Ida is a charismatic speaker, wants evidence, includes newspaper clippings used to make her case. Institutionalized, lynching is part of a tradition and it must be exposed. Oppressed people have no power to fight for themselves or disagree. -After buying a first class ticket on the train and not being allowed there, Wells eventually became an owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, and, later, of the Free Speech. -From experience and friends experiences, it encouraged her to write articles describing the lynching of her friend and the wrongful deaths of other African Americans. Putting her own life at risk, she spent two months traveling in the South, gathering information on other lynching incidents.
13th Amendment
-In December 1865 -abolished slavery in the United States and provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States
Jim Crow
-Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. -the former practice of segregating black people in the US.
Debt peonage
-Labeled "debt slavery" by those critical of it, debt peonage is a general term for several categories of coerced or controlled labor resulting from the advancement of money or goods to individuals or groups who find themselves unable or unwilling to repay their debt quickly. As a consequence they are obliged to continue working for the creditor or his assignees until the debt is repaid, and are often further coerced to borrow more or to agree to other obligations or entanglements -a system where an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work. Legally, peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867. -Sharecropping: economic system dominate labor force. -After the civil war, many blacks had no where to go, so they were forced to live on owners land and work for them to make money- but it was a trap, they were always in dept because whatever they worked would be taken out as food/shelter payment. Another way for white power
New Negro
-New Negro is a term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance implying a more outspoken advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices and laws of Jim Crow racial segregation. The term "New Negro" was made popular by Alain LeRoy Locke.
Universal Negro Improvement Association UNIA
-On July 20, 1914, Marcus Garvey, at the age of twenty-eight, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. -The U.N.I.A. was originally conceived as a benevolent or fraternal reform association dedicated to racial uplift and the establishment of educational and industrial opportunities for blacks, taking Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute as a model.
Booker T. Washington
-One of the most influential African American intellectuals of the late 19th century. -He was born a slave on a farm in Virginia and lived from 1856-1915. Freed when he was 9years old. -He founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 ( a black school in Alabama devoted to training teachers). Helped promote educational advancements and economic self-reliance among blacks. -He served as an advisor to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. -Disagreements with other black intellectuals: debate between Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois over the aims of industrial vs classical education among blacks. -Thinks blacks don't need a higher education, they need to learn industrial skills not liberal arts. -Wrote a classic African American narrative: Up From Slavery(1901) about his social and historical philosophy.
Sharecropping
-Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. -With the southern economy in disarray after the abolition of slavery and the devastation of the Civil War, conflict arose between many white landowners attempting to reestablish a labor force and freed blacks seeking economic independence and autonomy. Many former slaves expected the federal government to give them a certain amount of land as compensation for all the work they had done during the slavery era. Union General William T. Sherman had encouraged this expectation in early 1865 by granting a number of freed men 40 acres each of the abandoned land left in the wake of his army. During Reconstruction, however, the conflict over labor resulted in the sharecropping system, in which black families would rent small plots of land in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.
14th Amendment
-The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," which included former slaves recently freed.
15th Amendment
-The 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment reads: "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." Despite the amendment, by the late 1870s, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote, especially in the South.
Freedmen's Bureau
-The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. federal government agency established in 1865 to aid freedmen (freed slaves) in the South during the Reconstruction era of the United States, which attempted to change society in the former Confederacy -The Freedmen's Bureau provided food, housing and medical aid, established schools and offered legal assistance. It also attempted to settle former slaves on Confederate lands confiscated or abandoned during the war. However, the bureau was prevented from fully carrying out its programs due to a shortage of funds and personnel, along with the politics of race and Reconstruction. In 1872, Congress, in part under pressure from white Southerners, shut the bureau.
Explain the major movements that came together to form the New Negro Movement.
-The Harlem Renaissance was part of a larger movement, the New Negro Renaissance, which presented the world with a type of African American (urbane, cultured, self-assured and assertive) who would not fit into the stereotypes of the past. In Harlem, this talented "New Negro" gathered together in enough of a concentration to create an exciting, lively, published, artistic world. -The "New Negro," Locke announced, differed from the "Old Negro" in assertiveness and self-confidence, which led New Negro writers to question traditional "white" aesthetic standards, to eschew parochialism and propaganda, and to cultivate personal self-expression, racial pride, and literary experimentation. -all influential people and practices and laws
Harlem Renaissance
-The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. -Formed by critic and teacher Alain Locke in 1926 when he declared that through art, "Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self determination." Harlem became the center of a "spiritual coming of age" in which Locke's "New Negro" transformed "social disillusionment to race pride." Chiefly literary, the Renaissance included the visual arts but excluded jazz, despite its parallel emergence as a black art form. -All types of people were active and influential in the Harlem Renaissance period: intellectuals and creative types (writers and artists), entertainers, social activists, religious figures, business people, ordinary folk and even gangsters. For example, many religious figures, political activists, business and professional people became high profile Harlemites. Popular entertainers (mucicans, dancers, etc.) also had important roles in making Harlem a hotbed of culture and entertainment
Tulsa Riot 1921
-The Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Riot was one of the worst urban racial conflicts in United States history. Two days of violence in 1921 by whites against blacks left an estimated 50 people dead, hundreds injured, and more than 1,000 black owned homes and businesses destroyed. -The riot, which began on May 31, 1921, was initiated by an incident that happened the day before. On the morning of May 30, a black man named Dick Rowland stepped into Tulsa's Drexel Building to use the restroom. The elevator operator was a young white girl named Sarah Page. A scream was heard from inside the elevator, and Rowland ran out. While there is no conclusive evidence, it was the general belief of white Tulsans that Rowland attempted to assault Page. -Rowland was arrested, and subsequent headlines in local newspapers stirred up the white and black populations of Tulsa. Talk of lynching arose among whites, and a crowd of whites and blacks gathered outside the courthouse where Rowland was being held on the night of May 31. A gun discharged while a white man was trying to disarm a black man, causing the incident to erupt into a much larger racial conflict. -By the early morning of June 1, the wholesale burning and pillaging of black Tulsa had begun. Blacks were greatly outnumbered, and the police were not effective in controlling the riot.
Great Migration
-The movement of 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970. -Driven from homes in the South by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregation laws. -Many moved to the North to take advantage of the need for industrial workers. Northers cities saw exponential growth in black populations -Migrants were forced to work in poor conditions and there was limited living space available. -There was still widespread racism and prejudice -During the Great Migration, African Americans created a new black urban culture. -After the Civil War Reconstruction period ended in 1876, white supremacy was large in the South and Jim Crow segregation laws took over. -Blacks were forced to take part in the sharecropping system, violence and lynching of black southerners were still common. -Blacks could typically make 3 times more working in a factory than working in the rural South. -World War I created a shortage of industrial laborers, this recruited blacks to come north for work. -Many black migrants found work in factories, slaughterhouses, and foundries working conditions were dangerous. -Hard to finding living because some covenants required white property owners to agree not to sell to blacks. -Black experience during the Great Migration lead to the New Negro Movement important in art and history. -Ended in 1970
Lynching
-The practice of killing usually by hanging -A celebration of white supremacy -Photographic art played a role in the torture of lynching. Spectators of a lynching have happy faces, dehumanization, shocking, casual aspect of lynching, people write post cards that are pictures of a lynching. -Lynching in America makes the case that lynching of African Americans was terrorism: a widely supported phenomenon used to enforce racial segregation. -Lynching: violent and public events that traumatized black people throughout the country. -Lynching was largely tolerated by state and federal officials. -Many African Americans who were lynched were never accused of any crime (for things such as bumping into white person, not using appropriate title to address a white person). -Lynching was watched by picnicking spectators (including elected officials and prominent citizens).
Red Summer of 1919
-The summer and early autumn of 1919 (May-October) had hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of race riots that occurred in more than 3 dozen cities worst cases in Chicago, Washington D.C. and Elaine Ark. -In most instances, whites attacked blacks. (now called uprising/rebellion). -World War I ended in 1918 and thousands of servicemen returned home to find jobs taken by Southern blacks or immigrants. -African Americans veterans who also returned were still denied many basic rights creating more competition. -High tension -The drowning in lake Michigan of an 11 year old black boy led to a riot: black boy swimming, white men through rocks, he drowns, black men and white police witness, white police do nothing. -Riots marked the beginning of growing willingness of blacks to fight for their rights.
Tuskegee Machine
-Tuskegee Machine referred to the financial control exerted over black education and, in particular, over black newspapers and periodicals by Booker T. Washington. -Du Bois' opposition led to the founding of the Niagara Movement to counter Washington's influence and to press for a more direct redress of grievances for black Americans 1907. Du Bois enlisted the help of allies in his crusade against Booker T. Washington's "Tuskegee machine."
National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACW)
-Two groups- The National Federation of Afro-American Women and the National Colored Woman's League merged in 1896 to form the NACW -Adopted the self help motto "lifting as we climb" -They stressed moral, mental, and material advancement. -By 1914 there were fifty thousand members of the NACW in one thousand clubs nationwide.
In what ways did Ida B. Wells-Barnett work to undermine white rule in the South?
-When she boarded the train, however, the conductor told her to move back to the smoking car. Wells refused and bit him when he tried to force her from her seat. Wells won her case in circuit court and was awarded a $500 settlement, only to see the decision reversed by the Tennessee Supreme Court on the grounds that her intention had been to cause difficulty for the railway. Eventually, Wells purchased partial interest in a black newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight (later renamed Free Speech), and became its editor. In addition to her writing, she continued to teach, using her time off in the summer to travel in the South soliciting subscribers and hiring correspondents. -Also fought against lynching in the South by examining cases in the South and rebelling.
W.E.B. Du Bois
-William Edward Burghardt Du Bois emerged as the most significant African American leader during the first half of the 20th century. -Was born and raised in the largely white town of Great Barrington, Mass where he encountered little overt racism and developed a passion for knowledge. -Went to Fisk University in Nashville. First black man to earn a Ph. D in history at Harvard in 1895. -He was an intellectual wrote 16 nonfiction books, 5 novels, and 2 autobiographies. -He was impatient with white people who accepted and ignored white domination -Published the Souls of the Black Folk attacked Washington and his leadership
New Negro Movement
1890-1930s -The rise of propaganda -Different organizations rose during this time: institutions, organizations, people, intellectuals, ideas from movement -Racial consciousness is shown through capital N in negro
What are the key points of Ula Taylor's argument about women within the Garvey movement? How does Taylor challenge historians who in past written about the Garvey movement as one that denied black female agency? Do Amy Jacques Garvey and Elise Johnson MacDougald, two women in very different social and political circles and movements, share similar ideas about black female leadership - what some call "New Negro womanhood?"
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How did freedmen and freedwomen define their freedom? What did freedom mean to ex-slaves?
After this act was passed, thousands of Southern slaves became "freedmen. Though they had eagerly awaited their liberators, freedom was accompanied by frightening uncertainties. Homeless, with few possessions, blacks fleeing to Union lines for protection found themselves as dependent on the Federal government for their existence as they had been on their masters. They were forced to sharecrop not much different from slavery. Freedmen and women wanted land and to grow their won food, they wanted to be able to vote (political access), literacy and education (be able to read, write, and understand), wanted to not be dependent on whites, wanted to reconnect with family members, wanted fair treatment and citizenship. Although there were new laws giving blacks freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote, this meant nothing to many blacks because jim crow laws and segregation discouraged them from their rights.
All African American intellectuals in this era discuss the importance of education. How do Anna Julia Cooper, WEB Du Bois and Booker T. Washington offer different interpretations about the path to African American progress with regard to how best to educate the race?
Anna Julia Cooper focused on black woman and said that they would play a decisive role in the destiny of their people. She chastised white woman for the lack of their support and encouraged black feminism. Booker T Washington thought that is African Americans acquired skills from black institutions they would gain economic, political, and social acceptance.
Describe the ways black Americans' civil, political, and economic rights were stripped from them after Reconstruction?
Black Americans lost these rights after Reconstruction because people gave up (both blacks and whites). Segregation and Jim Crow laws took over. Violence and discrimination kept blacks from voting or being treated like American citizens. African Americans used and built new organizations to resist the policies and practices that were taking place. Schools and churches built and organizations such as NAACP, NACW, Urban League.
Compare and contrast Anna Julia Cooper and Amy Jacques Garvey's ideas about race advancement.
Cooper saw education, and specifically higher education, as the means of black women's advancement. She believed "that intellectual development, with the self-reliance and capacity for earning a livelihood which it gives," would supersede any need for dependence on men, allowing women to extend their horizons and have their "sympathies... broadened and deepened and multiplied." Cooper began at M Street School as a math and science teacher, and was promoted to principal in 1902. It was also in this last decade of the 19th century that Cooper published her landmark text A Voice From the South, in which she dissects the way black women are affected by living at the intersection of oppressions and explains their status and progress as a definitive marker of the status and progress of the nation. The second wife of Marcus Garvey: she is the Co-Founder and First President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A). She is credited for saving Marcus Garvey's philosophy from ruin by telling youth about it for years after his death. She published 3 books.
What were the key issues that became the initial focus of the NAACP?
Key focus was to make sure that black citizens fully enjoy the civil and political rights of the constitution. White progressives were concerned about the rampant racial prejudice manifested in lynching, Jim Crow laws, and black riots.
What were the economic, social, and political factors that contributed to the Red Summer of 1919?
Migrants from the South moved North in search of jobs, political rights, and humane treatments. There was not enough housing. Most white Americans clung to social discrimination and white supremacy and reacted with attempts of violence to demands by African Americans for fair treatment and open opportunities. Blacks replaced the work of whites during the war.
Why did African Americans leave the South in such great numbers after 1910? Where did they go? How did these black American migrants reshape the places where they arrived? Give a specific example
Moved because of labor shortages in the south, disasters in agriculture. The North provided more opportunities such as jobs in industry. They also had the right to vote, there were more public schools. They created their own communities because whites were not willing to sell them homes. They established churches, social organization, businesses, and medical facilities. EX: in Chicago, NAACP branch was established, 80 baptist churches, and the Chicago defender was the leading black newspaper.
Perhaps Anna Julia Cooper is best known for her arguments about inequality among the "sexes." What are the central tenets of her argument? How does she associate race advancement with the advancement of women? What tradition of black activism does she draw upon as she makes this case? Think about the "when and where I enter" quote as it relates to this very issue.
She was also a passionate advocate for women's rights, especially for the education of African-American women. Women, Cooper argues, are essential to "the regeneration and progress of a race," and thus should be brought fully into the education process. She criticizes the Episcopal Church for neglecting the education of African American women, and argues that this is one reason why the Church had struggled to recruit large numbers of African Americans. She is saying that with women included in education and treated equally, there will be an advancement in race equality. The more African Americans there are to fight discrimination, the better.
Compare and contrast black women intellectuals and activists during the early part of the New Negro Movement. How did their work converge and depart from the work of suffragists, club women, and those engaged in settlement work?
Similarities: confronted problems that black people had in all areas, worked to eradicate poverty and racial discrimination to promote education. Differences: the club women were thought of as elitists and only allowed people in their ranking to join. The suffragists were open to all people.
What issues most concerned Radical Republican leaders during Reconstruction?
The Radical Republicans believed blacks were entitled to the same political rights and opportunities as whites. At the heart of their beliefs was the notion that blacks must be given a chance to compete in a free-labor economy. The Radicals hoped that the Civil Rights Act would lead to an active federal judiciary with courts enforcing rights.They were united only by their common commitment to emancipation and racial justice
Why were so many white southerners bitterly and violently opposed to black and white Republicans exercising political power in the post-war South?
The Republican Party in the South constantly split into factions as groups fought with each other. These bitter and angry contests were based less on race and issues than on the desperate desire to gain an office that would pay even amodest salary. Most black and white Republicans were not well off; public office assured them a measure of economic security. Most white Southerners led by conservative Democrats remained absolutely opposed to letting black men vote or hold office. Because black people voted did not mean they ruled during Reconstruction, but many white people failed to grasp that. Instead, for most white Southerners, the only acceptable political system was one that excluded black men and the Republican Party.White Southerners blamed the Republicans for an epidemic of waste and cor- ruption in state government. But most of all, they considered it preposter- ous and outrageous that former slaves could vote and hold political office. White Southerners were determined to rid themselves of Republicans and the disgrace of having to live with black men who pos- sessed political rights. White Southerners would "redeem" their states by restoring white Democrats to power. This did not simply mean defeating black and white Republicans in elections; it meant removing them from any role in politics. White Southerners believed any means—fair or foul—were justified in exorcising this evil.
When it comes to the notion of a "race problem" in America, Cooper makes a provocative argument for how to overcome such a problem. She traces this to American history and the ideas that were crucial to the founding of the nation. She writes: "The supremacy of one race, - the despotism of a class or the tyranny of an individual can not ultimately prevail on a continent held in equilibrium by such conflicting forces and by so many and such strong fibred races as their struggling on this soil." Explain what she means and how she grounds this in the history of the nation?
The continent is too diverse to have a single race be dominant. In a place when there are so many different races it is difficult for one race to come on top. She thinks everyone should accept the diversity and eliminate discrimination and racism. Without the history of these blacks and what they did, white race would be nothing. They would have no advantages if it weren't for the black people. The history is what gives white men their power. There is no them without you, and without the right to break you, they must fall from the mountain. Cotes discusses how history defines the way blacks are treated.