Jim Crow Era - Review

Plessy vs. Ferguson

(1896) The Court ruled that segregation was not discriminatory (did not violate black civil rights under the Fourteenth Amendemnt) provide that blacks received accommodations equal to those of whites.

How did the legal system treat blacks and whites accused of crimes against each other?

- Black people were not given a trial by peers (all white jury), often found guilty. The charges were often the result of not paying rent, local debts, that were the result of not being able to pay for basic needs due to low wages paid by white land owners. Put in prison and given fines. They couldn't pay fines. Business bought up the fines and forced the black convicts (mostly young men) to work for them for free under horrible conditions. This work without pay and terrible treatment could go on for months if not years. -White people received a trial by their peers (all white jury) rarely found guilty of horrible crimes against black people, and if found guilty only had to pay a small fine and served no jail/prison time.

Jim Crow

- Laws designed to enforce segregation of blacks from whites, , Jim Crow laws were state and local laws passed from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the mid-1950s by which white southerners reasserted their dominance by denying African Americans basic social, economic, and civil rights, such as the right to vote. - A white actor called himself Jim Crow, used black face make - up and mimicked/ mocked - how freed Southern Slaves acted. Today this is seen as racist behavior.

KKK

Stands for Ku Klux Klan and started right after the Civil War in 1866. The Southern establishment took charge by passing discriminatory laws known as the black codes. Gives whites almost unlimited power. They masked themselves and burned black churches, schools, and terrorized black people. They are anti-black and anti-Semitic.

Jim Crow Laws

State laws in the South that legalized segregation. Limited rights of blacks. Literacy tests, grandfather clauses and poll taxes limited black voting rights. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws passed from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the mid-1950s by which white southerners reasserted their dominance by denying African Americans basic social, economic, and civil rights, such as the right to vote.

Minstrel Show

white actors wearing black face mimicked and ridiculed African American culture, became increasingly popular.

Emancipation Proclamation

1863, Lincoln's proclamation made after a crucial victory at Antietam, allowed Lincoln to push for something radical; frees all slaves in areas under rebellion; this excludes the border states, keeping them on the side of the union, prevents foreign powers from entering the war for slavery, provides a rationale for the war, and allows blacks to enlist in the army.

Red Summer

1919 wave of riots across the US, coined by author James Weldon Johnson; describes the summer and autumn of 1919. Race riots erupted in several cities in both the North and South of the United States. The three most violent episodes happened in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas. These were part of a series of 20 or more race riots occurring in the U.S. where African Americans were the victims of physical attacks

Jim Crow etiquette

A black man could not offer to shake the hand of a white man. That implied equality; A black person could not look a white person in they eye because that also implied equality; A black person would have to step off the sidewalk if a white person was walking towards them; A black man could not speak to a white woman without being spoken to first.

Separate Car Law

A law where whites and black people had their own cars on a train. Based on racial discrimination. An example of segregation.

Mulatto

A person mixed African (black) & European (white) ancestry. A mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent. Mulattoes were found primarily in the South, where White and African-American populations were in closer proximity and thus the odds of having a mixed-race child increased. During the slave trade, a slave master could have children with a slave and consider the child a slave or pass for white.

Lynching

After Reconstruction some white Southerners began to use violence to keep blacks from fighting for their civil rights. One of the most common forms of violence was___. Illegal execution of a person by a mob.

Black Codes

Any code of law that defined and especially limited the rights of former slaves after the Civil War. Indeed, one of the main goals of the Civil War, freedoms for enslaved people, was being rolled back. One by one, southern states met Johnson's Reconstruction demands and were restored to the Union. The first order of buisness in these new, white-run governments was to enact black codes, laws that restricted freedmen's rights. The black codes established virtual slavery with provisions such as these: Curfews, Labor Contracts, Limits on women's rights, and land restrictions.

Segregation

Legal separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences. Keeps minorities powerless by formally separating them from the dominant group and depriving them of access to the dominant institutions.

Border State

States bordering the North: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. They were slave states, but did not secede.

Integration

open (a place) to members of all races and ethnic groups.

Racial Caste System

when slavery ended in the US this was what replaced it. Whites considered themselves higher than blacks.