We started out learning about the economic, political and social setting of the country enabled the Jim Crow Segregation to come about. The Southern economy was entirely dependent on the cheap labor that had previously been provided by slaves. The Civil War had devastated the South and their economy had to be rebuilt. Landowners needed to find a substitute to make up for the abolition of slavery. They used sharecropping to recreate the conditions of slavery as they were prior to the war. The convict-release system also arose, in which local police departments would rent out their arrested prisoners for labor. There was an overall lack of opportunity for black and poor whites in the South.
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 declared that public accommodations like public schools, public transportation and even restaurants had to be of free and equal access to all people. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, people essentially came to the courts and demanded to know why they couldn't be prejudiced against certain people. In accordance with the 14th Amendment, the courts ruled that it was only possible to protect people from discrimination by states and not individual people. In the famous case Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), Plessy, a partially black man who really appear white, bought a first class train ticket to sit in the white section of the train. Someone who had recognized Plessy and knew of his descent notified an authority that there was a black man sitting in the white section and Plessy was kicked off of the train. Plessy brought his case to the Supreme Court, who ruled that separating blacks and whites was acceptable as long as they were receiving equal accommodations. However, these accommodations were not always of equal quality; for example, white people may get a porcelain water fountain while black people have to use a hose coming out of a hole in the wall. The 15th Amendment said that states cannot prevent anyone from voting, but there were still issues like literacy tests, poll taxes and terror preventing certain people from voting.
Lynchings had become frequent events, and they were very public events as the authorities rarely intervened. Usually, people who had committed sex crimes were the main targets. This was almost always a black man who had been involved with a white woman, but never a white man who had been involved with a black woman, as there were no rape laws protecting them. Lynchings were meant to send a message to everyone, letting them know that this is what would happen to them if they were to step out of line. Sometimes, when people broke into jails to take prisoners, they would fail to get the right man, but carry on with the lynching anyway. This made sure to keep everyone in constant fear of defying what was though to be acceptable. There was pervasive ideology of white supremacy present in society, however, white really meant white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs. If you did not fit into this category, you were a victim of segregation, which is when one group denies activities, rights, or access to another group and, in effect, makes them second class citizens. This often leads to the realization of stereotypes. For example, there was a stereotype that black people are dumb, and, because they weren't allowed to receive adequate educations, they were often less intelligent than educated white men. White people were trying to isolate and dominant the groups they thought to be inferior, and if the country was to continue evolving, it would need to change its mentality.
It was difficult for the black population to fight back against these conditions due to fear of white men and an overall lack of resources to do so. However, a few notable blacks did try to develop plans to improve the state of the country for their people. Booker T. Washington was a southerner who believed in a plan of accommodation. He though black people should focus on self-improvement by educating themselves in vocational fields so that they can gain economic independence which would ultimately lead to equality. He put his plan in action when he helped to found the Tuskegee College for African-Americans. A northerner, W. E. B. DuBois, thought that black Americans could only defeat segregation by gaining political power. He felt full education was necessary to do this, and politics should be lead by the "talented tenth," or those making up the most skilled and intelligent 10% of the population. He was the first black graduate of Harvard, and later founded the NAACP, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
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