AAs Gilded Age Flashcards
(42 cards)
Negative view
This was a very negative era for African American Civil Rights.
Rights actually regressed and segregation, discrimination, violence and lynching became more prevalent.
There was little challenge to this from any quarter
Verny highlights the rampant
“electoral fraud, violence and intimidation”
Date of segregated transport beginning
1881, when Tennessee enacted a segregated railway law, and continued with every Southern state following suit
Leadership issues on segregation
Blacks like Booker T. Washington also favoured segregation, however he was split with Du Bois
Judgement supporting segregation
Plessy v. Ferguson judgement of 1896, which reinforced the idea of ‘separate but equal’
De facto northern segregation
In Chicago 5,000 African Americans were concentrated in one restricted area
Harlem effectively became a separate district for New York’s 23,000 blacks
Effect of exclusion from voting
African American voters had become a powerless minority by 1895
First Grandfather Clause
Introduced by Louisiana in 1898
Judgement supporting registration laws
Supreme Court upheld changes to the Mississippi Constitution in Williams vs. Mississippi 1898 ($2 poll tax)
Last black congressman
In 1901 the last remaining African American congressman, George H. White, retired, leaving no African American congressional representation
System of violence and lynching
The punishment of violence and lynchings for minor offences created a system whereby the law was deliberately ignored in much of the South, in favour of mob rule.
Lynchings in 1890s
Around 190 lynching/year
False arrests
There were notorious numbers of false arrests and imprisonment, with disproportionate numbers of African Americans prisoners in chain gangs and labour camps
Vicksburg riots
In 1874 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, rampaging whites killed about 300 blacks and terrorised thousands of potential voters
SC - slaughterhouse decision
Slaughterhouse decision (1873) - 14th Amendment protects only the rights of national (as opposed to state) citizenship
SC - Reese
US v. Reese (1875) - threw out indictment of Kentucky officials who had barred blacks from voting
SC - Cruikshank
US v. Cruikshank (1876) - rules that the 14th Amendment bars states, but not individuals, from encroaching on individual rights
SC - ruling on Civil Rights Act
In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1875 Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional
Compromise effect
The ‘Compromise of 1877’ essentially removed federal supervision of Southern states
Proportion of southern farms sharecropped
In some southern states, as many as 80% of farms were sharecropped (Georgia particularly bad)
Racial differences in value of output
In 1880 the average value of output for a black sharecropper was $160 compared to $200 for whites
Racial differences in land owned
Even black farm owners tended to have less land - in Georgia in 1890, the average white owner held 290 acres compared to 70 acres for blacks
Mixed view
There was a mixed picture of civil rights in this era; while segregation and discrimination was very entrenched in the South, it was less so in the West and North
African American cowboys
Significant progress from westward expansion - up to a quarter of ‘cowboys’ on Western ranches were African Americans
