Lesson 4 Flashcards
(19 cards)
Black Americans in Modern America
Childish Gambino - “This is America”
mocking Jim Crow
Charleston Church Massacre
“This a celly/ that’s a tool”
Slavery and The Founding
Fredrick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (4th of July, 1852)
He highlights the stark contrast between the freedoms enjoyed by others and the oppression they endure, stating that the Fourth of July represents liberty and celebration for some, but injustice and suffering for them.
Slavery and the American Constitution
The word “slavery” is never used, but there are provisions which are usually understood as referring to slavery:
-three fifths compromise
-fugitive slave clause
-slave trade clause
-Art. 1 insurrection issue
Slavery and The American Constitution
Fredrick Douglass, “The Constitution of the United States: Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?” March 26, 1860
“If the South has made the Constitution bend to the purposes of slavery, let the North now make that instrument bend to the cause of freedom and justice.” = “If the South has used the Constitution to support slavery, let the North now use it to fight for freedom and justice.”
“The Vaults of Opportunity” (Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream” (1963)
-The Constitution and Declaration of Independence were promises to guarantee all Americans unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
-This promise extended to all men, including Black and White Americans.
-However, America has failed to uphold this promise for its citizens of color.
-Despite this, there is a belief that justice and opportunity are not beyond reach.
-The “bank of justice” is not bankrupt, and the nation has the resources to fulfill its promises of equality and opportunity.
Abolition of Slavery and Reconstruction
Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863)
Reconstruction amendments:
-13th: Abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude (with one exception: punishment) (1865)
-14th: Granting Black Americans citizenship rights and “equal protection of the laws” (1868)
-15th: Prohibition of denying or abridging a itizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (1870)
The Reconstruction and Black Self-Assertion
Senator Hiram R. Revels (MS) - Mississippi
Rep. Benjamin S. Turner (AL) - Alabama
Rep. Josiah T. Walls (FL) - Florida
Rep. Joseph H. Rainey (SC) - South Carolina
Rep. Robert Brown Elliot (SC) - South Carolina
Rep. Robert D. De Large (SC) - South Carolina
Rep. Jefferson H. Long (GA) - Georgia
Afterlives of Slavery I: Jim Crow Regime
Economic discrimination:
-Sharecropping and economic dependence
-Convict leases
-Extralegal violence
Afterlives of Slavery I: Jim Crow Regime
Racial Segregation:
-Separate but equal (Pessy v. Ferguson 1896)
-Discrimination in public services
-Disrimination in private services
-Discrimination in access to financial services
Afterlives of Slavery I: Jim Crow Regime
Political disenfranchisement:
-Restriction on voting (poll tax and property qualifications, literacy tests and character requirements, grandfather clauses, all white primaries)
-Extralegal violence
Afterlives of Slavery I: Jim Crow Regime
Discrimination in legal system:
The trial and execution of George Stinney (1944)
-14yo boy accused of killing and raping two white girls
-his confession most probably coerced by white policemen
-inadequate counsel
-convicted by all-white jury
-less tha three months from arrest to execution
Afterlives of Slavery I: Jim Crow Regime
White supremacist violence:
-Red Summer (1919)
-Tulsa race riot (1921)
-Lynchings
Second Reconstruction: Antecedents
WWII and its aftermath
-Military rigidly segregated
-Gunnar Mydral, An American Dilemma (1944)
-Integration of the military (1948)
-The 1948 election
Second Reconstruction: Antecedents
Integration of baseball as a symbol and catalyst of change
-Moral suasion
-economic pressure
-Militant confrontation
-Personal courage
Second Reconstruction: The New Generation
Medgar Evers
-WWII Veteran, served during D-Day invasion, earned the rank of sergeant
-Returned to MS, registered to vote but was refused the opportunity to cast the ballot
-NAACP field secretary in MS
-Assassinated in 1963 for his civil rights activism
Second Reconstruction: Brown v. Broad
Brown v. Broad of Education of Topeka (1954)
-Integrated public schools
-Invalidates the rationale for “separate but equal”
-“SEPARATE=UNEQUAL”
Little Rock Nine (Little Rock, AR, 1957)
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