Jim Crow and Civil Rights

1
Jim Crow and Civil Rights

• The African American Experience

2
Guiding Questions

• What difference did the rise of Jim Crow policies
  make in the day-to-day lives of African Americans
  at the turn of the century?
• How did African Americans respond to the racial
  hostility they experienced in the Jim Crow era?

3
What was Jim Crow?

• The legal and extralegal forms of racial
  segregation
• A system of racial domination

4
When and where did the Jim Crow system exist?

• 1880s-1900s codification of the separation of
  blacks and whites
• De jure segregation vs. de factor segregation
• North and South

5

• C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow,
  "segregation would have been impractical under
  slavery
• Discuss this statement
• For additional reading see http//www.vcdh.virgin
  ia.edu/solguide/VUS08/essay08c.html

6
Why race relations worsened in the late 1880s
and 1890s is a hotly contested question.

• it reflected the collapse of the cotton economy,
  which led many whites to search for scapegoats.
• also related to a fear among many southern whites
  that a new generation of African Americans which
  had been born after the Civil War and not been
  subjected to slavery would not defer to white
  authority.
• a reaction against the increasing economic
  independence of southern blacks. From 1880 to
  1900, black farm ownership increased from 19.6 to
  25.4 percent, while sharecropping, declined from
  54.4. to 37.9 percent.

7
A System of Racial Domination

• Economics
• Politics
• Social

8
Jim Crow

• Must help students understand that Jim Crow was
  more than a series of strict anti-black laws. It
  was a way of life.
• List of typical Jim Crow laws
• Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a
  barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia).
• Blind Wards. The board of trustees
  shall...maintain a separate building...on
  separate ground for the admission, care,
  instruction, and support of all blind persons of
  the colored or black race (Louisiana).
• Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or
  allow to be buried, any colored persons upon
  ground set apart or used for the burial of white
  persons (Georgia).
• See What Was Jim Crow? by Dr. David Pilgrim at
  www.jimcrow.org

9
Jim Crow etiquette

• A black male could not offer his hand (to shake
  hands) with a white male because it implied being
  socially equal. Blacks and whites were not
  supposed to eat together. If they did eat
  together, whites were to be served first, and
  some sort of partition was to be placed between
  them.
• Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect
  when referring to blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs.,
  Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, blacks were called
  by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy
  titles when referring to whites, and were not
  allowed to call them by their first names. If a
  black person rode in a car driven by a white
  person, the black person sat in the back seat or
  the back of a truck. White motorists had the
  right-of-way at all intersections.

10
Race and Place
11
Social Jim Crowism Segregated Transportation

• Challenges against Segregated Transportation (see
  All the Women were White)
• Niagara Movement (see next slide)
• The Niagara Movement was organized in 1905 by
  W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, Ida Wells
  Barnett, and other middle-class but militant
  Black intellectuals. It was a repudiation of the
  conservative and stifling leadership of Booker T.
  Washington and the Tuskegee Machine. (see The
  Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles at
  http//www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1152.htm )
• NAACP
• The NAACP was formed in 1909 through the merger
  of two organizations the Niagara Movement and
  the National Negro Conference.

12
The black laws / speech of Hon. B.W. Arnett of
Greene County, and Hon. J.A. Brown of Cuyahoga
County, in the Ohio House of Representatives,
March 10, 1886.

• Members of the Ohio House of Representatives
  will be astonished when I tell them that I have
  traveled in this free country for twenty hours
  without anything to eat not because I had no
  money to pay for it, but because I was colored.
  Other passengers of a lighter hue had breakfast,
  dinner and supper. In traveling we are thrown in
  "jim crow" cars, denied the privilege of buying a
  berth in the sleeping coach. This monster caste
  stands at the doors of the theatres and skating
  rinks, locks the doors of the pews in our
  fashionable churches, closes the mouths of some
  of the ministers in their pulpits which prevents
  the man of color from breaking the bread of life
  to his fellowmen.
• This foe of my race stands at the school house
  door and separates the children, by reason of
  color, and denies to those who have a visible
  admixture of African blood in them the blessings
  of a graded school and equal privileges...We call
  upon all friends of Equal Rights to assist us in
  this struggle to secure the blessings of
  untrammeled liberty for ourselves and prosperity.
  

http//lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aapprot.html
13
Excerpt of The Niagara Movement Declaration of
Principles (1905)

• Protest We refuse to allow the impression to
  remain that the Negro-American assents to
  inferiority, is submissive under oppression and
  apologetic before insults. Through helplessness
  we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten
  million Americans must never cease to assail the
  ears of their fellows, so long as America is
  unjust.
• Color-Line Any discrimination based simply on
  race or color is barbarous, we care not how
  hallowed it be by custom, expediency or
  prejudice. Differences made on account of
  ignorance, immorality, or disease are legitimate
  methods of fighting evil, and against them we
  have no word of protest but discriminations
  based simply and solely on physical
  peculiarities, place of birth, color of skin, are
  relics of that unreasoning human savagery of
  which the world is and ought to be thoroughly
  ashamed.
• "Jim Crow" Cars We protest against the "Jim
  Crow" car, since its effect is and must be to
  make us pay first-class fare for third-class
  accommodations, render us open to insults and
  discomfort and to crucify wantonly our manhood,
  womanhood and self-respect.

14
Economic Jim Crowism
15
Sharecropping System the dominate form of
labor relations

• What did black farmers want?
• What did white planters want?
• Cycle of debt
• fixing the books
• settlin time
• Debt peonage
• Credit system
• Vagrancy laws
• Convict lease system
• Involuntary servitude

16
Sharecropper Contract, 1882
http//chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3
/sharecropper.pdfhttp//chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unit
docs/unit6/lesson3/mapcontractquestions.pdf

• To every one applying to rent land upon shares,
  the following conditions must be
• read, and agreed to.
• To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to furnish the
  team, plow, and farming
• implements . . . The croppers are to have half of
  the cotton, corn, and fodder (and peas
• and pumpkins and potatoes if any are planted) if
  the following conditions are complied
• with, but-if not-they are to have only two-fifths
  (2/5) . . . All must work under my
• direction.
• . . . No cropper is to work off the plantation
  when there is any work to be done on
• the land he has rented, or when his work is
  needed by me or other croppers.
• . . . Every cropper must feed or have fed, the
  team he works, Saturday nights,
• Sundays, and every morning before going to work,
  beginning to feed his team (morning,
• noon, and night every day in the week) on the day
  he rents and feeding it to including the
• 31st day of December. ...for every time he so
  fails he must pay me five cents.
• The sale of every cropper's part of the cotton to
  be made by me when and where I
• choose to sell, and after deducting all they owe
  me and all sums that I may be responsible
• for on their accounts, to pay them their half of
  the net proceeds. Work of every
• description, particularly the work on fences and
  ditches, to be done to my satisfaction,
• and must be done over until I am satisfied that
  it is done as it should be.
• SOURCE Grimes Family Papers, Southern Historical
  Collection, University of North

17
SharecroppingContinuity or Change?
http//www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/planta
3.htm
18
Frustrated SharecroppersRobert Curtis Smith
(turn of the century) in Litwack, Trouble in
Mind, p. 134

• If you make a crop and dont clear nothin and
  you still wound up won on your sharecrop and on
  your furnish and you try to move, well the
  police be after you then all right. But if youre
  clear well mostly, you cant go too far because of
  the money. If you move, or if you try to move,
  they know if they like the way you work they make
  you pay somethin just for holdin the house up.
  If, after you pay that you want to move, well you
  cant go too far becauseyou gonne need money to
  carry you on to the place where you can get work.
  And if you caint get work at one place you go to
  the next place, but you caint go too far, because
  you aint got enough in hand to go that far.

19
Sharecropping in Virginia

• http//www.mcps.org/ss/5thgrade/ShareCropTN.pdf

20
How did African Americans respond to the limits
of Southern labor systems?

• Maintain self-sufficiency
• Tenancy
• A tenant owned the crop he produced, the
  sharecropper did not
• Black womens labor

21
Housing

• In the rural South, blacks lived in the same
  housing that had been built for slaves. What did
  this housing look like?
• When did housing improve? How?

22
Housing

• 1895-1896, U.S. Department of Agriculture report
  on housing in the Tuskegee region of Alabama
• Practically all the negroes live in cabins,
  generally built of logs, with only one or at most
  two rooms. The spaces between the logs were
  either left open, admitting free passage of the
  wind in winter as well as in summer, or were
  chinked with earth or occasionally with pieces of
  board. The roofs were covered with coarse
  shingles or boards and were apt to be far from
  tight. The windows had no sash or glass, but
  instead, wooden blinds, which were kept open in
  all weather to admit the light.

23
W. E. B. Du Bois (1908)

• As cooking, washing and sleeping go on in the
  same room an accumulation of stale sickly odors
  are manifest to every visitorA room so largely
  in use is with difficulty to kept clean.
  .animals stray into the house there are either
  no privies or bad ones facilities for bathing
  even the face and hands are poorThe average
  country home leaks in the roof and is poorly
  protected against changes in the weather. A hard
  storm means the shutting out of all air and
  light cold weather leads to overheating,
  draughts, or poor ventilation hot weather breeds
  diseases.

24
Georgia farm operator (turn of the century)

• The original plantation houses of the South, I
  regret to say, were mostly 1-room affairs, 20 or
  25 feet square, and those were mostly of logs.
  The modern house is a frame house, boarded and
  sheathed with 3 rooms a general family room,
  which is used only to put the family bed in and
  then a separate bedroom, and a kitchen. The
  general modern tenant house is a 3-room house.

25
1901, Georgia commissioner of Agriculture

• Landlords have been forced to build better tenant
  houses and provide them with modern systems that
  are adapted all around, in order to retain and
  keep the best labor. That is really the way that
  a great many of our best people succeed in
  keeping their labor, and the better class of
  labor, by making everything around them as
  comfortable as possible.

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27
Sharecroppers cabin
28
The Politicsof Jim Crow

• Disfranchisement and Political Intimidation

29
Disfranchisement 2 Parts

• Disfranchisement I The Politics and Culture of
  Violence
• Use of violence to suppress black political
  action
• Disfranchisement II Literacy Requirements,
  property qualifications, Poll Taxes, Grandfather
  Clauses, and Understanding Clauses
• Disfanchisment Laws had to be carefully crafted
  to avoid 15th amendment, they could not
  explicitly use race as a barrier to voting.

30
The Culture of Violence and Intimidation

• Chain GangsConvict Lease System

31
Taken from the third chapter of "The Reason why
the colored American is not in the World's
Columbian Exposition," published in 1893

• the convicts are leased out to work for railway
  contractors, mining companies and those who farm
  large plantations. These companies assume charge
  of the convicts, work them as cheap labor and pay
  the states a handsome revenue for their labor
• ..The reason our race furnishes so large a
  share of the convicts is that the judges, juries
  and other officials of the courts are white men
  who share these prejudices. They also make the
  laws. It is wholly in their power to extend
  clemency to white criminals and mete severe
  punishment to black criminals for the same or
  lesser crimes. The Negro criminals are mostly
  ignorant, poor and friendless. Possessing neither
  money to employ lawyers nor influential friends,
  they are sentenced in large numbers to long terms
  of imprisonment for petty crimes.
• Every Negro so sentenced not only means
  able-bodied men to swell the state's number of
  slaves, but every Negro so convicted is thereby
  disfranchised.
• http//www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fredouconl
  ea.html

32

Jackson Weekly Clarion, printed in 1887 the
inspection report of the state prison in
Mississippi

• "We found in the hospital section twenty-six
  inmates, all of whom have been lately brought
  there off the farms and railroads, many of them
  with consumption and other incurable diseases,
  and all bearing on their persons marks of the
  most inhuman and brutal treatment. Most of them
  have their backs cut in great wales, scars and
  blisters, some with the skin pealing off in
  pieces as the result of severe beatings. Their
  feet and hands in some instances show signs of
  frostbite, and all of them with the stamp of
  manhood almost blotted out of their faces....
  They are lying there dying, some of them on bare
  boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones
  almost come through their skin, many complaining
  for the want of food.... We actually saw live
  vermin crawling over their faces, and the little
  bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and
  stiff with filth. As a fair sample of this
  system, on January 6, 1887, 204 convicts were
  leased to McDonald up to June 6, 1887, and during
  this six months 20 died, and 19 were discharged
  and escaped and 23 were returned to the walls
  disabled and sick, many of whom have since died."
  
• http//www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.ht
  m

33
Why the convict lease system?

• no black crime spree
• Southern governments wanted to control the black
  population.
• The system used by the planter class and
  industrialist to intimidate black sharecroppers
  and provide workers for the Souths growing
  industry.
• The system reaffirmed white feelings of racial
  superiority
• Helped maintained racial hierarchy of southern
  society.

34
Other Helpful Websites

• http//www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/
• Especially see sections on Jim Crow Laws,
  Lynching and Riots, and Jim Crow Stories.
  The lesson plans and activities are also useful.

35
Disfranchisement

• Almost all southern states passed statutes
  restricting suffrage in the years from 1871 to
  1889
• But, it was in the 1890s that a formal movement
  for disfranchisement emerged in full force.
• Why the Delay?
• The Fifteenth Amendment
• prohibited states from depriving a citizen of his
  vote due to race, color, or condition of
  servitude.
• Four main ways disfranchisement was accomplished
• Poll Tax , Literacy requirements , Property
  requirements , Residency requirements

36
Escape clauses

• designed so that poor and illiterate whites could
  still qualify to vote.
• (1) Understanding clause
• Literacy and educational requirements
• http//www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_02/Vot
  e172.shtml LA Literacy Test
• Grandfather clause
• Could not vote if grandfather could not have
  voted prior to 1867

37
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38
African-American Responses to Jim Crow Politics

• Booker T. Washington
• The Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895 (see
  http//historymatters.gmu.edu for document)
• The Washington-DuBois Debate
• Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
  published within The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
  (see http//historymatters.gmu.edu for document)

39
W.E.B. Du Bois ,  The Souls of Black
Folk.  1903.Chapter III Of Mr. Booker T.
Washington and Others

• it has been claimed that the Negro can survive
  only through submission. Mr. Washington
  distinctly asks that black people give up, at
  least for the present, three things,
          First, political power,         Second,
  insistence on civil rights,         Third,
  higher education of Negro youth, and
  concentrate all their energies on industrial
  education, the accumulation of wealth, and the
  conciliation of the South. This policy has been
  courageously and insistently advocated for over
  fifteen years, and has been triumphant for
  perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of
  the palm-branch, what has been the return? In
  these years there have occurred
• The disfranchisement of the Negro.
• The legal creation of a distinct status of civil
  inferiority for the Negro.
• The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions
  for the higher training of the Negro.
•    These movements are not, to be sure, direct
  results of Mr. Washingtons teachings but his
  propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped
  their speedier accomplishment. The question then
  comes Is it possible, and probable, that nine
  millions of men can make effective progress in
  economic lines if they are deprived of political
  rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only
  the most meagre chance for developing their
  exceptional men? If history and reason give any
  distinct answer to these questions, it is an
  emphatic No.

40
Racist Publications and Black Response
41
How are African Americans represented in these
photographs? http//www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/m
enu.htm
42

• Do you see any similarities to depicting people
  as inferior and the use of violence against them?
  
• Negative images used to justify discrimination
  and segregationist system

43
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44
Defending black identity

• Henry M. Turner
• A man must believe he is somebody before he is
  acknowledged to be somebodyRespect Black.
  (Litwack, Trouble in Mind, p. 462)

45
Black Progress/Black Resistance
46
The Quest for an Education

• Discussion starter Ask students what the
  importance of education is to them. How
  significant is it in their lives?

47
The Value of an education

• Elderly black woman, deer fesser, please accept
  this 18 cents it is all I have. I save it out of
  my washing this week. God will bless you. Send
  you more next week.
• A teachers diary, Aunt Hester gave a pound of
  butter and a dime. Grandma Williams a chicken.
  Effie McCoy, a cake and five cents Bessie a
  dress.
• See Richard Wormser, The Rise and Fall of Jim
  Crow, p. 49

48
The value of an education from another
perspective

• Montgomery Alabama Lawyer, It is a question of
  who will do the dirty workIf you educate the
  Negroes they wont stay where they belong and
  you must consider them as a race, because if you
  let a few rise it makes the others discontented.
• Unknown, It tends to make the negro unwilling to
  work where he is wanted and desirous of working
  where he is not wanted
• See Litwack, Trouble in Mind, p. 95

49
The Quest for Education

• Why were students afraid?
• One Virginia county man, down in my neighborhood
  they are afraid to be caught with a book.
• Caroline Smith, 1871, Georgia They would not let
  us have schools. They (KKK) went to a colored man
  there, whose son had been teaching school, and
  they took evry book they had and threw them into
  the fire and they said they would dare any other
  negro to have a book in his house

50
Booker T. Washington and W. E. B.
Du Bois

• Identify significant differences in the early
  lives of Washington and Du Bois. Where was each
  man born? Who was born a slave? Where did they go
  to school? What early experiences played a role
  in shaping their differing philosophies on
  elevating African-Americans in American society?
• Contrast the educational theories of both men.
  What did each man believe should be the purpose
  of education for African Americans?

51
Booker T. Washington

• Washington was "born a slave on a plantation in
  Franklin County, Virginia..." (Up From Slavery)
  in 1856. After emancipation, he and his family
  moved to Malden, West Virginia. The nearby
  Kanawha Sapines salt furnaces provided wage work
  for many freed slaves in West Virginia, including
  members of Washington's family. A prominent white
  family, the Ruffners, hired the young Washington
  as a domestic. Washington later said the lessons
  he learned from them were "... as valuable to me
  as any education I have gotten anywhere since."
• see http//www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/tuskegee
  /btwoverview.htm

52
from "Nineteenth Annual Report of the Principal
of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute"
by Booker T. Washingtonhttp//lcweb2.loc.gov/amme
m/aap/aapindus.html

• The chief value of industrial education is to
  give to the students habits of industry, thrift,
  economy and an idea of the dignity of labor. But
  in addition to this, in the present economic
  condition of the colored people, it is most
  important that a very large proportion of those
  trained in such institutions as this, actually
  spend their time at industrial occupations. Let
  us value the work of Tuskegee by this test...Our
  students actually cultivate every day, seven
  hundred acres of land, while studying
  agriculture. The students studying dairying,
  actually milk and care for seventy-five milch
  cows daily...and so I could go on and give not
  theory, nor hearsay, but actual facts, gleaned
  from all the departments of the school.

53
from "The Primary Needs of the Negro Race" by
Kelly Millerhttp//lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphi
gh.html

• The first great need of the Negro is that the
  choice youth of the race should assimilate the
  principles of culture and hand them down to the
  masses below. This is the only gateway through
  which a new people may enter into modern
  civilization...The Roman youth of ambition
  completed their education in Athens the noblemen
  of northern Europe sent their sons to the
  southern peninsulas in quest of larger
  learning...The graduates of Hampton and other
  institutions of like aim are forming centers of
  civilizing influence in all parts of the land,
  and we confidently believe that these grains of
  leaven will ultimately leaven the whole lump.

54
W. E. Burghart Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth,"
September 1903

• The Negro race, like all races, is going to be
  saved by its exceptional men. The problem of
  education, then, among Negroes must first of all
  deal with the Talented Tenth it is the problem
  of developing the Best of this race that they may
  guide the Mass away from the contamination and
  death of the Worst, in their own and other races.
  ..
• How then shall the leaders of a struggling people
  be trained and the hands of the risen few
  strengthened? There can be but one answer The
  best and most capable of their youth must be
  schooled in the colleges and universities of the
  land. We will not quarrel as to just what the
  university of the Negro should teach or how it
  should teach it I willingly admit that each
  soul and each race-soul needs its own peculiar
  curriculum. But this is true A university is a
  human invention for the transmission of knowledge
  and culture from generation to generation,
  through the training of quick minds and pure
  hearts, and for this work no other human
  invention will suffice, not even trade and
  industrial schools.

55
The Niagara Movement and the NAACP

• Niagara Movement 1905
• NAACP 1909
• Heirs to the 19th century abolitionist movement
• NAACP mission to ensure that African Americans
  be physically free from peonge, mentally free
  from ignorance, politically free from
  disfranchisement, and socially free from insult.
• Booker T. Washington declined to join, so did Ida
  B. Wells

56
Discussion Question

• Do you think that you could have lived as a black
  person in the Jim Crow South?
• How would you have coped?
• What would you have done to survive? What would
  have been the most difficult thing for you as a
  young black person to have accepted or coped with
  in Virginia at the peak of Jim Crow?
• Answer the same questions from the perspective of
  a young white person.

57
Going North The Great Migration

• Two phases
• Phase 1 1900-1915
• Phase 2 WWI to 1930

58
The Chicago Defender, April 7, 1917
59
 

• Albert Alex Smith, "They Have Ears But They Hear
  Not," The Crisis, XXI (November, 1920), p. 17.

60
Great Migration

• One Way Ticket (Langston Hughes)
• I pick up my life, And take it with me, And I
  put it down in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo,
  Scranton, Any place that is North and East,
• And not Dixie.

• I pick up my life And take it on the train, To
  Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Seattle, Oakland, Salt
  Lake Any place that is North and West, And not
  South.

61
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63
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64
For Images and Maps about Migration North see

• http//www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/landing.cfm
  
• Great Migration lesson plan -- http//artsedge.ken
  nedy-center.org/content/2247

65
Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence

• http//www.columbia.edu/itc/history/odonnell/w1010
  /edit/migration/migration.html

66
"Interview of Jacob Lawrence"from African
American Frontiers Slave Narratives and Oral
Histories Alan GovenarABC-CLIO (Santa Barbara,
2000) _at_ http//www.inmotionaame.org/texts/?migrati
on
My family was a part of the migration. That is,
my mother, my sister, and my brother. My father
and my mother were separated. I was born in
Atlantic City, New Jersey. They were moving up
the coast, as many families were during that
migration. And I was part of that. We moved up to
various cities until we arrivedthe last two
cities I can remember before moving to New York
were Easton, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. And then we finally settled in New
York City. So that was my upbringing. My young
years were spent just doing that traveling as
part of the migration, and that was it. I was
aware of people moving, older people like my
mother's peersI would hear them talk about how
another family has arrived. And these were the
people who would mention the fact that they had
been here a few years and they were seeing the
new migrants coming in and settling or moving on.
And I didn't realize what it was at the time, of
course it's only in later years that I realized
what was going on.
67
The Music of the Great Migration

• http//www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom/defmigration
  .html
• Harlem Music lesson Plan--http//artsedge.kennedy-
  center.org/content/2258
• Harlem childrens games lesson plan
  -http//artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/2249

68
Times Is Gettin Harder Blues of the Great
Migration

• Times is gettin' harder,
• Moneys gettin' scarce.
• Soon as I gather my cotton and corn,
• Im bound to leave this place.
• White folks sittin' in the parlor,
• Eatin' that cake and cream,
• Niggers way down to the kitchen,
• Squabblin' over turnip greens.
• Times is gettin' harder,
• Moneys gettin' scarce.

• Soon as I gather my cotton and corn,
• Im bound to leave this place.
• Me and my brother was out.
• Thought wed have some fun.
• He stole three chickens.
• We began to run.
• Times is gettin' harder,
• Moneys gettin' scarce.
• Soon as I gather my cotton and corn
• Im bound to leave this place.

(find at Historymatters.gmu see also"Sir I Will
Thank You with All My Heart" seven Letters from
the Great Migration
69

• What life was like for African Americans in the
  Jim Crow North in the early the 20th century?

70
PROMISE LAND?
Chicago, Illinois, July 1941 LOC Prints and
Photographs Division
71
Chicago Housing
Chicago, Illinois, July 1941 LOC Prints and
Photographs Division
72
Torched school in New Jersey from Scott Nearing,
Black America (New York The Vanguard Press, 1929)
73
The New Negro
74
African American ResponsesOrganized Protest

• National Urban League --1910 in New York City
• Churches
• Universal Negro Improvement Association -- 1914

75
African American ResponsesWWI

• Complex factor WWI
• W.E. B. Dubois Returning Soldiers May 1919
• We are returning from war! The Crisis and tens
  of thousands of black men were drafted into a
  great struggle. For bleeding France and what she
  means and has meant and will mean to us and
  humanity and against the threat of German race
  arrogance, we fought gladly and to the last drop
  of blood for America and her highest ideals, we
  fought in far-off hope for the dominant southern
  oligarchy entrenched in Washington, we fought in
  bitter resignation. For the America that
  represents and gloats in lynching,
  disfranchisement, caste, brutality and devilish
  insultfor this, in the hateful upturning and
  mixing of things, we were forced by vindictive
  fate to fight also.
• But today we return! We return from the slavery
  of uniform which the world's madness demanded us
  to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand
  again to look America squarely in the face and
  call a spade a spade. We sing This country of
  ours, despite all its better souls have done and
  dreamed, is yet a shameful land.

76

• Red Summer
• If We Must Die (1919) Claude McKay
• If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted
  and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us
  bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock
  at our accursed lot.If we must die, O let us
  nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be
  shedIn vain then even the monsters we
  defyShall be constrained to honor us though
  dead!O kinsmen we must meet the common
  foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us
  brave,And for their thousand blows deal one
  deathblow!What though before us lies the open
  grave?Like men we'll face the murderous,
  cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but
  fighting back!

77
The Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro

• paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Aaron Douglas
• sculptures by Augusta Savage
• picture quilts by Faith Ringgold
• Poetry by Langston Hughes
• Lesson plan --http//artsedge.kennedy-center.org/c
  ontent/2248/

78
More websites

• Portrait of Place, Portrait of a Family
  http//artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/2259

79
Between the Wars

• Direct Action during the Depression contrasted
  sharply both quantitatively and qualitatively
  with the history of such tactics during the
  entire preceding century A. Meier and E. Rudwick
• Increase in Black Political Awareness
• Newspaper circulation doubled
• NAACP membership increased
• Increased militancy
• Marcus Garvey UNIA
• Dont Buy Where You Cant Work (1929-1941)
• Harlem Riot- 1935

80
The Fight for Civil Rights Toward a Social
Movement (pre-Brown)

• Focus The early twentieth-century civil rights
  efforts of African American with particular
  attention on individual acts and local
  organization such as church groups, and national
  organizations (i.e. NAACP , NUL and CORE).
• Goal Help students understand that long before
  the African American struggle for rights became a
  mass movement, local resistance in black
  communities took many forms.

81
Rising Black Militancy

• Langston Hughes (1931) Tired
• I am so tired of waiting,
• Arent you
• For the world to become good
• And beautiful and kind?
• Let us take a knife
• And cut the world in two
• And see what worms are eating
• At the rind.

82
World War II and the Rise of African-American
Protest Politics

• Philip Randolph and the March on Washington
  Movement
• The president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
  Porters, a primarily black union, was A. Philip
  Randolph (1889-1979).
• March 1941, Randolph proposed a new civil rights
  strategy a massive march on Washington D. C.
• Three demands
• The immediate end to segregation and
  discrimination in federal government hiring.
• An end to segregation of the armed forces.
• Government support for an end to discrimination
  and segregation in all American employment.

83
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

• Est. 1942 on the University of Chicago campus.
• The creation of CORE marked the beginning of a
  mass movement for civil rights.
• CORE PHILOSOPHY
• Interracial founders committed to Gandian
  techniques of nonviolent direct action
• Their tactics provided an important example for
  later civil rights activists.
• strikes, demonstrations, boycotts
• Dont Buy Where You Cant Work (1929-1941)
• Sit-ins by Howard Univ. students (1943-1944

84
Jackie Robinson Civil Rights Advocate

• The first black man to "officially" play in the
  big leagues,
• First game with Dodgers in 1947
• http//www.archives.gov/education/lessons/jackie-r
  obinson/

85
Barbara Johns and Beyond Rising Expectations,
1951-1959

• Barbara Johns, April 23, 1951
• Brown v. Board of Education, May 1954
• Montgomery Bus Boycott, December 1955
• Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas,
  September 1957
• Key Point Students took the initiative in
  seeking to transform legal rights into tangible
  racial advances.

86
The Brown Decision

• Immediate Reaction to the Decision Comparing
  Media Coveragehttp//www.landmarkcases.org/brown/
  reaction.html
• Compare and contrast different regions newspaper
  reportage.
• How did Virginia newspapers report the decision?
• Get Local
• Were Loudoun County schools segregated?
• Was segregation de jure (by law) or de facto (in
  fact)? Make sure the students understand that
  even if schools were not legally segregated (de
  jure), they could have been segregated in fact
  (de facto) because people of color were excluded
  from moving into certain neighborhoods and
  communities, and the segregated communities
  created segregated schools.
• How and when did the schools become integrated?
• http//www.balchfriends.org/Glimpse/EssUnderstandi
  ng.htm

87
African Americans in Montgomery Protest
Segregation Transportation

• Half a century before the 1955-1956 Montgomery
  Bus Boycott African Americans in the city had
  conducted a two-year boycott when the city
  council enacted a trolley-car segregation bill.
  Like the bus boycott of 1955-1956, the
  Montgomery streetcar boycott of 1900-1902 was
  part of a larger regional black protest against
  Jim Crow urban transit.
• (August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, The Boycott
  Movement Against Jim Crow Streetcars in the
  South, 1900-1906, Journal of American History,
  55, 4 (March 1969), 756. (pdf)
• Slide from presentation by Elsa Brown, 2002

88
Known Streetcar Boycotts

• Atlanta, 1892-1893
• Augusta, 1898
• Savannah, 1899
• Atlanta and Rome, 1900
• Augusta, 1900-1903
• Jacksonville, 1901
• Montgomery, 1900-1902
• Mobile, 1902
• New Orleans and Shreveport, 1902-1903
• Little Rock, 1903
• Columbia, 1903
• Slide from presentation by Elsa Brown, 2002

• Houston, 1903-1905
• Vicksburg and Natchez, 1904
• San Antonio, 1904-1905
• Richmond, 1904-1905
• Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, 1905
• Jacksonville and Pensacola, 1905
• Nashville, 1905-1906
• Danville, Lynchburg, Petersburg, and Norfolk,
  1906
• Newport News, 1906-1907
• Savannah, 1906-1907

89
Who are these Women?

• March 2, 1955 December 1, 1955

90
Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Mary Louis Smith, Claudette Colvin Who were
  they?
• http//www.historylearningsite.co.uk/montgomery_bu
  s_boycott.htm
• Montgomery Bus BoycottOrganizing Strategies and
  Challenges Activity at http//civilrightsteaching.
  org/lessonshandouts/handouts.htm
• Jo Ann Robinson Who was she?
• Women's Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery,
  Alabama
• May 21, 1954 letter to Mayor
• INTERVIEW http//library.wustl.edu/units/spec/fil
  mandmedia/pdfs/ROBINSON-JO20ANN.pdf

91

• Slide from

• Slide from presentation
• by Elsa Brown, 2002

92
Flyer announcing boycott
Slide from presentation by Elsa Brown, 2002
93
Teaching the Bus Boycott

• Toni Morrissons Remember http//houghtonmifflinbo
  oks.com/readers_guides/morrison_remember.shtml
• http//www.teachingforchange.org/busboycott/busboy
  cott.htm
• Teaching With DocumentsAn Act of Courage, The
  Arrest Records of Rosa Parks http//www.archives.g
  ov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/

94
Student Activism and the Emergence of a Mass
Movement, 1960-1965

• Focus College students developed new strategies
  and revitalized old ones that help to escalate
  the civil rights struggle and broaden its base.
  Their tactics included sit-ins, freedom rides,
  jail-ins, boycotts, voter registration drives,
  and marches.
• Goal To help students understand how/why the
  involvement of college students brought
  transformed the movement.

95
Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement

• Sweet Chariot The Story of the Spirituals
• http//ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Freedom/civil.cfm
• MUSIC OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA, 1954-1968
• http//www.learningtogive.org/lessons/unit53/
• Eyes on the Prize Lesson
• http//www.tolerance.org/teach/resources/songbook/
  pdf/010_eyesprize.pdf
• Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
• http//www.folkways.si.edu/
• Search for Sing For Freedom The Story of the
  Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs and
  Voices of the Civil Rights Movement Black
  American Freedom Songs 1960-1966. There are
  audio clips for both CDs available online.

96
EYES ON THE PRIZE

• Paul and Silas bound in jailHad no money for to
  go their bailKeep your eyes on the prize, hold
  onPaul and Silas thought they was lostDungeon
  shook and the chains come offKeep your eyes on
  the prize, hold onFreedom's name is mighty
  sweetAnd soon we're gonna meetKeep your eyes on
  the prize, hold onI got my hand on the gospel
  plowWon't take nothing for my journey nowKeep
  your eyes on the prize, hold on

• Hold on, hold onKeep your eyes on the prize,
  hold onSoozie!Only chain that a man can
  standIs that chain o' hand on handKeep your
  eyes on the prize, hold onI'm gonna board that
  big greyhoundCarry the love from town to
  townKeep your eyes on the prize, hold onHold
  on, hold onKeep your eyes on the prize, hold on

97
Sit-ins

• Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-in (1960)
• Bigger Than a Hamburger and A Conference on
  the Sit-ins see handout
• Consider the following statement by journalist
  Louis Lomax, "They the sit-ins were proof that
  the Negro leadership class, epitomized by the
  NAACP, was no longer the prime mover in the
  Negro's social revolt. The demonstrations have
  shifted the desegregation battles from the
  courtroom to the marketplace.
• See Greensboro Sit-ins Launch of a Civil Rights
  Movement at http//www.sitins.com/index.shtml.
  Site contains photographs, documents, and audio
  clips from Greensboro participants and civil
  rights leaders.

98
Ella J. Baker (June, 1960) Bigger than a
Hamburger

• The Student Leadership Conference made it crystal
  clear that current sit-ins and other
  demonstrations are concerned with something much
  bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized
  Coke.
• Whatever may be the difference in approach to
  their goal, the Negro and white students, North
  and South, are seeking to rid America of the
  scourge of racial segregation and discrimination
  - not only at lunch counters, but in every aspect
  of life.

• By and large, this feeling that they have a
  destined date with freedom, was not limited to a
  drive for personal freedom, or even freedom for
  the Negro in the South. Repeatedly it was
  emphasized that the movement was concerned with
  the moral implications of racial discrimination
  for the "whole world" and the "Human Race."

99
Ella Baker

• SNCC
• Ella Baker
• 1940s (NAACP)1950s (SCLC) 1960s (SNCC)
• Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro
  sit-ins. She wanted to help the new student
  activists and organized a meeting at Shaw
  University for the student leaders of the sit-ins
  in April 1960. From that meeting SNCC was born.
• Different leadership style than MLK
• Baker believed in group centered leadership vs
  leadership-centered group

100
A Movement in Transition SNCC

• SNCC went through three stages.
• First 1960 to 1963 (Sit-ins and Freedom Rides)
• Second 1963 to 1964 (Freedom Summer) A time of
  transition which sparked a reconsideration of
  nonviolence
• Nearly 1,000 volunteers worked in Mississippi
  that summer.  During those months, 6 people, were
  killed, 80 beaten, 35 churches burned, and 30
  other buildings bombed.
• Third 1965 to 1967. A trip to Africa by several
  SNCC leaders, discussions with and about Malcolm
  X, and growing alienation between blacks and
  whites inside SNCC was capped by the Watts riot
  in August, 1965. The following June, "Black
  Power" became SNCC's battle cry in a march led by
  James Meredith in Mississippi.

101
Freedom Rides

• Define The Freedom Riders left Washington DC on
  May 4, 1961. They were scheduled to arrive in New
  Orleans on May 17, the seventh anniversary of the
  Brown decision. The Freedom Riders never made it
  to New Orleans.
• Outcome led to the end of segregation in
  interstate bus travel in a ruling, -- took effect
  in September 1961.
• Website
• African American Odyssey-Library of Congress
• See http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/ao
  intro.html
• especially the Civil Rights Era section.

102
Birmingham

• Project C ('Confrontation Birmingham' )
• New campaign in Birmingham.
• Goal to activate the black community and to
  force complete desegregation of all the city's
  facilities.
• Letter from Birmingham City Jail
• Written in response to a letter in the local
  paper, the Birmingham News by eight white Alabama
  clergymen. The clergymen stated that the
  demonstrations by "impatient" "outsiders" was
  "unwise and untimely". They thought that the
  civil rights movement should wait and give
  Birmingham citizens a chance to reform their city
  on their own.
• MLK Perhaps it is easy for those who have never
  felt the stinging darts of segregation to say,
  Wait. comes a time when the cup of endurance
  runs over, and men are no longer willing to be
  plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope sirs,
  you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable
  impatience
• For more information about the letter, listen to
  the following NPR radio report
  http//www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20010305.me.14.ram

103
ALABAMA CENTENNIAL, by Naomi Long Madgett

• They said, "Wait." Well, I waited.For a hundred
  years I waitedIn cotton fields, kitchens,
  balconies,In bread lines, at back doors, on
  chain gangs,In stinking "colored" toiletsAnd
  crowded ghettos,Outside of schools and voting
  booths.And some said, "Later."And some said,
  "Never!" Then a new wind blew, and a new
  voiceRode its wings with quiet urgency,Strong,
  determined, sure.
• "No," it said. "Not 'never,' not 'later."Not
  even 'soon.'Now.Walk!"
• And other voices echoed the freedom words,"Walk
  together, children, don't get weary,"Whispered
  them, sang them, prayed them, shouted
  them."Walk!"

• And I walked the streets of MontgomeryUntil a
  link in the chain of patient acquiescence broke.
• Then again Sit down!And I sat down at the
  counters of Greensboro.Ride! And I rode the bus
  for freedom.Kneel! And I went down on my knees
  in prayer and faith.March! And I'll march until
  the last chain fallsSinging, "We shall
  overcome."
• Not all the dogs and hoses in BirminghamNor all
  the clubs and guns in SelmaCan turn this
  tide.Not all the jails can hold these young
  black facesFrom their destiny of manhood,Of
  equality, of dignity,Of the American DreamA
  hundred years past due.Now!

104
Birmingham cont

• On Sept. 15, 1963, the all-Black Sixteenth Street
  Baptist Church was bombed. Sunday school was in
  session.
• See
• Ballad of Birmingham
• Websites
• http//cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/lesson.plan
  s/05/02/church.bombing/ Includes Lesson Plan

105
Ballad of Birmingham

• "Mother dear, may I go downtown         Instead
  of out to play,  And march the streets of
  Birmingham In a Freedom March today?"
• "No, baby, no, you may not go, For the dogs are
  fierce and wild, And clubs and hoses, guns and
  jails Aren't good for a little child."
• "But, mother, I won't be alone. Other children
  will go with me, And march the streets of
  Birmingham To make our country free."
• "No, baby, no, you may not go,                  
                               For I fear those
  guns will fire.
• But you may go to church instead And sing in the
  children's choir."

• She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
  And bathed rose petal sweet, And drawn white
  gloves on her small brown hands, And white shoes
  on her feet.
• The mother smiled to know that her child Was in
  the sacred place, But that smile was the last
  smile To come upon her face.
• For when she heard the explosion, Her eyes grew
  wet and wild. She raced through the streets of
  Birmingham Calling for her child.
• She clawed through bits of glass and brick, Then
  lifted out a shoe. "O, here's the shoe my baby
  wore, But, baby, where are you?"

106
The Militant Years, 1966-68

• Focus The changing face of the civil rights
  movement.
• Goal Help students understand why the
  expectations created by the civil rights movement
  met with frustration in the mid-1960s and how
  their disappointment and frustration aroused a
  new urgency among black civil rights activist.

107
A NEW KING

• Have students identify the ways in which Martin
  Luther King, Jr. is portrayed in the mass media,
  and specifically, which of his ideas are
  communicated to the public.
• Have students read and discuss a range of Kings
  ideas almost completely unknown to most of the
  public today.
• Homework Read excerpts of Kings speeches and
  writings. Identify lines that stand out as
  interesting, deep, meaningful, moving or
  surprising.

108
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON ON MARTIN LUTHER KING

• Martin Luther King, Jr., kept getting up morning
  after morning, knowing they the FBI and other
  government agencies were after him, knowing they
  were possessed of this zealous intensity that was
  illegal and immoral!  And so he was a danger to
  America.  Why?  Because he loved democracy so
  much he wanted to see it become real.  He wanted
  to march democracy from parchment to pavement. 
  He wanted to see it become a reality in this
  nation.  Thats why he had a dream. 
• But America has frozen him.  Now they freeze King
  in this posture of dreaming before the sunlit
  summit of expectation at the height of his
  national fame in Washington, D.C., where he said,
  I have a dream.  He said more than that.   We
  ought to have a moratorium on that speech for the
  next ten years.  I dont want to hear it no
  more!  And if youre gonna play the speech, play
  the other parts of the speech  We have come to
  the nations capital to cash a check marked
  insufficient funds.   In other words,
  Wheres my money?! Thats the part we ought to
  play.  Right?  We ought to play the part where
  King says, The foundations of this nation will
  continue to shake.  He said, The whirlwinds of
  revolt will continue to shake the foundations of
  this nation until the Negro is granted his full
  citizenship rights.  Play that part, too!

109
MLK ON NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION

• Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963The
  purpose of our direct-action program is to create
  a situation so crisis-packed that it will
  inevitably open the door to negotiation My
  friends, I must say to you that we have not made
  a single gain in civil rights without determined
  legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is
  an historical fact that privileged groups seldom
  give up their privileges voluntarilyWe know
  through painful experience that freedom is never
  voluntarily given by the oppressor it must be
  demanded by the oppressed.

110
A PART OF I HAVE A DREAM THAT WE DONT USUALLY
HEAR

• Speech to the March on Washington for Jobs and
  Justice, August 28, 1963There will be neither
  rest nor tranquility in America until the colored
  citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The
  whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the
  foundations of our nation until the bright day of
  justice emerges.

111
MLK on Poverty

• Speech to Teamsters and Allied Trade Councils,
  New York City, May 2, 1967Today Negroes want
  above all else to abolish poverty in their lives,
  and in the lives of the white poor. This is the
  heart of their program. To end humiliation was a
  start, but to end poverty is a bigger task. It is
  natural for Negroes to turn to the Labor movement
  because it was the first and pioneer anti-poverty
  program... I am now convinced that the simplest
  approach will prove to be the most revolutionary.
  The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly
  by a now widely discussed measure the guaranteed
  annual income. We are likely to find that the
  problems of housing and education, instead of
  preceding the elimination of poverty, will
  themselves be affected if poverty is first
  abolished

112
MLK ON THE POOR PEOPLES MARCH ON WASHINGTON,
PLANNED FOR SPRING 1968

• From Inconvenient Hero (1997), by Vincent
  HardingHe was planning to bring the poor of
  every color, to stand and sit with the poor where
  they could not be missed.
• MLK said, Weve got to camp in put our tents
  in front of the White House Weve got to make it
  known that until our problem is solved, America
  may have many, many days, but they will be full
  of trouble. There will be no rest, there will be
  no tranquility in this country until the nation
  comes to terms with our problem.

113
MLK on a REVOLUTION OF VALUES

• "Beyond Vietnam," Address, Riverside Church, New
  York, April 4, 1967 I am convinced that if we
  are to get on the right side of the world
  revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical
  revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the
  shift from a thing-oriented society to a
  person-oriented society.
• A true revolution of values will soon look
  uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and
  wealth.
• A true revolution of values will lay hands on the
  world order and say of war "This way of settling
  differences is not just."
• Our only hope today lies in our ability to
  recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out
  into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal
  hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

114

• For more on MLK see http//urbandreams.ousd.k12.ca
  .us/lessonplans/mlk2/materials_s3.html

115
Lessons Learned The Walk Away Points

• 1. African Americans have suffered great
  challenges to realizing full freedom and
  equality.
• 2. They have a long history of resisting
  oppression and racism
• 3. Individuals can make a difference/students can
  make a difference

116

• Please note this presentation is for workshop
  purposes only.
• Please address all source inquiries to the
  presenter Wendi N. Manuel-Scott