Chapter 8 Segregation and Discrimination

Chapter 8 Section 3- Segregation and Discrimination Slide 1: 1. After African Americans won their freedom they still faced violent opposition from whites 2. by the 20th century Southern states had adopted a broad system of legal policies of racial discrimination and devised methods to weaken African-American power Slide 2 : Voting restrictions: 1. Some states required people be able to read in order to vote (most African Americans could not read) 2. Poll tax: Annual tax that had to be paid before being qualified to vote. Slide 3: 1. Poll tax and literacy test excluded some whites who could not pay the tax or read 2. Government passes the grandfather clause. Says that you’re allowed to vote as long as your father or grandfather was eligible to vote before January 1st, 1867, even if you could not read or write 3. chose this date because freed slaves did not have the right to vote, Slide 4: 1. States also passed segregation laws to separate white and black people in public and private facilities. 2. Law is also known as Jim Crow laws after a popular old minstrel song Slide 5: 1. U.S. Supreme Court took up the case of segregation in Plessy vs Ferguson. 2. Court ruled that segregation was legal and did not violate the 4th amendment. 3. Coined the term “Separate but equal” due to the ruling that said separate facilities were acceptable as long as they provided equal service. Slide 6: 1. African Americans also faced informal rules and customs called racial etiquette 2. Blacks and whites could not shake hands, because it implies equality 3. Blacks also had to yield the sidewalk to white pedestrians 4. and black men always had to remove their hats for white people. Slide 7: 1. African Americans who did not follow the racial etiquette could face severe punishment or death. 2. Blacks who were accused of violating the etiquette were lynched 3. Between 1882-1892 more than 1400 African American men and women were shot, burned, or hung without trial in the South. Slide 8: 1. Most African Americans lived in the segregated South, but by 1900 many were moving north to the cities in search of better paying jobs and social equality 2. Found conditions to be about the same. Forced into segregated communities, faced workplace discrimination, and labor unions discouraged black membership 3. Employees hired African American laborers as a last resort and fired blacks before whites Slide 9: 1. Sometimes violence would erupt between the two classes, such as the New York race riot of 1900. 2. Violence erupted after a young black male, believing his wife was being mistreated by a white policeman, killed the policeman. Word of the killing spread and violence erupted. Slide 10: 1. Western communities were home to people of many backgrounds working and living side by side. 2. You had native Americans, Asian immigrants, and Mexicans. 3. Racial tensions made life difficult Slide 11: 1. Mexicans worked on the railroads because they were accustomed to the hot, dry climate, but the work was grueling and the railroads made them work for less money than other ethnic groups. 2. 1902 National Reclamation Act gave government assistance for irrigation projects, many southwest areas bloomed, and Mexican laborers became the major labor force. Slide 12: 1. Some Mexicans and African Americans were forced into debt peonage 2. Debt Peonage: a system that bound laborers into slavery in order to work off a debt to the employer. 3. 1911 the Supreme Court declares involuntary peonage a violation of the thirteenth amendment. Slide 13: 1. By 1880 more than 100,00 chinese lived in the United States. 2. White would push them into segregated schools and neighborhoods. 3. Strong opposition to Chinese workers developed all over the country. Slide 14: Racial Discrimination posed terrible legal and economic problems for non-whites throughout the United States at the turn of the century.