The New South/Segregation 1877-1950

• The Compromise of 1877 : opened door to denial of black citizenship

• 1890s - early 1900s: -> increased lynchings -> racial segregation: legal -> African American: no right to vote

• Jim Crow laws• Some Afro-Americans organized in workers´

organizations like Knights of Labor (1869-1900) or joined in parties like the Populists

• Foundation of all-black towns by Afro-Americans

• during the First World War in Europe: -> scores moved from the countryside

to southern cities ->labor was needed in northern cities,

which attracted black folk

• Racial attacks against black men and institutions

• “Harlem Renaissance”

• 1932: highest unemployment rate of black workers

• “Double Victory”

• Afro-Americans fought for getting more important jobs with more pay

• Riots in several U.S. cities between whites and Afro- Americans caused deaths, injuries and damage of property

• 1945- 1970: Black resistance to racism ( protracted war for freedom)

• Fights for economical and racial justice in southern towns and cities

Jim Crow

• Andrew Johnson (democrat; 1865-69)• Post-Civil War the Reconstruction began...

• -> 13. Amendment: no slavery, involuntary servitude

• -> 14. Amendment: civil rights for Afro-Americans

• -> 15. Amendment: male suffrage for Afro-Americans

• -> the Dixie States agreed hoping to regain influence; this was only possible

• due to Johnson allowing them to rejoin the Union but still preserving the "Black Codes"

• -> retaining the full citizenship from Afro-Americans (no voting, no testifying against whites [...] )

• -> not only the Southerners repressed the blacks...

• -> the Northern Industrialists exploited the Black workforce surging to the Northern States

• There by pushing them into a state akin to slavery...

• Rutherford B. Heyes (republican; 1877-81)• lost the presidential election but Tilden

(democrat) gave him the presidency for de facto ending the reconstruction

• -> also ending the 3 Amendments power over the Dixie States...

• poor white people sought refugee in the privilege of being white rather than getting to vote themselves or any rights at all

• -> the Minstrel shows helped them identify with their Caucasian race rather than the poor working class w/o any rights what’s ever

• The Jim Crow era started 1876 and lasted till 1964 it's characterized by racism and segregation. Especially in the Southern States it lasted till even the 1960s under the term "separate but equal" coined by the court procedure Plessyvs Ferguson.

Lynching

• illegal execution of an accused person by a mob

• the term "lynching" probably derived from the name Charles Lynch ( 1736-96), a justice of the peace who administered rough justice in Virginia

• it was originally a system of punishment used by whites against African American slaves

• whites who protested against this were also in danger of being lynched

• after the establishment of the KuKluxKlan in 1867 the number of lynching increased dramatically

KuKlux Klan

• Known as KKK or The Klan

• Racist organization in the United States

• First Klan (1865-1870s), Second Klan (1915-1944), Third Klan (since 1946)