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Summary American Century , A level History
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Summary notes from the American Century: WJEC A level course, I received full UMS in this exam
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plesplCivil Rights in America 1890 – 1990Impact of Jim Crow and the erosion of freedom
- Allowing to vote, created new demographic of voters who were going to vote for different
politicians
- 15th amendment prohibited people not being allowed to vote because of their race
- Got around this by voter suppression, introducing literacy tests and costs to discourage black
men to vote
- Loopholes for white people, didn’t have to do literacy tests if ‘their grandfather had voted’
- Introduced for white people to have power over black people
- Was allowed to happen due to each states government and the federal governments declining
interest in the protection the black population of the south
De facto segregation – separation of the races in fact if not in law
De jure segregation – separation of the races imposed and supported by law
Jim Crow Laws: the laws that enforced segregation and discriminated against Black people. They
were introduced in 1877 as a way for white people in the south to still have control and power over
black people.
Why were black people unable to dominate Southern politics?
1863 – slavery was abolished
- Black people weren’t able to have the same formal education that white people did, this
hindered them in comparison to white people
- There would also be bias from white people, racist attitudes
- More barriers for them overcome
- Accustomed to white leadership and domination
- Black community was divided, ex slaves resented free born black people who saw themselves as
superior
- Black people were a minority in most states
- The republican party knew it was going to get the black vote but put up white candidates to get
white votes
- Southern black leaders were usually moderates who had no desire to exclude ex Confederates
from office
- Lack of experience
How were black southerners disfranchised?
- White supremacists used violence and intimidation to stop black voting
- 1880, South Carolina legislature decreased black representation by redrawing congressional
districts. They put black voters in a single black majority district ‘the shoestring district’,
gerrymandering
- Voter fraud
- 1882, Southern states introduced poll tax, meaning voters would have to pay 71% of the black
electorate voted in 1890, 9% voted after the poll tax
- 1882, South Carolina introduced a literary qualification for voting and Mississippi introduced
both literacy and income qualification, they often manipulated the tests to disqualify black
Americans
,- 1898, Louisiana sough to assist poor white voters who could not pay poll tax or do literacy test.
They used the ‘grandfather clauses’ if ‘their grandfather had voted’ and other states followed
through
- Voter suppression
Why was it relatively easy to erode black freedoms after 1877?
- By 1900, the republicans who were supportive of black rights, were aware that they needed to
win white votes in the south. They aimed to avoid another civil war and wanted to appeal to
white voters. With more white votes, the black votes became less important, they now wanted
to ignore black issues.
- Plessy vs Ferguson, allowed segregation
- The constitution gave the southern states power over voting, education, law enforcement which
enabled segregation to spread
The response of the Supreme Court and impact of supreme court decisions
- The supreme court is the highest court of justice and interprets the constitution
- Each state has its own supreme court as well as the US supreme court
- The president appoints the 9 supreme court justices and they can stay for their whole lives
- In 1868, the supreme court decided that each state had the power to decide who could votes,
voter suppression towards black votes
Case vs Alabama
1883, the supreme court upheld an Alabama statute that imposed harsher penalties on
fornication when the participants were of different races. It maintained that as long as both
fornicators were subject to the same penalty, the races were being treated equally. This was
an example of ‘separate but equal’.
Williams vs Mississippi
A black defendant challenged his indictment for murder as Mississippi excluded black
Americans from the juries. Under Mississippi law jurors had to be qualified voters. The
supreme court ruled that the 1890 Mississippi states constitution was not discriminatory
when it required voters to pass a literacy test and pay poll tax.
Plessy vs Ferguson
1896, the supreme court did not rule against the Jim Crow laws that legalised segregation. It
ruled that ‘separate but equal’ facilities for black and white Americans did not contravene
the 14th amendment or American law. This was a case organised by a civil rights group who
staged Plessy’s act of ‘disobedience’. Plessy was mixed race and was sitting in a ‘whites’
carriage on a train. The supreme court argues that the constitution had ‘absolute equality
under the law, not social equality’. The origin of the ‘separate but equal’ argument.
Cumming vs Board of Education
The court approved segregated and unequal schools
Lack of funding for black schools yet funding for white schools the supreme court rejected a
14th amendment essentially approving segregated and unequal schools.
,Racial Violence
- The KKK was outlawed but there was still large amounts of racial violence
- Many black people died as a result of lynching
- Many white people carried out ‘executions’ as punishments for alleged rape or assault which
was rarely true
- In 1890s there were 1875 reported incidents of lynching in the US, the majority in the South
- In 1909, 88.6% of victims were black
- At least 50 victims in the period up to 1918 were women, some of whom were pregnant
- No one was convicted for these until 1918
- Lynching was a reflection of the depth of racial hatred of white Americans
Why did racial segregation and white supremacy become so entrenched after 1890?
- Black people had to overcome de jure (legal discrimination) in the South and de facto (actual
discrimination) in the North
- End of slavery had left Southern black people with freedom of movement but without material
resources. Most black people were in a poverty trap. Without good educational opportunities it
was difficult.
- Education for black people became available in the South only after the Civil War. The new black
schools and colleges depended upon Northern white funding
- With so little and such poor quality education available, it was difficult to organise any mass
black movement for equality
, Key Individuals in the Civil Rights Movements
Ida B Wells
- Ida was born into slavery in Mississippi
- After the abolishment of slavery she became a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee where she
started journalism on the side
- In 1892 three black owners of Memphis grocery stores were murdered by a white mob and
lynched
- Ida B Wells began investigating this and exposing the racist lynching
- She wrote anti-lynching articles and lectured on lynching increasing her profile and publicity for
her movement
- She was part of founding the NAACP but was side-lined from the movement as she did not wish
to tone down her beliefs
William (W.E.B) Du Bois
- One of the first advocates in using academic knowledge in the civil rights movement
- He used his phD to show sociology to show race problems
- He studied and taught at universities
- Was part of the Pan-African movement, most of Africa was still colonised, he wanted to build up
the independence movement in Africa
- He focused on confidence and the ability of black people to succeed against white people
Booker T Washington
- Born into a slave family
- He worked as a salt packer and coal minder whilst attending elementary school
- He attended and taught at schools
- He addressed the National Education Association
- He began a leading black newspaper which was anti-lynching and pro-civil rights
- His most famous speech was at the Atlanta World Fair he said equality would come through hard
work not force, which angered other civil rights activists
- Was an accommodationist – they favoured initial black concentration upon economic
improvement rather than upon social, political and legal equality. They believed that the best
way for black people to survive was accept segregation and develop their educational and
vocational skills.
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