History reading quizz
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Ch.10JimCrowandGhettos_AfricanAmericans.pptxCh. 10 Jim Crow and Ghettos: African Americans
PS/Jim Crow Firsthand Experience
Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson - John Arthur Johnson, nicknamed the Galveston Giant, was an American boxer who, at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion.
White fans expected Tommy Burns to defeat him soundly.
“Just hit the ape in the belly...This battle may in the future be looked back upon as the first great battle of an inevitable race war…” (American Experiences: Readings in American History: Volume II)
Johnson ended up toying, taunting, and working Tommy with ease. Made short work of him, beating him badly.
“There was no fight. No Armenian massacre could compare with the hopeless slaughter that took place...a grown man and a naughty child.” (Jack London)
Beginning of an incredible racist campaign against Johnson.
Jack Johnson
Commentators from Both Sides
White commentators treated the fight like a national disaster. Called for a Great White Hope.
“Never before in the history of the ring has such a crisis arisen as that which faces the followers of the game tonight.”
African-American commentators reacted joyously
“No event in forty years has given more genuine satisfaction to the colored people of this country than has the signal victory of Jack Johnson.” - Richmond Planet
Jackson’s Post-Fight Actions
Being proud and outspoken, he refused to accept racism.
Married a white woman, gave her the finest jewels and clothes, took her on tour with him throughout the United States.
Became a folk hero among the African-American population, giving a crucial transition in their history during this post-Civil War era.
Became the antithesis of Jim Crow, racism, and hatred from any naysayers.
Reconstruction Era and Beyond
While Reconstruction had raised African-American expectations that a new time was coming, a new nation filled with hope, a time of prosperity and banishment of old racist ideals...it did not come to pass immediately. Was a slow and painful process.
Southern economy was based on slavery, old ways still lived on.
Emancipation Proclamation, Thirteenth (no slavery)/Fourteenth (citizenship & equal legal rights)/Fifteenth (right to vote w/o regard to color/race) amendments did not alter reality too much.
Jim Crow - Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. All were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures after the Reconstruction period. The laws were enforced until 1965.
Segregation in theaters, buses, trains, streetcars, waiting rooms, schools, housing, hospitals, prisons, parks, toilets, restaurants, and drinking fountains.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 - Supreme Court decision affirming the “separate but equal” rule for public facilities was constitutional.
How Southern Socialites Rewrote Civil War history
Land Reform
After the Civil War, no effective land redistribution took place. The end result? African-Americans having nowhere else to go but work back on white-owned plantations. Sometimes for their former owners.
Sharecropping - a tenant farmer on cultivated land giving a part of each crop as rent.
Initially created as a compromise to the land redistribution issue. Farm owners needed labor, and African-Americans needed work and land.
This system allotted each family to rent a part of the plantation, with their crop divided at the end of the year.
System quickly eroded over time due to small farm yields, taking out loans for farming equipment and getting into debt, etc.
Crop Lien - process of obtaining loans and credit from merchants and larger farmers for supplies and food. (African-American & white farmers)
Extremely high interest rates led to cotton prices plummeting.
Farmers soon found themselves in even further debt.
Disenfranchisement
Disenfranchisement - after the Reconstruction Era in the United States of America was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting.
After the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited voting discrimination on the basis of race, whites used other methods to prevent them from voting.
Physical intimidation & threats by employers to be fired
Poll tax (paying a fee before voting)
Literacy tests (asking complex legal questions, illiterate could not vote)
Grandfather Clause - stated that if your ancestors could vote before the Civil War, then you did not have to pass the reading test. This allowed for white people who could not read to vote.
“White Primaries” - primary elections to select white candidates for public office, banning African Americans from attending.
Four Major African-American Leaders
These various individuals were intellectual powerhouses of their time. Advocated for their own method of uplifting the African-American community, fight U.S. racism, and improve their situation.
1) Booker T. Washington - an American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Advocated for receiving more economic freedom/independence in their lives through hard-work and business ownership. Through hard work and education, the black community could rise in economic status and slowly bring about equality. They could not fight racism head on, would have to prove their worth through economic means. (Plus immediate economic relief)
2) W.E.B. Du Bois - an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Advocated for equality within society between African-Americans and their countrymen. He wanted them to be immediately equal politically, economically, and socially, fighting for their rights at each turn. This strategy did not have a lot of leeway and viewed Washington’s strategy as being complacent and not extreme enough.
Booker T. Washington (Left)
W.E.B. Du Bois (Right)
Sequoia National Park
← Booker T. Washington tree!
Booker T. Washington & Du Bois
Four Major African-American Leaders
3) Marcus Garvey - Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. Advocated for pan-Africanism, a conception of all blacks around the world being one group of people that should uplift one another. Protested white imperialism and racism in the U.S., wanted African-Americans to leave the U.S. in favor of Africa to start a better life for themselves. Resurrecting their African culture was key.
4) A. Philip Randolph - a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, the American labor movement, and socialist political parties. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African-American labor union. Criticized Washington for being relaxed on segregation issues, accused Du Bois of being too concerned with the black upper class and ambivalent to the working/poor blacks, and considered Garvey to curious oddity destined to be forgotten. Concentrated on African-American workers and argued that only through labor unions cold they exert real power.
Marcus Garvey (Left)
A. Philip Randolph (Right)
Marcus Garvey Biography
Migrations, Ghettos, and Agency
The Great Migration - sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970.
Cities began to adjust to higher black demographics.
20th-century segregation → city policies of city/suburb demographic planning → some modern ghettos
Ghetto - a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, typically as a result of social, legal, or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished than other areas of the city.
Origin: 1516, Cannaregio, Italy where Jews lived in an impoverished section of the city.
Life, Migrations, and Hidden Meanings
Final Thoughts
While fighting for equal rights, how did African-Americans deal with issues of assimilation, white-washing, migration movements, socio-economic community degradation, etc?
Legal and civil protests
Varying political leaders advocating for change in different ways
Regaining agency through language of music
Rap, hip-hop, “ghetto music,” etc.
Spoke of hardships, comin-up from the “hood,” and culture eventually spread from the inner-cities to the suburbs. Was embraced into popular media!
Ex: Modernly, suburb white kids blasting hardcore rap on the road.
Like Native Americans, African-Americans let acculturation and assimilation only go so far. Still retained variants of their own culture, habits, and personalities.
Great irony → African Americans were one of the most “American” of any immigrant group, living here for so long and literally building up the nation. Sadly, they were treated like second-class citizens for so long. In some cases and regions, still are.
End of chapter 10!
Be aware of quiz due dates and weekly work.
Annotated Bib due on July 19th!
