Segregation & Discrimanation
African Americans Fight Legal Discrimination
Effected:
African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican residents, and Chinese immigrants
Voting Restrictions
- In southern states blacks couldn't vote or had to be able to read and most times were given harder reading tests or just failed because the officials didn't like blacks
Poll Tax - an anual tax you had to pay each year before voting
Grandfauther Clause - This clause they added to the constitution saying if you couldn't read or pay the tax you could still vote if your grandfauther or fauther had been able to vote before the date of January 1st, 1867. (before this date blacks were not allowed to vote)
Jim Crows Law
Segrigation Laws - Whites and blacks were seperated in public areas
- These laws were called Jim Crows Laws after a popular song that ended with jump, JIm Crow
Plessy VS. Ferguson
- 1896 Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal
- Ruled against the 14th amendment (No state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdition the equal protection of the laws.)
- Established doctiene "Seperate But Equal"
- This lasted for around 60 years
Turn-of-the-Century Race Relations
Violence
- Between 1882-1892 over 1,400 African-American men and women were shot,
burned, or hanged without trial in the South
- 1880's-1890's Lynching peaked
Discriminiation In The North
- there was also segregaion in the north
- New York City Race Riot 1900 competition between working-class whites and African Americans became violent
Young black man beleived his wife was being mistreated by a white policeman and killed him. This made the whites man and they started attacking blacks.
Discrimination in the West
Mexican Workers
- Late 1800's
- Mexicans were hired more than any other ethnic group to work on constructing rail lines
- This was because they were used to the hot dry climate, the work was grueling, they worked for less money than other ethnic group
- 1902 National Reclamation Act gave government assistance for irrigation projects, Mexicans became the major labor force in the agricultural industries
- Debt Peonage - system that bound laborers into slavery in order to work off a debt to the employer
- 1911 supreme court declared involuntary peonage a violation of the 13th ammendment
Excluding the Chinese
-1880 more than 100,000 chinese immigrants lived in the U.S.
- whites were scared of chinese people taking over their jobs so racial discrimination started with the chinese also
Comments