This presentation discusses life for African-Americans in the post-war South during Reconstruction and more importantly during the Redemption period following the North's departure from the South. Key topics include: redeemers, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and Plessy vs. Ferguson.
African-Americans in the South Post-Reconstruction
1. Jim Crow, “Separate, but equal”
African-Americans in the South
After Reconstruction
2. Reconstruction Review
Remember that following the Civil War, African-
Americans enjoyed many new freedoms in the
Union-occupied South
Access to education, voting… pretty much had all
civil rights
Many African-Americans became sharecroppers
3. Redeemers
After the backdoor deal that gave Rutherford B.
Hayes the presidency in 1876, Union forces
pulled out of the South
“Redeemers” took over and sought to limit the
freedoms of African-Americans
First, they kicked all African-Americans out of
political office limiting the African-American’s
opportunities to stop the redeemers
4. Key Vocab- Segregation
The process of keeping two or more different
groups separate from each other
People with blue eyes are allowed to play on the
slide while people with green eyes can only play
on the swings
Segregation can be both voluntary (Little Italy and
China Town in NY), and forced
6. Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow Laws are all of the laws made in the
South that segregated blacks and whites in
public facilities
The ultimate goal was to separate blacks from
whites treating both groups “separate, but equal”
In reality, it legally made African-Americans a
lower class in the South with major inequalities
between whites and blacks
8. Historical Connection – Germany
Think back to Cambridge World History!
One of the first steps the Nazi government in
Germany took against the Jewish population was
to separate the Jewish population from the
“Aryan” population
This legally made the Jewish population a lower
class and led to many rights and liberties being
taken away
10. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
A pivotal Supreme Court case that upheld
segregation in the South
The Court ruled that as long as facilities for
blacks and whites were both equal, they could
remain separate
11. The Reality of Plessy
Facilities became separate and unequal
White facilities were better funded and
maintained
This was seen especially in the schools
12. Voting Oppression
One of the ways in which the white population
kept African-Americans out of political office or
voting for those who would support them was to
put up barriers to voting
Ways African-Americans could be kept from
voting:
Literacy test (have to read to vote)
Poll tax (have to have money to vote…
coincidentally not applied to white voters)
Grandfather clauses (you could only vote if your
ancestors voted before the Civil War)
Violence / Intimidation
13. Rise of the Civil Rights
Movement
The Civil Rights Movement would not earnestly
begin until the 1950s…
But, a major organization and several prominent
leaders arose in the early 20th century that started
the movement
Please now move on to task 2 to learn more!