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.

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!