Chapter 12 Section 2

Chapter 12 Section 2

A Focus on Transportation

Disputes related to separating the races often came to a head over how to regulate interracial contacts on means of transportation. As the New Orleans Times-Democrat explained, this was because one “is thrown in much closer communication in the car with one’s traveling companions than in the theatre or restaurant.” People of color had protested attempts to segregate them from whites as early as Reconstruction. In May 1867, African Americans in New Orleans gathered in the streets to protest their recent segregation into streetcars marked with a large yellow star. Freedmen and former free people of color alike objected to the so-called Star Car requirement. Their protests were large and effective enough that the city’s mayor was forced to reverse the Star Car policy. The city’s streetcars retained integrated seating until the early twentieth century. 

Open Ended

You are to fill in the bullets

1. Two goal of the Bourbons were to

2. To Achieve White Supremacy

3.Jim crow laws restrict .... and

Open Ended

Disputes to regulate the races came to ahead when discussing how to separate the races on means of transportation because why?

Open Ended

What were the star cars and why did they come to an end?

The state’s 1868 constitution actually prohibited racial segregation. Article 13 of that constitution’s bill of rights read, in part, all “persons shall enjoy equal rights and privileges upon any conveyance of a public character.” Despite this constitutional guarantee of equal access, segregation was becoming the norm. In part, this was because most former slaves were poor, and could rarely afford tickets—much less first-class tickets—on steamboats or trains. Former free people of color, however, often could and did exercise their constitutional rights. Josephine Decuir was a former free woman of color who could afford first-class travel. In 1872, she was denied entry to the first-class stateroom on a Mississippi River steamboat, even though she had been sold a first-class ticket. Decuir and her husband had been prosperous slave owners before the Civil War

She bristled (became angry) at being segregated to inferior parts of the ship set aside for “colored people,” so she sued the steamboat company. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in her favor based on the equal access guarantees of the 1868 Louisiana Constitution. However, when the U.S. Supreme Court heard her case in 1878, they reversed the state ruling. The Court based its decision on the fact that the steamboat company engaged in commerce across state lines and was, therefore, not subject to Louisiana law. Their ruling also narrowed the equal access guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. The following year, the state adopted a new constitution that had no equal access guarantee

Open Ended

How did Josephine Decuir get equal treatment? Why did the State Supreme Court rule in her favor? Why did the Federal Supreme Court reject the decision of the Louisana supreme Court?

Segregation Statutes

By the late 1880s, Bourbon-dominated southern legislatures had begun to pass Jim Crow laws that required racial segregation in virtually all public places. It was in this context that the Louisiana legislature passed the 1890 Separate Car Act that required “separate-but-equal” railroad cars for whites and people of color. Despite the determined opposition of the Committee of Citizens and Homer Plessy, the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferugson was extremely influential. 

After 1896, laws were passed that segregated nearly every aspect of life. There were statutes that required separate schools; separate train cars; and separate entrances, bathrooms, and seating in virtually all public places. Even the state’s blood supply had to be segregated by the race of the blood donor. Over time, almost everything became separate, but few of those facilities were of equal quality

Open Ended

Give three examples of things that were segregated in society

Prejudice against Italian Immigrants

African Americans were not the only group to suffer from prejudice in the era of white supremacy. The state’s large population of Italian immigrants also endured suspicion and a second-class status in many areas of life. Many newspapers gave voice to fears about Italian clannishness (the tendency to associate only with people like oneself) and criminality. The stories focused on the existence of secretive criminal gangs known as the Mafia. New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy was shot in 1890. Just before he died, he allegedly described his attackers with an insulting term used to portray Italians. In the investigation that followed, police arrested nineteen suspects, all of whom were Italian. 

Open Ended

The Irish suffered prejudice too. What were two complaints that were common among prejudice people in regards to Italians?

The first trial of nine defendants ended in either not guilty verdicts or a deadlocked jury. A mob, led by a group calling themselves the Committee of Fifty, gathered in the streets. The enraged citizens included common laborers but also men who were prominent in both politics and business. Under this elite leadership, the group stormed the parish prison where thirteen of the Italians were still being held. The mob, which met very little resistance from the police guards, shot nine of the men inside the prison. Two more were dragged from the prison into the streets and hanged from lampposts. Those who took part in the 1891 murders defended their actions on the basis of maintaining social order and white supremacy. No one was ever charged in the killings. 

Multiple Choice

What were the police charged the Italians with

• Stealing

• Killing the police Chief

• Vagrancy

• assault

Multiple Choice

What was the result of the trial of the Italians?

• Hung Jury

• Not guilty

• Guilty on all charges

• Guilty of assault

The lynching (putting to death by mob action without legal sanction) of eleven Italians was notable for the number of victims killed at one time. But lynching was an ugly part of political disagreement and white supremacy during this era. Historians have confirmed that at least 391 people were victims of mob violence in the state in the 70 years between 1882 and 1952. Most of these acts took place before 1900, reaching a peak in a period of extreme political disagreement in the 1890s. The reasons given for committing these murders varied, but they were generally connected to ensuring white political or economic control. The groups who committed these acts were rarely punished for their actions.

Open Ended

Describe wht happened to the Italians even though they were found not guilty.

Multiple Choice

What happened to the people in the mob that shot or hung the Italians?

• Nothing

• They were tried and acquitted

• They were sentenced but later set free

• They were shot

The 1898 Constitution

By the time a new state constitution was adopted in 1898, white supremacy was the norm socially and politically. In the new constitution, several tactics were used to ensure that African American voters, along with many poor whites, were removed from the voting rolls. Because Louisiana had very high rates of illiteracy, the requirement that voters had to know how to read and write ruled out many. There were also requirements that voters be property owners and that they pay a yearly poll tax (a tax that had to be paid before a person could vote). All this placed additional obstacles in the way of the landless and poor

Multiple Choice

A requirement that you must be able to read and write to vote

• Grandfather Clause

• Gender test

• Literacy test

• Jim Crow test

Multiple Choice

Beside the African Americans what other group were removed from the rolls by things like the literacy requirement?

• Poor Whites

• Illegal Aliens

• Germans

• French

In order to provide an exception for some white voters, the state adopted a grandfather clause (a law that gave a person the right to vote if he could demonstrate that his father or grandfather had been a voter before 1867). This grandfather clause effectively ruled out all former slaves and their descendants. The new requirements succeeded in disfranchising the vast majority of African American voters. In 1897, the numbers of registered white voters exceeded the numbers of registered blacks only slightly. By 1900, black registration had plummeted (fallen sharply). In that year, approximately 125,000 whites were registered, but only 5,320 African Americans had managed to keep the right to vote. 

Multiple Choice

How did they get around the requirement to vote like the literacy test for some voters

• They increased the amount they needed to pay

• They passed the Grandfather Clause

• They passed a law that allowed them the right to vote

• They gave them an exemption

Anti-Lottery Bourbon

Governors While virtually all late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century governors were white supremacists, they also acted in ways that qualified them as reformers. Francis T. Nicholls was elected to his second term as governor in 1888 largely because he was thought to be honest. There was also widespread discontent with the corrupt activities of the Louisiana Lottery. Both Nicholls and the next governor, Murphy J. Foster, fought hard to end the Lottery’s influence on politics. By the end of 1893, Foster had succeeded in driving the Lottery from the state. He was helped in this effort when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the company could no longer conduct business across state lines. Foster also oversaw the adoption of the Constitution of 1898.

Open Ended

What did the Supreme Court rule concerning the lottery and what effect did it have on the lottery?

But even with these political successes to his credit, the state and its people still had many problems. The vast majority of Louisiana’s people were poor, landless, and faced with ongoing economic challenges.

Open Ended

What problems still faced Louisiana's poor?

Economic Challenges &Sharecropping and Debt Peonage

While corruption made some people rich, others managed to maintain their wealth through plantation agriculture. But without slave labor, it became more difficult for even large planters to make a profit. Small farmers struggled just to make ends meet.

Without a slave labor force, planters with a lot of land began a system of hiring workers called sharecropping. In this system, a planter would rent a portion of his land to a farmer who agreed to raise a cash crop, usually cotton. In return for the land and access to a small house, the farmer promised the landowner an agreed-upon portion, or share, of the crop he and his family raised. 

How much of the crop a farmer agreed to “share” varied, but giving the owner at least half of the crop was common. This arrangement often became less favorable because the sharecroppers also needed other supplies during the year. Most of them had little money and depended on receiving goods on credit at local stores. Some of those stores were also owned by the planter. In rural areas where there was little competition, the store usually charged very high prices for food, clothing, and other basic necessities purchased on credit. Under these circumstances, a sharecropper might owe far more than half of his crop to the planter in order to settle his account. In many cases, sharecroppers actually went into debt, especially in years when the harvest was poor.

This created a cycle of poverty known as debt peonage. Once in debt, it became more and more difficult for a sharecropper or even a landowning small farmer to escape the cycle of credit, debt, and increasing poverty.

Open Ended

What is sharecropping and how did it work?

Sugar Workers Organize

Because of the way sugar was raised, harvested and processed, sharecropping was not widely adopted in the southern part of the state. A sugar planter’s need for labor varied during the year. The demand for workers was particularly high in late autumn during harvest time—called grinding season. Planters had a limited amount of time in which to harvest their crops and process the cane into molasses and granulated sugar. The sugar crop of 1886 was very poor. As a result, planters tried to mitigate (lessen, diminish) their losses by lowering their workers’ pay. Unhappy about this, sugar workers thought that, by joining together, they might force planters to return their wages to pre-1886 levels.

A national labor organization called the Knights of Labor tried to organize workers in the sugar parishes by having them join together in a union. The unionized laborers decided to strike for better pay and conditions in November 1887, just as the critically important grinding season began. The strike angered many planters, who ordered the workers off their lands. Many of the union members went to the nearby city of Thibodaux to regroup and decide what to do next. The planters hired gunmen to protect their lands and interests. The two groups clashed in Thibodaux on November 22, 1887. At least thirty African American sugar workers were killed and one hundred more were injured by the better-armed forces working on behalf of the planters.

The violent response by the planters ended the strike and kept sugar workers from taking part in any further attempts to unionize until well into the twentieth century

Agricultural Innovation

Most farmers and planters continued the antebellum practice of raising a single cash crop. Despite the difficulties of farming without slave labor, the state’s planters and small farmers continued to focus on the cultivation of cotton and sugar. There were small areas of innovation however. Some farmers tried new crops, hoping for better returns. Men who took a scientific approach to crop diversification often led the way.

Expansion of Rice Cultivation

The most successful development came in the expansion of rice cultivation in southwest Louisiana. The turn toward rice was encouraged by the efforts of a man named Seaman A. Knapp. In the late 1880s, Knapp came to Louisiana and shared his methods for successful rice farming with local farmers. He also encouraged farmers from his home state of Iowa to migrate to Louisiana. Many did and they, along with Knapp, established several southwest Louisiana towns, including Vinton, named after Knapp’s Iowa birthplace. Locals also established towns, like Crowley in 1887, which became a hub for shipping Louisiana rice to other parts of the nation via railroad.

Farmers’ Alliances and Fusion Politics

Aware of the challenges they faced, some farmers came together in organizations called Farmers’ Alliances. These Alliances were similar to unions in that they attempted to use the power of group organizing to achieve better conditions for those who labored on the land. In the early 1890s, these farmers joined together to stage a serious but ultimately unsuccessful challenge to the Bourbons. In hotly contested elections in both 1892 and 1896, an unlikely coalition of poor farmers—both black and white—and sugar planters joined forces. The sugar planters, many of whom were Republicans, resented the current Democratic president’s refusal to support a sugar tariff. Therefore, they were willing to join with the farmers to challenge the Bourbon Democrats. 

The fusion (joining together) of wealthy sugar planters and mostly poor farmers has led this to be called the fusion movement. The party the farmers supported was called the People’s Party, and the political movement that grew out of their actions has come to be known as populism (belief in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people). If votes had been counted fairly in the 1896 election, Murphy Foster’s challenger, a wealthy sugar planter named John N. Pharr, would have taken the governor’s office. Instead, suspiciously lopsided vote totals from parishes controlled by the Democrats gave Foster the victory. 

After the 1896 elections, the Bourbons decided to take actions that would prevent future challenges and take the vote away from as many of their political opponents as possible. The challenge posed by the fusion movement, though ultimately unsuccessful, helps to explain why poor whites, as well as blacks, were the targets of disfranchisement strategies in the 1898 Constitution. Review

Open Ended

What is fusion politics and what was its purpose?