HIstorical Development of the Civil Rights Movement

Plessy vs. Ferguson

•Background: Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in the “white car” of the East Louisiana Railroad.

•This act violated the Separate Car Act of 1892. Plessy deliberately broke this law in order to challenge it in a court of law.

•1896 – the Supreme Court heard the case and ruled that the law requiring segregated railroad cars was constitutional.

•The decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." This idea was applied in restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools. The term “separate but equal” would last until 1954.

The coutcome of this trial ser up which of the vollwoing in the South in the U.S. (There is more than one asnwer.)

• Jim Crow Laws

• Voting Rights

• Due Process

• segregation

President Truman Embraces Civil Rights

•The first president of the United States to address the NAACP. 

•Executive Order 9981 – abolished discrimination on the basis of race and religion in the military. This eventually led to the end of segregation in the Armed Forces.

What was the coutcome of Truman's Action?

The system of sharecropping

After the Civil War, the federal government did little to help African Americans own land. Freedmen needed jobs and planters needed workers. Planters and freedmen agreed to a system where the freedmen would rent land rather than work for wages. By the 1870s, this system, known as tenant farming or “sharecropping” was the most common system of agriculture across the South. Under this system, workers would rent small plots of land called shares to work themselves. In return, they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner at the end of the year.

Which of the following best summarizes the practice of sharecropping?

• The Freedman was hired by landowners and paid a fair wage at the end of the week.

• Freedmen refused to work in agricultural settings after the Civil War

• Many Freedman farmed by "renting" land through payment of a portion of their crops.

• Sharecropping is when several people farm the land and sell the crops for their community.

The sharecropping system often resulted in the sharecropper owing more to the landowner (for the use of tools and supplies) than they were able to repay.  Some African Americans managed to acquire enough money to buy land, but most went into debt or were forced by poverty and the threat of violence to sign unfair labor contracts.  This left them with little hope of improving their situation. Laws favored landowners which made it difficult to move away or to sell crops to anyone but the landowner.

Which of the following is true of the outcome of sharecroppping for many African Americans. (You can choose more than one right answer.)

• Most sharecroppers went into debt.

• Many were abel to save money and buy their own land.

• Many were forced to sign unfair labor contracts.

• It was possible for the sharecroppers to get help in court.

Two-thirds of sharecroppers were white and one third were black. Mechanization and other factors led to the eventual end to sharecropping. But the effects of sharecropping had a negative impact on the African American community.  Instead of being able to pass down land and money, sharecropping resulted in increasing racial economic differences. By 1930, only one in ten African Americans living in the South owned the land on which they worked. 

What is the overall problem with sharecropping. (You can check more than one right answer.)

• It kept African Americas in slave like conditions.

• It mae a bad economic situation worse for African Americans.

• It cost taxpayers a lot of money.

• Techniquies the African Americans used ruined the land and let directly to the Dustbowl

Which of the following is the definition of "Disenfranchisement"

• When you break up a monopoly.

• To take away someone’s right to vote. To take away power and rights.

• When someone is not a citizen of the country they live in.

• It is when someone realizes that things were not as good as they seemed.

Summary:  White southern governments made sure that segregation remained in society.  States passed laws to disenfranchise African American voters. Two methods became common to accomplish the goal of keeping African Americans from voting.  One was the poll tax or property qualification.  That is, either a tax had to be paid in order to vote or a person had to own property in order to vote.  Few African Americans had enough money to pay the poll tax.  The other method was the literacy test which required voters to demonstrate the ability to read and interpret the Constitution.  By the late 1890s, the African American male vote had decreased by 62%.

What were two of the ways southern governments kept African Americans from voting? (There is more than one answer.)

• Poll Tax

• Secret voting locations

• Loitering charges.

• Reading Tests

Summary

On August 28, 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American teenager, was brutally murdered in Mississippi. The crime shocked the nation and the world.  The trial and acquittal of the accused murderers caused the newly begun Civil Rights Movement to grow and forever changed American society.

Where did the murder of Emmitt Till take place?

• Louisiana

• Chicago

• MIssissippi

• Alabama

Timeline

August 24: Emmett and a group of teenagers go to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market. Bryant's Grocery, owned by a white couple, sells supplies and candy to mainly black sharecroppers and their children. Emmett goes into the store. Some of the kids outside the store will later say they heard Emmett whistle at Carolyn Bryant.

August 28: Carolyn's husband, and his half-brother J. W. Milam, kidnap Emmett Till. They will later admit beating him, taking him to the edge of the Tallahatchie River, shooting him in the head.

What was Emmitt Till accused of doing?

• Stealing from the store

• Walking down the street at night.

• Whistling at a white woman.

• Trespassing.

.August 29: J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant are arrested on kidnapping charges.

August 31: Emmett Till's body is pulled from Mississippi's Tallahatchie River.

September 2: The Jackson [Mississippi] Daily News decries the "brutal, senseless crime" but complains that the NAACP is working "to arouse hatred and fear" by calling Till's murder a lynching.

What is the best definition of a lynching. (We learned about this in the Progressive Era when we studied Ida B. Wells.)

• When a woman cannot testify in court.

• The refusal of the right to vote.

• Another word for sharecropping.

• When a mob kills someone without a trial for an alleged crime.