AAs: Gilded Age (1875-1895)

1. Plessy v. Ferguson case (1896) - acted as legal precedent for segregation by ruling that racial segregation on railway carraiges was constituional   

2. Segregation laws became know as 'Jim Crow Laws' extended schools, colleges, water fountains, facilities such as toilets

3. Segregation developed in states such as Mississippi and Alabama with large AA populations > Due to whites fearing economic competition and demands for equality for black people > Led to lynching, migration to the north for AAs

4. Booker T. Washington spoke against blacks demands for social equality and encouraged an exception of segregation – ideas which became known as the ‘Atlanta Compromise’

5. Washington was also often viewed as an 'Uncle Tom' because his schools concentrated on trades rather than academic subjects

6. Period between 1880 and 1910 saw a lynching campaign against African Americans.  White mobs would take an African American man and submit him to beatings and torture before murdering him usually by hanging

1. STATE GOV: Jim Crow Laws were segregation laws

2. Southern state governments felt free to disenfranchise black males by exploiting loopholes in the Fifteenth Amendment which imposed additional voting requirements ( non-racial) such as payment of poll tax, property qualifications or literacy tests by introducing the Grandfather Clause

3. Mississippi vs Williams (1898) further enforced what the Grandfather Clause did. It upheld literacy tests, use of poll tax as qualification and the grandfather clause stating they did not indicate racial discrimination >>> black votes plummeted from 130 000 in 1896 to 5 320 in 1900

1. System of share cropping gave freed men a living but there were negatives >>> black labourers receieved low prices for their produce which was mostly cotton as landlords found it useful to have cheap workers for such a labour intensive crop >>> gave freed men a living but there was little opportunity to experiment or diversify

2. Booker T. Washington in 1900 helped establish the National N e g r o Business League and ensured that the organisation concentrated on commercial issues and rather than the achievement of civil rights

1. Principle of 'separate but equal' extended to education after closure of Ware High School in Georgia 1897

2. Then the Cummings v. Board of Education Southern state (1899) claimed that the board was maintaining a white high school without providing a similar school for blacks.

3. Booker T. Washington set up Tuskegee  N  e  g  r  o  Normal Institute in July 1888 >>> school taught academic subjects but emphasised a practical education including farming, carpentry and brick-making >>> Washington showed his administrative ability, leadership and vision