26 pages • 52 minutes read
Booker T. WashingtonAtlanta Exposition Speech
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1895A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Jim Crow
Jim Crow refers to a series of laws passed across the South following the end of Reconstruction and remaining in place (and growing in number) until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Jim Crow laws made racial discrimination legally enforceable, even going so far as to require, in some cases, the use of separate Bibles in wedding ceremonies and separate hospitals and ambulance services. The laws effectively prevented Black people from acquiring property, voting, and receiving higher education, and they also interfered in private life by forbidding interracial marriages and social events. Jim Crow segregation was deemed constitutional the year after Washington’s speech in the US Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), according to the principle of “separate but equal.” That is, segregation did not violate the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment as long as Black people and white people were offered equal facilities and opportunities. Of course, facilities and opportunities were not equal. It was not until the 1954 case Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, KS, that the court rejected the Plessy precedent. And even then, many of the social customs and attitudes that enforced Black inferiority persisted after Jim Crow laws were removed from the books.
Reconstruction
Reconstruction comprised 12 years following the US Civil War. Materially and economically devastated, the South suffered from poverty and dislocation. US troops and bureaucrats occupied the former Confederacy and sought to reconstruct its political and economic institutions. The protection of Black civil rights became the jurisdiction of the federal government, and the Freedman’s Bureau (1865-72) offered direct assistance to formerly enslaved people. Many slave owners also received payment for the loss of their (human) property. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed (the so-called “Reconstruction Amendments”), ending slavery and (technically) guaranteeing full citizenship rights to Black people.
Reconstruction saw a significant number of Black Southerners elected to political office, which did nothing to temper the fears and fury of defeated Confederates. The Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations began inflicting violence on freed Black people and their white collaborators. Reconstruction became increasingly unpopular as Southern white people maintained their resistance and Northerners tired of the expense and effort of occupying the South. To solve the contested presidential election of 1876, Democrats allowed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to take office in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, thus ending Reconstruction and ushering in Jim Crow.
Segregation
Segregation is the separation of people based on factors such as race, ethnicity, religion, sex, or occupation. Segregation between the races—Black and white—became enforceable by law following the Compromise of 1877 ending Reconstruction. It was enshrined as constitutional in the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and remained in effect until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Segregation was not limited to the South. Black and white people in the US have historically lived in different neighborhoods and towns even in the North. While this phenomenon is partly due to chance and choice, the government also played a role. Even while fighting segregation in the South, the federal government and Northern cities and states made zoning and policy choices that eroded multi-race neighborhoods, often to the detriment of their Black residents (Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of how our Government segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017).
