Education

• States began to pass laws requiring elementary students to attend school at least 3 months out of the year

• More colleges began to serve more people

• Colleges began to specialize in subjects

Two perspectives on Education

Booker T. Washington believed racism would end once Af-Ams focused on gaining economic success through vocational skills;

established Tuskegee Institute for Agriculture, domestic and mechanical work

Famous speech-the Atlanta Exposition featured the phrase “Cast down your buckets”

WEB Du Bois•1st Af-Am. to receive a PhD. •Urged Af.-Ams to seek liberal arts degrees •Dubois believed that through intelligence the next leaders would fight for social equality, economic equality and civil rights.

Background

• Af.-Ams voted and held office in the South for about 10years (until about 1886) after the Civil War during Reconstruction

Ways that African-Americans were legally discriminated against

• literacy tests often more than just a reading test, Af-Ams were often given more difficult tests

• poll tax -having to pay to vote presented both Af-Ams and poor whites

• grandfather clause –many southern states wanted to make sure that poor and illiterate whites were not affected by literacy tests and poll tax. They instituted a clause that stated that any person could vote if their father or grandfather was qualified to vote before January 1, 1867

• Jim Crow Laws -segregated people in public and private places on the basis of race (The legality of this was upheld in 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson) This would not be overturned until 1954 Brown v. Board of Education

Customs affecting blacks

– Blacks were expected to yield the sidewalk to whites and remove their hats

– Af-Ams who did not follow customs faced punishment – Lynching-hanging without a trial – In the North, Af-Ams lived in segregated

neighborhoods more as a result of de facto segregation

– In the South, Jim Crow laws forced Af-Ams to live in segregated neighborhoods or dejure segregation

Court Cases

• Plessy v. Ferguson- 1896 landmark case that established “separate but equal ruling”

• Homer Plessy was 1/8th black & wanted to ride on the “white car on the train”

• Legalized the Jim Crow laws in the South

• Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, KS

• 1954 Landmark decision that established that separate but equal was NOT EQUAL

• Linda Brown an African Am girl had to walk a few miles past a white school to go to a black school cause of many demonstrations on both sides

Resisting Discrimination

• In1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP was founded

• NAACP worked through the court system to end discrimination

• Ida B. Wells, black journalist worked to end lynching

The Women Question

• Both sides had strong arguments regarding the question should women be allowed to vote (338)

• Susan B Anthony worked to helped get the female suffrage.

Changing Roles of Women

• Women working inside the home was made easier by: tin cans, new household appliances, & ready made clothing

• Women working outside the home- • Only single women worked outside the home

(servants, factory workers, telephone operators, teachers)

• Department stores• Rural free delivery• Mail-order catalogs

Dawn of Mass Culture

Ams. had more leisure time– amusement parks like Coney Island in NY – bicycling, tennis , boxing, baseball – vaudeville, theater, circus – music-ragtime – first movies-10 minutes long, silent, ( by 1914 DW Griffith’s Birth

of a Nation was 3 hours) – Department stores like Woolworth’s "Five and Dime" and chain

grocery stores became popular – Mail order catalog like Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck

(by 1910, 10 million Ams. shopped by mail) – USPS began Rural free delivery which brought packages directly

to every home – Brand names: Hershey, Coke, and Pepsi