Focus Question• Why do people tend to separate into groups? What

critieria are used to form these groups?

THE BIRTH OFJIM CROWThe Segregated South

Redemption Era• Without federal troops, Reconstruction governments

collapsed• Old Planter elites reclaimed political power• Chased out Republican and Black officials• Began to rewrite electoral rules

• Did not amend state constitutions for 20 years

Rolling Back on Voting• Limit Black representation

• Poll Tax• Literacy Test

• However, poor whites caught by this• Grandfather Clause• Promoting White Supremacy

Growth of the Black Middle Class• In Southern towns, a Black professional class develops

• Shop owners• Lawyers• Doctors• Teachers

Concerns Arise• Black Middle Class is a threat

• Educated• Respectful positions• Hold a certain amount of wealth• Successful

• In many ways, at a higher social class than poor whites.

Railroad• Southern railroads divided into two sections

• First class• Nice accommodations• Gentile conduct

• Second class• Rude and rough accommodations• Place for men to smoke and drink

Social Conventions• Second Class was not acceptable for women

• No one, white or black, wanted their women in the second class car.

• Few businessmen wanted to be in the second class car.• Unchaperoned white women with successful Black men• Draws a concern for Southern social custom

Southern White Fear• Fear develops of relations between white women and

black men• Laws passed to separate the races in “home” settings

• Railcars• Schools• Theaters

• Quickly expanded

Challenged• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)• Homer Plessy was 1/8th Black

• Bought a first class ticket• Forced to the Second class car

• Filed Suit

Plessy v. Ferguson• Supreme Court decided case

• Ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional

• 8 to 1 decision• “Jim Crow” laws began to spring up all over, going much

further than “home-like” settings

Different Paths• Different paths to equality proposed

• Booker T. Washington• Farming and Mechanics• Stress economic equality

• W.E.B. DuBois• Promotion of the “Talented Tenth”• Stress civic equality