DISTANCE LEARNING 4/13-4/17 A Brief History of Jim Crow
DISTANCE LEARNING 4/13-4/17 A Brief History of Jim CrowDIRECTIONS: SELECT ‘MAKE A COPY’ IN DOCS then once you have your own copy select ‘share’ and share with my school email so I can monitor your work on this packet: romank@Read article and annotate using CATCH (highlight and write or type notes in the text) Article link at the end of this text. “I can ride in first-class cars on the railroads and in the streets,” wrote journalist T. McCants Stewart. “I can stop in and drink a glass of soda and be more politely waited upon than in some parts of New England.” Perhaps Stewart’s comments don’t seem newsworthy. Consider that he was reporting from South Carolina in 1885 and he was black.A marker in New Orleans stands where Homer Plessy was arrested in 1892. His case ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in an infamous decision creating the legal doctrine of “separate, but equal.” (Wikimedia Commons)Stewart had decided to tour the South because he feared for freedmen’s liberties. In 1868, with Amendment XIV, the Constitution had finally given black men full citizenship and promised them equal protection under the law. Blacks voted, won elected office, and served on juries. However, 10 years later, federal troops withdrew from the South, returning it to local white rule. And now, the Republican Party, champion of Reconstruction and freedmen’s rights, had fallen from national power. Would black people’s rights survive?After a few weeks on the road, Stewart decided they would. True, terrorism against blacks — lynching, rape, arson — ran unchecked. True, many rural blacks lived under a sharecropping system little better than slavery. But Stewart noted many signs of change. He saw a black policeman arrest a white criminal. He saw whites casually talk with black strangers. “The morning light is breaking,” he told his readers.Stewart was wrong. Over the next 20 years, blacks would lose almost all they had gained. Worse, denial of their rights and freedoms would be made legal by a series of racist statutes, the Jim Crow laws.“Jim Crow” was a derisive slang term for a black man. It came to mean any state law passed in the South that established different rules for blacks and whites. Jim Crow laws were based on the theory of white supremacy and were a reaction to Reconstruction. In the depression-racked 1890s, racism appealed to whites who feared losing their jobs to blacks. Politicians abused blacks to win the votes of poor white “crackers.” Newspapers fed the bias of white readers by playing up (sometimes even making up) black crimes.In 1890, in spite of its 16 black members, the Louisiana General Assembly passed a law to prevent black and white people from riding together on railroads. Plessy v. Ferguson, a case challenging the law, reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. Upholding the law, the court said that public facilities for blacks and whites could be “separate but equal.” Soon, throughout the South, they had to be separate.Two years later, the court seemed to seal the fate of black Americans when it upheld a Mississippi law designed to deny black men the vote. Given the green light, Southern states began to limit the voting right to those who owned property or could read well, to those whose grandfathers had been able to vote, to those with “good characters,” to those who paid poll taxes. In 1896, Louisiana had 130,334 registered black voters. Eight years later, only 1,342, 1 percent, could pass the state’s new rules.Jim Crow laws touched every part of life. In South Carolina, black and white textile workers could not work in the same room, enter through the same door, or gaze out of the same window. Many industries wouldn’t hire blacks: Many unions passed rules to exclude them.In Richmond, one could not live on a street unless most of the residents were people one could marry. (One could not marry someone of a different race.) By 1914, Texas had six entire towns in which blacks could not live. Mobile passed a Jim Crow curfew: Blacks could not leave their homes after 10 p.m. Signs marked “Whites Only” or “Colored” hung over doors, ticket windows, and drinking fountains. Georgia had black and white parks. Oklahoma had black and white phone booths.Prisons, hospitals, and orphanages were segregated as were schools and colleges. In North Carolina, black and white students had to use separate sets of textbooks. In Florida, the books couldn’t even be stored together. Atlanta courts kept two Bibles: one for black witnesses and one for whites. Virginia told fraternal social groups that black and white members could not address each other as “Brother.”Though seemingly rigid and complete, Jim Crow laws did not account for all of the discrimination blacks suffered. Unwritten rules barred blacks from white jobs in New York and kept them out of white stores in Los Angeles. Humiliation was about the best treatment blacks who broke such rules could hope for. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which revived in 1915, used venom and violence to keep blacks “in their place.”More than 360,000 black men served in World War I. The country welcomed them home with 25 major race riots, the most serious in Chicago. White mobs lynched veterans in uniform. Black Americans fought back. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909, and the Urban League publicized abuses and worked for redress.Protesters march against school segregation. (Wikimedia Commons)Though they drew support from both races, these groups barely stemmed the tide. The 1920s and 30s produced new Jim Crow laws. By 1944, a Swede visiting the South pronounced segregation so complete that whites did not see blacks except when being served by them.But World War II changed America, inside and out. The link between white supremacy and Hitler’s “master race” could not be ignored. Jim Crow shocked United Nations delegates who reported home about the practice. “Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills,” said a government spokesman. “It raises doubt even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith.”In 1948, President Harry Truman took decisive action to promote racial equality. He urged Congress to abolish the poll tax, enforce fair voting and hiring practices, and end Jim Crow transportation between states. Four Southern states abandoned Truman’s Democratic Party in protest. Then, as commander in chief, Truman ordered the complete integration of the armed forces. He did not wipe out racism, but, trained to obey commands, officers complied as best they could. In Korea, during the 1950s, integrated U.S. forces fought their first war.Back at home, when the new Eisenhower administration downplayed civil rights, federal courts took the lead. In 1950, the NAACP decided to challenge the concept of “separate but equal.” Fed up with poor, overcrowded schools, black parents in South Carolina and Virginia sued to get their children into white schools. Both times, federal courts upheld segregation. Both times, the parents appealed. Meanwhile, in a similar case, Delaware’s Supreme Court ordered a district to admit black students to white schools until adequate classrooms could be provided for blacks. This time, the district appealed.The Supreme Court agreed to consider these three cases in combination with one other. In Topeka, Kansas, where schools for blacks and whites were equally good, Oliver Brown wanted his 8-year-old daughter, Linda, to attend a school close to home. State law, however, prevented the white school from accepting Linda because she was black.On May 17, 1954, at the stroke of noon, the nine Supreme Court Justices announced their unanimous decision in the four cases, now grouped as Brown v. Board of Education. They held that racial segregation of children in public schools, even in schools of equal quality, hurt minority children. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The practice violated the Constitution’s 14th amendment and must stop. To some, the judgment seemed the fruitful end of a long struggle. Actually, the struggle had just begun. LEARNING 4/20-4/24 A Brief History of Jim CrowDIRECTIONS: Answer the following questions based on the previous article TYPE AND SUBMIT TO Imagine that you were born black in 1860 and lived until 1920. Would you have any faith in the U.S. legal system? In the “American way of life”? Why or why not?How did Jim Crow laws affect the American image abroad? How did our foreign policy impact racial equality at home?Most laws are meant to promote the general welfare or protect society from an evil. Did Jim Crow laws serve these purposes? If so, how? If not, what was their purpose?DISTANCE LEARNING 4/27-5/1 Jim Crow EraREAD ARTICLE AND ANNOTATE USING CATCH FORMAT; ANSWER QUESTIONS IN THE SOAPSTONE WORKSHEET THAT FOLLOWSThe Washington Post, WonkblogThe forgotten way African Americans stayed safe in a racist America By Ana Swanson January 8For African American travelers, much of the U.S. could be a hateful and dangerous place, even into the 1960's. Jim Crow laws across the South mandated that restaurants, hotels, pool halls and parks strictly separate whites and blacks. Lynchings kept blacks in fear of mob violence. And there were thousands of so-called “sundown towns,” including in northern states like Indiana,Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan, which barred blacks after dark, an unofficial rule reinforced by the threat of violence. So in 1936, a postal worker named Victor Green began publishing a guide to help African American travelers find friendly restaurants, auto shops and accommodations in far-off places. Green dubbed the guide after himself – the “Green Book” – and published it for decades. Green says he was inspired by the Jewish press, which had long published information on restricted places. The images below come from the New York Public Library, which recently digitized 21 volumes of the Green Book, from 1937 to 1964. (You can click on the covers to enlarge.)Covers from the 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951 railroad, 1956 and 1960 editionsThe Green Book included listings for hotels, restaurants, gas stations, bars and beauty salons across the U.S., as well as travel articles, paid advertisements, and stories about local attractions. The guide first focused on New York, but was gradually expanded to cover the whole U.S. The first edition said on its cover, "Let's all get together and make motoring better," while the 1949 edition featured a quote from Mark Twain – “Travel is fatal to prejudice.”While poverty and discrimination kept many African Americans from owning cars, a new black middle class rose up in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, and many of them were eager to escape poor treatment on public transportation. Yet car ownership came with its own challenges. Many African Americans would pack meals, blankets and gasoline in their cars on trips in case they ended up somewhere where they wouldn’t be served or didn’t want to ask. Green Books were sold at Esso service stations, one of the few gas station chains that served African Americans. The first edition retailed for a quarter, and Green soon upped the price to 75 cents. Brian Foo of NYPL Labs used the library's data to create an interactive map that allows you to plot different trip, and see what the Green Book suggests along your route. Foo's program combs through the listings in the Green Book to find a restaurant roughly every 250 miles and lodging every 750 miles. Though the Green Book was a life-saving tool at the time, it's also a vivid reminder of just how discrimination and prejudice made -- and still make -- the world much smaller and less free. Though Green's list was far from comprehensive, many states have only a handful of listings, and the guesthouses and motels featured in the photos look small and somewhat shabby today. In the introduction to the 1949 edition, Green writes: “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published." "That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.” The last edition, published in 1963, was an international edition which described itself as a guide to "vacation without aggravation." Green died in 1960, and the book gradually lost some relevance after the creation of a national highway system in 1956, which meant travelers no longer ventured as much into cities and towns, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in hotels, restaurants and other public accommodations.Ana Swanson is a reporter for Wonkblog specializing in business, economics, data visualization and China. She also works on Know More, Wonkblog's social media channel. for Jim Crow travel articleText ComponentThe Forgotten Way African Americans stayed safe...by Ana Swanson ANSWER ?’S ON RIGHT SIDE; COMPLETE SENTENCESSubjectWhat is the subject or topic of the piece?What is this piece about?OccasionWhat event or occasion do you think caused the author to write this piece?AudienceTo whom is the author writing? How do you know?PurposeWhat does the author want you to believe or understand?What is the purpose of the text (choose one):To educate or informTo persuade or convinceTo reflect on an important event or ideaSpeakerWhat do we know about the speaker?How does her background affect her point of view on the subject?ToneWhat is the attitude of the speaker or writer as revealed by the choice of vocabulary?Tone Words: academic, formal, informal, sarcastic, humorous, informative, reflective, persuasive, casual, argumentative, passionate, cautionary, respectful, etc.DISTANCE LEARNING 5/4-5/8 A Brief History of Jim CrowListen to the song “Jim Crow Blues”, by Leadbelly: read/annotate (CATCH) the lyrics to the song, and read/annotate the poem by Langston Hughes entitled, “Merry-go-round.”Once this is done, write a TIEA format 10 sentence paragraph in which you analyze the tone of each piece, and compare them to each other. You will need to use at least 1 piece of evidence from each reading to confirm your inference of the tone. SUBMIT TO Possible tone words if you cannot figure it out are as follows: resilient, desperate, hopeful, diligent, spiritual. If you use one of these, make sure that your evidence proves the tone. Random choices will not be rewarded.Jim Crow Blues, by Leadbelly[spoken]Gotta get together let itDon’t be no stoneWell we’ll all be in the same boat ratherOkay now you gonna want this “Jim Crow Boys” ennThat man mus makes a man wear out his shoes when I give en the Jim Crow playin.[Actual song]Bunk Johnson told me too, This old Jim Crowism dead bad luck for me and youI been traveling, I been traveling from toe to toeEverywhere I have been I find some old Jim CrowOne thing, people, I want everybody to knowYou're gonna find some Jim Crow, every place you goDown in Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia's a mighty good place to goAnd get together, break up this old Jim CrowI told everybody over the radioMake up their mind and get together, break up this old Jim CrowI want to tell you people something that you don't knowIt's a lotta Jim Crow in a moving picture showI'm gonna sing this verse, I ain't gonna sing no morePlease get together, break up this old Jim CrowMERRY-GO-ROUND by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)colored child at carnival:Where is the Jim Crow sectionOn this merry-go-round,Mister, cause I want to ride?Down South where I come fromWhite and coloredCan’t sit side by side.Down South on the trainThere’s a Jim Crow car.On the bus we’re put in the back–But there ain’t no backTo a merry-go-round!Where’s the horseFor a kid that’s black? ................
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