16.3 SEGREGATION AND DISCRIMINATION

Objective:Understand the persistence of racism in America in late 1800’s early 1900’s

VOTING RESTRICTIONS & SEGREGATION

• Literacy test• Poll tax• Grandfather clause• Jim Crow Laws

Supreme Court finds these laws constitutional. WHY???

http://pbsvideodb.pbs.org/resources/eyes/images/ph3.jpg

http://www.literacyrules.com/Black%20History/JimCrowPic3.jpg

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)• Segregation by race is constitutional as long as

facilities are separate, but equalREALITY: facilities were never equal

14th AMENDMENTSection 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the

jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

COURT INTERPRETS THIS TO ALLOW PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS TO DISCRIMINATE!!!

ONLY ONE Justice dissented - Justice John Harlan

"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution."

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICANS

IN THE SOUTH:segregation and discrimination was not only permitted, IT WAS THE LAW (de jure)

IN THE NORTH:segregation and discrimination were not legalized, but commonly practiced (de facto)

Explain how segregation and discrimination affected the lives of African Americans at the turn of the century.

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MEXICAN AMERICANS

• Many Mexicans hired to work in mining, irrigation, and farming in the Southwest• Many Mexicans suffer under debt

peonage (=sharecropping)• Debt peonage not made illegal until

1911

Chinese Exclusion Act - 1882

• Great Railroad Strike of 1877!!!• Strike failed b/c of disunity b/w Chinese & Irish • Congress passes Chinese Exclusion Act to halt

Chinese immigration. Pres. Hayes vetoes the popular bill.

• Passes after Hayes leaves office & in effect until 1943.

http://immigrants.harpweek.com/

STOP

13.1 HW, #1

Why do you think that the assimilation policy of the Dawes Act failed? Support your opinion with information from the text.