Was accommodation or agitation the

best path for African Americans in

the Progressive Era?

 "There was a South of slavery and secession - that

South is dead. There is now a South of union and

freedom - that South, thank God, is living, breathing,
and growing every hour
- Henry Grady , journalist

The "New South"

In contrast to the old antebellum South

- hope for economic regeneration, sectional

reconciliation
Small industrial bases emerged, ie. Birmingham, AL (Steel),

Atlanta, GA (Tobacc0)

BUT the New South remained overwhelmingly rural

Northern business practices kept South a supplier

--

Blacks in the Southern Economy

90% of American blacks lived in the South in 1900
Mostly sharecroppers or part of the crop lien system
(1870s-1950s)

Politics in the Jim Crow South

Institutionalized discrimination (de jure segregation)
Jim Crow laws - Social segregation laws that
separated white and black facilities
separate but equal doctrine upheld in Plessy v.
Ferguson
LEGALIZED
JIM CROW
LAWS

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiffs argument

to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of
the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of
inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found
in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put
that construction upon it The argument also assumes that
social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and that
equal rights cannot be secured except by an enforced
commingling of the two races If the civil and political rights
of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other
civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other
socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put
them upon the same plane.
- Plessy v. Ferguson decision, 1896

 The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this

country. But in view of the Constitutionthere is no caste
here...In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before
the law.It is, therefore, to be regretted that this high
tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the
land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a
State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil
rights solely upon the basis of race. 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 arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis
of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of
servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the
equality before the law established by the Constitution. It
cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.
- Justice Harlan dissenting, Plessy v. Ferguson

 Informal discrimination (de

facto)
Etiquette and custom
forced blacks into
submission
ie. More than 2500
Southern blacks
lynched b/w 1885-1900
*Ida B. Wells (black muckraker/
newspaper editor) exposed
the extent of lynching in her
book, Southern Horrors

Dissenting Voices

Booker T. Washington

W.E.B. DuBois

Booker T. Washington
Ex-slave, founder of Tuskegee

Institute (AL) for vocational ed

Outlined his views on race
relations in a speech at the Cotton
States Internl Expo (Atlanta Compromise speech,
1895)
Felt black Americans should work to gain economic security
before equal rights (believed blacks could gradually earn
equality)
Advocated skillful accommodation to the social realities of the
time (ie. accept disenfranchisement in return for
economic inclusion through vocational education)

 Developed job training

and vocational programs

at Tuskegee Institute
Asked whites to give job

opportunities to black
Americans

Carpentry Class
at Tuskegee Institute

W.E.B. DuBois
Intellectual leader, 1st African American to

earn a doctorate from Harvard, one of the

founders of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Outlined views in The Souls of Black Folks and The Crisis
Strongly opposed Washingtons tolerance of segregation
and accommodation to whites
Demanded immediate equality for blacks and pushed
blacks to engage in a struggle for civil rights
Either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance
will destroy the United States.

 Felt talented black

students should
get a classical
education
Believed it was wrong

to expect citizens
to earn their rights
Helped organize the

Niagra Movement (civil

rights org) in 1905 to
espouse ideas

 Men we shall have only as we make manhood the

object of the work of the schools intelligence,

broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and
is, and of the relation of men to it this is the
curriculum of that Higher Education which must
underlie true life. On this foundation we may build
bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain,
with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the
means of living for the object of life.
- W.E.B. DuBois

Isabel Wilkerson, in a 2014 Guardian article:

Even though white Americans outnumber black
Americans fivefold, black people are three times more likely
than white people to be killed when they encounter the
police in the US, and black teenagers are far likelier to be
killed by police than white teenagers.
Images and stereotypes built into American culture have
fed prevailing assumptions of black inferiority and
wantonness since before the time of Jim Crow. Many of
those stereotypes persist to this day and have mutated with
the times. Last centurys beast and savage have become this
centurys gangbanger and thug, embedding a pre-written
script for subconscious bias that primes many to accept
what they were programmed to believe about black
Americans, whether they are aware of it or not.