White only: Jim Crow in America

By the late 1870s Reconstruction was coming to an end. In the name of

healing the wounds between North and South, most white politicians
abandoned the cause of protecting African Americans.

In the former Confederacy and neighboring states, local governments

constructed a legal system aimed at re-establishing a society based on
white supremacy. African American men were largely barred from voting.
Legislation known as Jim Crow laws separated people of color from whites
in schools, housing, jobs, and public gathering places.

Taking away the vote

Denying black men the right to vote through legal maneuvering and
violence was a first step in taking away their civil rights. Beginning in the
1890s, southern states enacted literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate
registration systems, and eventually whites-only Democratic Party
primaries to exclude black voters.
The laws proved very effective. In Mississippi, fewer than 9,000 of the
147,000 voting-age African Americans were registered after 1890. In
Louisiana, where more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in
1896, the number had plummeted to 1,342 by 1904.

Poll tax receipt

Poll taxes required citizens to pay a fee to register to vote. These fees kept
many poor African Americans, as well as poor whites, from voting. The poll
tax receipts displayed here is from Alabama.
Jim Crow songbook

This songbook, published in Ithaca, New York, in 1839, shows an early

depiction of a minstrel-show character named Jim Crow. By the 1890s the
expression “Jim Crow” was being used to describe laws and customs aimed
at segregating African Americans and others. These laws were intended to
restrict social contact between whites and other groups and to limit the
freedom and opportunity of people of color.

Advertising Cards
Insulting racial stereotypes were common in American society. They
reinforced discriminatory customs and laws that oppressed Americans of
many racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds. The cigarette holder and
early 20th-century advertising cards depict common stereotypes of African
Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, and Irish Americans.

arly Klan image

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to combat

Reconstruction reforms and intimidate African Americans. By 1870 similar
organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia and the White
Brotherhood had sprung up across the South. Through fear, brutality, and
murder, these terrorist groups helped to overthrow local reform-minded
governments and restore white supremacy, and then largely faded away.

KKK robe and hood

By the mid-1920s the Klan was again a powerful political force in both the
South and the North, spreading hatred against African Americans,
immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. Klan membership plummeted later in the
decade after a series of scandals involving its leadership. But by then, the
Klan had inflamed racial hatred and strengthened the political power of
white supremacists in many parts of the country. This Ku Klux Klan robe
and hood date from the 1920s.

KKK parade in Washington

Demonstrating their political power, Klansmen triumphantly parade down

Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 1926, in full
regalia. (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Ballot—No Negro Equality

The fight over civil rights was never just a southern issue. This ballot is
from the race for governor of Ohio in 1867. Allen Granbery Thurman’s
campaign included the promise of barring black citizens from voting. He
narrowly lost to future president Rutherford B. Hayes. Thurman was then
appointed U.S. Senator for Ohio, where he worked to reverse many
Reconstruction-era civil rights reforms.

Thurmond campaign poster

Race and white privilege have long been central issues in American politics.
At the Democratic presidential convention in 1948, southern delegates
broke with the party over civil rights and formed the State’s Rights Party.
Their nominee for president was a prominent segregationist, South
Carolina governor Strom Thurmond. He received more than a million votes
and carried four southern states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
South Carolina. His campaign sent a clear message to the nation that the
South would not give up segregation without a fight.

 
http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-­‐segregated/white-­‐only-­‐2.html