​Legal Discrimination

• ​After Reconstruction, many African Americans wanted to use their new political & social rights

  • ​many were met with hostile & violent opposition from some whites

    • ​African Americans voted & occasionally held office in the south

  • ​by the 20th century, Southern states adopted a board system of legal racial discrimination

    • ​These states wanted to destroy African American political power

​Voting Restrictions

• ​Southern states imposed new voting restrictions & denied legal equality to African Americans

  • ​some states limited the vote to people who could read & administrators would give literacy test

    • ​Blacks were given more difficult questions or tests in foreign languages

  • ​Southern states imposed poll taxes to keep the poor from voting

    • ​to protect any poor, uneducated whites, states created a grandfather clause

​Poll Tax: an annual tax that formerly had to be paid in some other states by anyone wishing to vote

​Grandfather Clause: a provision that exempts certain people from a law on the basis of previously existing circumstances

​Jim Crow Laws

• ​In the 1870s & 1880s, the Supreme Court failed to overturn the poll tax or grandfather clause

  • ​at the same time African Americans were losing voting rights states passed segregation laws

    • ​these laws kept white & black Americans in public & private facilities

    • ​These laws became known as Jim Crow Laws

​Segregation: the separation of people on the basis of race

​Jim Crow Laws: laws enacted by Southern states & local governments to separate white & black in public & private facilities

​Plessy v. Ferguson

• ​A legal case reached the Supreme Court that tested the constitutionality of segregation

  • ​in 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public place was legal as long as there were equal accommodations

    • ​the Plessy v. Ferguson set the separate by equal precedent

​Plessy v. Ferguson: an 1896 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that separation of the Race in public accommodations was legal

​Turn-of-the-Century Race Relations

• ​African American faced formal discrimination, informal rules & customs, called racial etiquette, that regulated relations between whites & blacks

  • these customs belittled & humiliated African Americans

    • The customs enforced their second class citizen

• ​Booker t. Washington earned support of both white and black Americans

  • ​Washington wanted people to work together to improve social & Economic issues

    • ​Some people thought that racial equality should be the most important task

​Violence

• ​African Americans that didn't follow racial etiquette were subjected to severe punishment

  • ​Blacks who were accused of breaking the etiquette could be lynched

    • ​between 1882 & 1892, more than 1,400 men & women were shot, hung or burned without trial in the South

​Discrimination in the West

• ​The western frontier was full of different immigrants

  • ​Asians went to the Pacific coast while Mexican/ African Americans inhabited the southwest

    • ​Racial Tensions were still strong in these regions

• ​In the late 1880s, the railroad hired a large amount of Mexican workers

  • ​the workers were used to the dry, hot climate when constructing the railroad

    • ​These people also worked for very little pay and very harsh working conditions

​Debt Peonage: a system in which workers are bound in servitude until their debt is paid.