A Lesson Before Dying

English II C.P.

Louisiana

Pre-Civil Rights South

• Few opportunities• Denied African Americans’

many human rights• Slavery was abolished in

1863, per the Emancipation Proclamation

• 1870- the 15th Amendment gave ALL men (white and black) the right to vote.

Reconstruction of America

• One of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American History.

• Lasted from during the Civil War until 1877.• Northern victory decided fate of Union and of

slavery. • Problems arose… How should the nation be

reunited? What system of labor should replace slavery? What would be the status of the former slaves?

African Americans and Reconstruction

• They were active members in the Reconstruction

• Central to reconstruction was efforts of African Americans to establish meaning to their new freedom, and to claim their rights as citizens.

• Congress enacted laws and Constitutions giving African Americans the right to vote and to hold office.

The South Reacts

• The Southern Government faced great opposition to the Reconstruction.

• Mainly from the Ku Klux Klan• The North abandoned its commitment to

protect the rights of former slaves, Reconstruction came to an end, and white supremacy was restored throughout the South.

Jim Crow Laws• The name of the racial caste system which operated primarily in the

South from 1877 to the mid- 1960’s.• Jim Crow was not a person. Named after a popular 19th century

minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans.• Written by Thomas Rice, a white struggling actor

– “Come Listen all you galls and boys, I’m going to sing a little song, My name is Jim Crow, Weel about and turn about and do jis so, Eb’ry time I Weel about I jump Jim Crow”

• It consisted of rigid anti-Black laws. • It became a way of life in the South.• African Americans were relegated to second class citizens.• Christian Ministers taught that the Whites were the “chosen” people,

Blacks were to be servants, and God supported racial segregation.

Beliefs/Rationalizations of Jim Crow Laws

• Whites were superior to Blacks in all ways, including, but not limited to, intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior.

• Sexual relations between Whites and Blacks would produce a Mongrel race, which would destroy America.

• Treating Blacks as equals would encourage Interracial sexual unions.

• If necessary, violence must be used to keep Blacks at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.

Jim Crow Norms• A Black male could not offer his

hand (to shake hands) with a White male because it implied being socially equal.

• Blacks and Whites were not supposed to eat together.

• Under no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the cigarette of a White female- this suggested intimacy.

• White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.

• If Blacks rode in the car with Whites, they had to sit in the back seat, or the back of the truck.

• Blacks were not to show public affection to one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended Whites.

• Blacks were to be introduced to Whites, not Whites to Blacks.

• Whites did not use courtesy titles when referring to Blacks (Ms., Mrs., Mr., Sir, or Ma’am). Blacks were called to by their first name. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to Whites, and COULD NOT call them by their first name.

Jim Crow Guide• Stetson Kennedy wrote the Jim Crow Guide. If offered

simple rules Blacks were to observe when conversing with Whites.– Never assert or intimate that a White person is lying.– Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White person.– Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class.– Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge

or intelligence.– Never curse at a White person.– Never laugh derisively at a White person.– Never comment upon the appearance of a White female.

Separate Car Law

• 1890- Separate Car Law was implemented.• Train cars were to be separate but equal for

both Blacks and White.• Blacks put this to test.• Homer Plessey (7/8 White and 1/8 Black… i.e.

Black) sat in a Whites only passenger car.• He was arrested.

Plessey Vs. Ferguson

• 1896- Plessey vs. Ferguson• Supreme court ruled that segregation was legal

(to have separate facilities for both blacks and whites) as long as they were both EQUAL.

• Separate but equal, though separate was rarely equal.

• Segregation became the way of the land.• PLESSEY VS. FERGUSON LIGITIMIZED JIM CROW LAWS!

Any Black person accused of ANY perceived offense to a White person risked his or her life!

Plantation Life• A plantation is a large agricultural business which produces

a cash crop for sale for profit.• In Louisiana, the most important cash crops were cotton

and sugar cane.• Prior to Emancipation Proclamation, slaves were forced to

run the plantation. Slaves planted, weeded, and harvested crops; kept fences and plantation structures in order; built slave cabins; and made products like shoes and barrels for the plantation.

• In order to gain the greatest production, slaves had to be driven or whipped.

Plantation Life…After E.P.

• African American men and women refused plantation discipline, to live in slave quarters, and even on plantation.

• They wanted their own land to raise a family and to produce own surpluses.

• Plantation owners were mad.• Agreed to allow ex-slaves to farm independent

land on their property. In the end, ex-slaves had to pay Plantation owners money.

Scottsboro Trials

Scottsboro Trial• March 25, 1931- alleged rape of two White females by

nine Black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight train.• Hoboing- riding freight trains without paying.• Among passengers- four black Chattanooga teenagers

hoping to investigate a rumor of government jobs in Memphis hauling logs on the river and five other black teens from various parts of Georgia. Four young whites, two males and two females dressed in overalls, also rode the train, returning to Huntsville from unsuccessful job searches in the cotton mills of Chattanooga.

Scottsboro Trial• A white male stepped on the hand of Haywood Patterson (a black teen).• Haywood and his friends engaged in a stone throwing fight against White boys.• Black boys defeated White boys and threw them off the train. • Haywood helped pull one of the White boys, Orville Gilley, back on the train to

save him, because the train was going at life-endangering speeds.• The boys who were thrown off train went to a station master and reported

what they described as an assault by a gang of blacks. • The stationmaster wired ahead. A posse in Paint Rock, Alabama, stopped the

train. Dozens of men with guns rushed at the train as it ground to a halt. • The armed men rounded up every black youth they could find. Nine captured

blacks, soon to be called "The Scottsboro Boys," were tied together with plow line, loaded on a flat back truck, and taken to a jail in Scottsboro.

Scottsboro Trials

• Victoria Price and Ruby Bates• In response to questioning, they told one of the posse

members that they had been raped by a gang of twelve blacks with pistols and knives.

• In the jail on the March 25th, Price pointed out six of the nine boys and said that they were the ones who raped her.

• The guard reportedly replied, "If those six had Miss Price, it stands to reason that the others had Miss Bates."

Scottsboro Trials• In January, 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court, by a 6 - 1 vote,

affirmed all but one of the eight convictions and death sentences. • The court ruled that Eugene Williams, age thirteen, should have not

been tried as an adult.• The cases were appealed to the United States Supreme Court which

overturned the convictions in the landmark case of Powell vs Alabama.

• The Court, 7 - 2, ruled that the right of the defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause to competent legal counsel had been denied by Alabama.

• There would have to be new trials.• Two who had trials, found guilty and sentenced to death.

Scottsboro Trials

• Overturned because Alabama excluded blacks from its jury rolls in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

• Fourth trial began. Haywood was again charged with rape, however, sentenced to 75 years in life, not death.

• In December of 1936, while Patterson's appeal was still pending and the other eight blacks awaited their trials.

Scottsboro Trial.

• Four were finally released in 1937. • Two not guilty• Two regardless of guilt, age 12-13 at time of

crime, served long enough.• 1943, 1946, 1950- four of the remaining were

paroled• 1948- Haywood escaped

Ernest Gaines

Biography

• He was born in 1933 on the River Lake plantation in Pointe Coupe Parish, Louisiana

• This is the setting for most of his fiction• At the age of nine he was picking cotton in the

plantation fields; the black quarter's school held classes only five or six months a year.

• When he was fifteen, Gaines moved to California to join his parents, who had left Louisiana during World War II.

• There he attended San Francisco State University and later won a writing fellowship to Stanford University.

Biography• Gaines published his first short story in 1956. • Since then he has written eight books of fiction, including Catherine

Carmier, Of Love and Dust, Bloodline, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Long Day in November, In My Father's House, and A Gathering of Old Men, most of which are available in Vintage paperback editions.

• A Lesson Before Dying, his most recent novel, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also been awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant, for writings of "rare historical resonance."

• Ernest Gaines and his wife Dianne now live year-round in Oscar, Louisiana. They built a house on land that was part of the plantation where he grew up.