Jim Crow

Starter – Listen to the song “Strange Fruit”. Can you understand what this song is about?

Southern trees bear strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Jim Crow laws

• Segregation laws• Separated white and black people

• Ex. separate schools, hospitals, parks, etc. . .

• De facto segregation – “in fact” or “in practice” not spelled out in law

• De jure segregation – “based on law”

Voting Restrictions

• Poll taxes – tax paid to be able to vote

• Literacy tests – voters had to pass then could vote

• Grandfather clause – could vote if grandfather was able to vote

Plessy vs. Ferguson• 1896 Supreme court decision• Separate-but-equal facilities did not violate

the Constitution

Homer Plessy

KKK

Lynching

• Mob violence, results in death

African-American Leaders

Booker T. Washington

• Blacks must realize that segregation is here to stay

• Build up segregated communities

• Equality through labor skills

• Tuskegee Institute

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as writing a poem.”

Tuskegee Institute

W.E.B. Dubois

• Challenge segregation/discrimination

• Equality through becoming well-educated

• NAACP - 1909 (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

Marcus Garvey

• Af. Am.s must segregate from whites

• “Back to Africa” movement