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African-American History: From Emancipation to Present 

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Douglass “What, to a slave, is the 4th of July?” o Cruel irony that a country celebrating freedom and liberty also has slavery at its core o Irony that he was invited to speak on Independence Day, yet the day does not represent freedom for people of his color “Citizenship” at its core o What does it mean to be American? John Jack o His headstone as a base of abolitionist text  Highlights the hypocrisy of many free, white males of the time Narrative of a nation can be found on its currency o Confederate money showing content black slaves, white womanhood, southern politicians, labor, industry, agriculture, etc. NB: Yale has the largest collection of Confederate money. Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech End of course will change, as Holloway hasn’t taught this in 2 years

Day 2: Pre-Emancipation to Emancipation  Citizenship linked to freedom linked to race  Francis Ellen Watkins Harper’s Bury Me in a Free Land (1854) o Psychological harm of separating mothers from babies  Missouri Compromise (1820) angers south due to federal government’s interference o An issue that framed the Civil War  Compromise of 1850 o East-West line drawn across the middle of the United States furthers the visible separation of North from South and “free” from enslaved  Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin  Kansas-Nebraska Act eradicating the Missouri Compromise  Republican Party becomes the party of the African Americans until Depression era.  Dred Scot v. Sanford: Traveling north of the Compromise of 1850 line does not secure one’s freedom o By virtue of his slavery, he is not a citizen, he is ineligible to bring suit, and he had never been free. Chief Justice Robert Taney calls blacks inferior and strips Scot’s humanity from him. o Missouri Compromise rendered unconstitutional  John Brown o Principal at a seminary; armed abolitionists and planned an uprising to overtake an armory at Harper’s Ferry o Wounded and captured by troops of the federal government; hanged o Seen as martyr  1860: Election of Abraham Lincoln o South felt that Union was untenable and that they had no political power

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o Attempt of government to buy property rejected by south o Attempt at colonization of blacks went nowhere 1862: Lincoln determined to emancipate, first by Congressional act that forbids captured slaves to return to servitude 1863: Slaves in a rebelling state are declared free by the United States o Emancipation Proclamation  Did not “free” slaves legally  Piece of evidence that the war is about slavery  Also about troops: Lincoln and the north needs more troops 1863: Mandated conscription for men 20-45, unless they paid $300 o Exacerbated class tensions  War was fought by poor people o NYC draft riots  Shipping hub during war for troops and goods  Fear held by Irish workers that emancipated blacks would threaten their social status and jobs  Primarily Irish attack police and military officials, then later, blacks  Roughly 1,000 die (including lynchings, proof that it’s not just a southern phenomenon) o Some Irish proceed to sympathize with Confederates.

Day 3: Politics, Labor, and Free Will  Reconstruction = the attempt to re-unite the Union  Crucial Timeline o 1865: Lincoln Assassination o 1865: 13th Amendment (slavery abolished) o 1865-7: Presidential Reconstruction o 1867-77: Radical Reconstruction o 1868: 14th Amendment (citizenship and due process) o 1870: 15th Amendment (right to vote regardless of race)  Blacks begin to hold office in all levels (will peak in 1870s and not return until Clinton Presidency) o 1877: Withdrawal of northern troops and end of Reconstruction  Central Questions of Emancipation and Conclusion of Civil War o What to do with blacks? How to control them? Who does work? How will the South survive the upheaval?  Lincoln’s 10% Plan: Pardon all Southerners (except Confederate officers) when at least 10% of citizens took a loyalty oath to the Union  Johnson’s Plan o General pardon to all except Confederate officers and wealthy planters  White yeoman farmer’s response: Black Codes  Republicans in Congress are troubled by both Johnson’s Plan and the Black Codes o Impetus behind 14th and 15th Amendment  South divided into 5 military districts, each with a Republican government ran by northerners

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Codes (1865-67) Broad collection of state and local laws Sought to create a new labor system putting blacks to work Gave them right to acquire property, marry, make contracts, sue, be sued, testify in court (against blacks) o Some required yearly labor contracts, and if not abided by, then fines and arrest were real threats o Black women must return to the fields and proper behavior delineated o Forced apprenticeship in some o Blacks could not hunt or own weapons Black Codes disappeared out of questions of legality Sharecropping o Reformed response to Black Codes o Based on credit  Whites own tools, land, and seed, but not labor o Blacks not paid in cash, but rather shares needed for sustenance and materials to farm o Landowners or overseers sold the crops, and not the sharecroppers o System rigged because sharecroppers unaware of real value of crops  Landowners would lie about their sharecroppers being in debt o Collapses in 1940s, only because of mechanized agriculture Field Order #15 (1865) o Issued by Union General Sherman o Declares a stretch of land between [ ], GA and Jacksonville, FL o Would have given land to 200,000 blacks if Congress upheld the promise Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (1865) o For poor whites and blacks o Food, shelter, medicine, education, labor arrangements, secure justice for blacks against overseers o Mixed record at best  850,000 acres returned to Civil War-era owners  Beginning of primitive schooling (elementary and middle at best), but practically nothing compared to the average white school of the time o Gone by 1872, but schools survive thanks to philanthropy Radical southern anxiety about the re-election of Lincoln o Miscegenation between black men and white women o MS: first anti-miscegenation law on the books (Capital D) Democratic politics blatantly pro-white supremacy during and after Reconstruction o 1868 Democratic Primary What did freedom mean? o KKK established in 1866  Targeted non-whites and non-Protestants  Sense of a lost way of life (white supremacy)

First installment of Klan wiped out by northern military in first couple years Election of 1876 o Tilden wins popular vote, but Electoral College unclear because of contested results throughout the south o Compromise: Hayes wins Presidency but forced to withdraw federal troops and ending reconstruction Carpetbaggers o Seen as northern opportunists taking advantage of the south  Establishing business, getting into government 

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Ethnic Notions  Very stereotypical opening  White woman portrayed as normal, beautiful, etc.  Images turn to perception to reality  Sambo; stereotypical black male character from 1820s onward o Man who found simple pleasures in food, song, and dance  Jim Crow character a devastating literary character especially to whites who never saw blacks  Minstrel character rise at same time as abolitionist movement o Blacks started playing themselves at turn of century but then forced into blackface themselves  Coon: white example of proof that blacks cant adapt to freedom  Positive black nanny another defense of slavery o Docile, kind, protector of white property  But when dealing with blacks, she’s the strong one because black men are deemed weak and incapable of sustaining families  Black children presented as animalistic  Perpetuation of stereotype the only way for black actors to ever make it in their profession  Blackface permeates 20s through WWII  Household products and food profiled stereotypes as well  Blacks only showed in spiffy clothing only in uniforms, and part of that uniform is a smile Day 4: End of Reconstruction (1877 – c. 1900)  Reconstruction: Test to economic, political, and psychological systems of whites  Southern whites talk of “redeeming themselves”: reclaiming self-governance  KKK returns when federal troops leave the south, but there are other organized terrorist groups like it o Relieving southern anxiety through terror  Resurgent Democratic party  All of the below are attempts to suppress the black vote and SOME poor whites o Black crops, homes, barns, other properties destroyed o White supremacists brandish whips

Gerrymandering of predominantly-black districts Poll taxes: proof that taxes were paid on property (which blacks didn’t really own) o Grandfather clauses o Literacy tests (illegal to teach blacks to read until after Civil War) Error of judgment that unites blacks and poor whites o Grassroots/populist social movement amongst them to anoint Tom Watson as their leader o Destabilizes a one-party south, but power corrupts and blacks get pushed to the side Demographics of south o Blacks and whites would always see each other on the street. o Social interactions tense and minimal o Playing the race card politically deepens these boundaries. o Louisiana: blacks majority in 26 parishes in 1896 (130,000+ blacks)  1900: majority in 0 parishes (5,300 black voters) o Alabama: 180,000 blacks of voting age; only 3,000 vote Southern whites viewed black education and civil/societal behavior as a litmus for if they should vote. When legal means and white intimidation didn’t work, there was also lynching. o Historians say 1880 is the beginning of reliable lynching records. o 1882-1901: More than 100/year o By 1968: Over 4000 die, more than 3600 black Lynching is more than stringing people up. o About propriety and social control o X person does X thing and we tie him to a slapped horse. o Accused X is in prison and will be publicly lynched. The event is advertised. o Dismemberment of body parts (while alive) sold as souvenirs. o Burning, torture, stabbing Journalist (at the time) Ida B. Wells becomes nation’s anti-lynching crusader. o Thomas Moss, only black grocer in her hometown, opens the second grocery store in his town and ignores the white grocer’s threat not to. o He is lynched. She investigates. o Most lynching rape allegations are false, and fewer are accused of rape than what was previously believed. But some of these sexual relations between black males and white females were consensual. (To save herself, she would confess rape/assault.)  Thought that white men were projecting o Wells set out to demonstrate complexity, yet uncivility, of lynching  Unpopular idea to whites; assault on southern manhood Thoughts associated with re-visiting old lynchings o Does showing images of them again continue the inappropriate theme of lynching as spectacle? o o

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Day 5: c. 1890 - 1910  Importance of Tera Hunter’s To ‘Joy My Freedom o On the ground, daily acts of resistance o Intra-racial class dynamics  “Uplift”, as subversive and radical o Freedmen’s Bureau  Collapsed in attempting to provide resources to blacks o American Baptist Mission Society: exclusively white, northern society that took it upon themselves to go down south and serve, educate, and “civilize” blacks  Controlled language and interpretation of texts, including Bible o National Baptist Convention (1895): by and for blacks; own Sunday school texts, songs, etc.  Fought in battle of commercial control of interpretation  Fought in the physical space of a church o National Association of Colored Women (1896): “Lifting While We Climb”; combination of most upstanding black women in a community; goal to “save the race”  Radical in that it wanted to organize social services  Conservative in that it systematically uplifts the downtrodden; didn’t want fundamental equality; believed that there was an upper limit to the achievement of poor blacks  Anna Julia Cooper: leading black theorist of her day, wrote A Voice from the South (1892) o Victorian, straight-laced, but a belief that black women would lead the race’s “rising” o Disappeared from history because of conflicting belief that black men would lead the race’s “rising” o Attacked Booker T. Washington for male-centered beliefs on black progress  Respectability Politics  Role of Church o Multipurpose building for more than worship o Jobs center, places for clothes, food, schooling  Dates o 1866: First Jim Crow laws separating people on racial basis (miscegenation, education, transportation)  1870s: fully integrated into society o 1885: Southern schools fully segregated by now o 1895: Nat Baptist Convention; Frederick Douglass dies; Booker T. Washington gives The Atlantic [ ] Address o 1896: NACW; Plessy v. Ferguson; American Negro Academy forms o 1898: ANA founder dies  Booker T. Washington’s address o “Cast down your bucket where you are”  Call for racial management and native loyalty o “The wisest among our race understand…”

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Washington’s Ideology o Races should be separate socially, but one in hand economically o Re-build the south together; blacks are loyal workers and whites have the money o Educated, but docile workforce Booker T. Washington: born into slavery in 1856, worked as a child, worked into college, recognized for determination to succeed and became protégé of head of Hampton Institute (trade school); establishes Tuskegee Institute at age 25 and his students physically build the school o Most important African American until his death in 1915 Plessy v. Ferguson: Majority blames construction of “arbitrary separation of race” on blacks o Plessy refused to move from first class/white cabin, despite paying for the ticket. He was thrown off the train and in jail. He pled that the 14 th Amendment rendered the Louisiana law that got him in jail was unconstitutional. o Establishment of fallacy “separate, but equal” that remained until Brown W.E.B Du Bois (born 1868): Booker T. Washington’s chief antagonist o Claimed Washington was against education that would psychologically emancipate blacks o Called Washington’s speech the “Atlantic Compromise” o “Talented tenth” are in the best position to “uplift the race”  Phrase from John Morehouse o Bachelors from Fisk; Ph.D. from Harvard; studied at University of Berlin  Well-versed in the Western Canon o He, and progressive-minded blacks, unhappy with state of affairs  Called for just civil society in manifesto from Niagara movement NAACP o White officers except WEB Du Bois

Day 6: c. Migration and the Birth of a Nation  Sterling Brown’s poem “Old Lem” o They don’t come by ones… twos… they come by tens.  Richard White o Contextualizing the Great Migration  Organizations other than the NAACP o Young Men’s Christian Association and Young Women’s Christian Association  Space for kids, community organizing, etc. o National Urban League (1911)  Explicitly concerned with labor, usually for the blacks who just arrived to an urban area  Willing to bust unions to get blacks jobs by being in the pockets of corporate interests  NB: Around the 1940s and 50s, there’s another great migration westward.

But the “Great Migration” is a general movement from the SE US to generally the north. o Political movement and political act within itself Situation on the Southern Ground at the turn of the 20th C. o Post-Reconstruction voting rights are strategically being taken away o State education functionally gutted o Social segregation increasing o Lynching still happening o Sharecropping increasingly looking like slavery o Biological hazard to cotton farming making it an unattractive business  Boll weevils o War limited numbers of immigrant working class. Southern whites begin to threaten blacks with plans to leave. o Blacks leaving would upset the southern power balance. Poor whites would not see themselves as powerful because of black migration, making the poor whites a threat to all other whites. Black northern newspapers strategically publishes stories about the southern “Reign of Terror” inspiring blacks to come north. o Chicago Defender Pitting southern fields against northern factories is a simplistic description of why the Great Migration happened. o Wasn’t always permanent movement to the north o Sometimes seasonal, periodic labor with regular returns o The end result is a net change from south to north. Blacks remained predominantly southern until 1950s, so the Great Migration wasn’t the turning point. De facto northern segregation, rather than de jure. o Low quality housing: very cramped, dense, and unsanitary o Labor unions running along ethnic, immigrant lines (white only) o Native black resistance NB: Even this is an improvement over a south. DW Griffith’s Birth of A Nation helps re-spur popularity of the KKK o Immediately controversial, definitely racist, weirdly radical, inaccurate from a factual standpoint, but accurate in terms of the southern mindset of white America o Portrayed as sympathetic to the south o Breakthrough in technology of film o Riots and public demonstrations wherever it was released o Attracted attention of NAACP, who published a 47 page pamphlet that was a tirade against it o

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Day 7: 1917 - Mid 1920s (with emphasis on 1917-1919)  DuBois’ “Close Ranks” o “Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our white citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy.”

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Published in Crisis People are angry with these remarks. respond positively to DuBois. A large black male population enlisted in WWI. Some didn’t fight under the American flag. Black men who joined the French army felt true freedom for the first time. o NB: Secret directive to French troops (influenced by the American government) was intended to thwart the cordial relationship between blacks and the French. Special Grievances in the North o Rioting  Massacre in E. St. Louis  “Red Summer” (25 cities in 6 months, primarily in the north, worst in Chicago)  Only the Illinois National Guard could restore peace in Chicago o NAACP organized a response to riots and lynching with silent march from Harlem to the center of Manhattan o A majority of the soldiers who were lynched post-war were done so in uniform.  Cruel dedication to eliminating visions of what citizenship should be Blacks fighting back was part of a new mentality. o After the disappointment of no new respect/freedom for blacks upon the end of the war o DuBois’ “Returning Soldiers” (May 1919) o Anger resulted from lynched soldiers o McKay’s “If We Must Die”  Direct response to the Red Summer Marcus Garvey o Embodiment of the New Negro mentality  Forged out of political and economic frustration, cultural shock of Great Migration, etc. o Jamaican-born, educated in London o Advocates for a new kind of colonial presence o Inspired by Booker T. Washington’s “Up from Slavery (?)”  Committed to economic self-sufficiency, not temporary acquiescence to whites o Creates UNIA  Promoting ideal of self-sufficiency and black empire  But knew he would have the most success in US; goal of centering in Harlem  Roughly 500,000 followers  Business enterprise; blacks who support blacks promote economic and social independence; worked similar to a civil service agency  Instilled race pride, notably to new migrants o Made concrete attempts to gain control of Liberia but was denied o o Some o

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Begins steamboat fleet (Black Star Steamship Line)  Overpaid for first ship; 2nd ship leaked and sunk; the third blew a boiler on the maiden voyage  Symbol of poor business acumen NB: Largest organized group of grassroots black activists in the early 20th C. Ho...