State/local Government

• Sharecropping was where white landowners allowed former slaves to work their land in return for a considerable share of what was produced. In many cases this was not very different from slavery.
• Black Codes:

  • restricted right of AA to compete against white Americans for work
  • gave states right to punish vagrants and unemployed former slaves
  • gave states right to return vagrants and unemployed former slaves to forced labour
  • allowed those who attacked AA to go unpunished, with state officials often participating in attacks
• The 1877 Hayes Compromise returned the rights of the state to that of 1865.
• After the Hayes Compromise, Southern states began to pass Jim Crow laws and segregation became legalised. The state of Tennessee segregated rail travel in 1881, after 1899 there were laws segregating waiting rooms.
• From 1901-1910, transport, sports, hospitals, orphanages, prisons and education were segregated.
• Southern states introduced literacy tests which deliberately excluded African Americans.
• Grandfather clauses said if a man’s family had voted before a certain year, that man could vote. This excluded AA.
• Mississippi began the process of voter registration tests in 1890 and other states followed. 13,000 AA voters in Louisiana in 1896 fell to 5000 in 1900.
• There was limited electoral support for civil rights as so many AA couldn't vote, and the issue wasn’t popular in the north until the 1960s.
• The influx of AA in the North from 1915 made racial hatred common and the issue of civil rights extended beyond ‘backward’ Southern attitudes.
• The violence and discrimination in the South in the 60s gave opportunities for the communist bloc to criticise America. USSR propaganda portrayed the US as a rotten capitalist system.
• By the 90s, economic inequality remained. In 1989, 21% of whites graduated college as opposed to 11% of AA.
• In 1988, unemployment amongst AA was 5 percent points higher than white Americans, higher than the 1950s.
• AA occupied only half of managerial and professional occupations of whites by 1990s.
• AA family income doubled from 1950 to 1989, but the wealth gap with white families increased far more, from $7000 in 1950 to $12,000 in 1987.
• In 1963, police chief Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor used water hoses, beatings and arrests to combat protests in Birmingham. This only increased the emotional appeal of King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’.
• Carpet bagging - Southern objection to northern officials and businessmen interfering in their affairs after the Civil War and using corruption to get the votes of former slaves. They were often portrayed as carrying carpet bags.
• In the 1950s, access to weapons was easy and white juries were unwilling to convict racial crimes. Civil rights was often seen as Northern interference similar to carpet bagging in the Civil War era.
• When the Freedom Riders appeared in Birmingham, ‘Bull’ Connor allowed Klan members to attack them for 15 minutes before interfering.
• Opposition from southern authorities such as White Citizen’s Council wasn’t as effective in the 50s and 60s as it had been during Reconstruction. Segregationist governors such as Orval Forbus in Arkansas and George Wallace in Alabama only pushed reluctant administrations to use federal authority to enforce law.
• Greater television coverage meant discrimination, segregation and violence couldn’t be hidden away as it had been from 1877 to the 1940s.