American society The experiences of African Americans

• Slavery abolished in America via the 13th Amendment


  1865
• African Americans given citizenship

  1868
• African American men gained the right to vote

  1870
• Laws, the justice system, social customs and violence continued to be used against African Americans, denying them full access to these rights and freedoms
• Segregation


  The separation of white and black people
• There were many Americans who believed in white supremacy and refused to see African Americans as equals
• Jim Crow laws


  Laws that enforced segregation, meaning white people and black people had to live separately
• Segregation meant


  • African Americans could not use the same facilities as white Americans
  • Despite being citizens, African Americans were segregated in the US military
  • The justice system protected the rights of white Americans and maintained segregation
• Sharecroppers


  Economically exploited and kept in poverty in the South
• It was difficult for African Americans to change these laws as they were restricted from voting in elections
• Barriers to voting for African Americans


  • Poll tax
  • Proof of ability to read difficult extracts
• These barriers could also cause difficulties for poorer white Americans
• In seven states, voters could be exempt if their ancestors had held the right to vote before the American Civil War (1861-1865)
• This so-called grandfather clause in effect only applied to white people, as before the war most African Americans were enslaved and had no voting rights
• African Americans migrated north in ever-increasing numbers in what became known as the Great Migration
• They settled in growing industrial cities, such as Chicago, Detroit and New York
• Even though the Jim Crow laws did not exist in the North, life was still hard for African Americans there
• They faced discrimination and exploitation
• Due to a combination of racism and poor education, their work was often in low-paid menial jobs
• Their wages did not match those of white people doing the same job
• This meant that most lived in the poorest areas of the cities
• Ku Klux Klan (KKK)


  A racist terrorist organisation that began in the southern states at the end of the American Civil War to maintain white supremacy
• It declined in the last decades of the 19th century, only to revive after 1915
• This was partly due to the popularity of DW Griffith's film Birth of a Nation, which was released in 1915
• In the film the KKK is portrayed sympathetically
• Its membership surged after World War One, growing to around 5 million in 1925
• Its members came from across America, and they openly paraded in the capital city of Washington, DC, in 1926
• White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs)


  The majority of the KKK members who believed in the supremacy of the original European immigrants to America, most of whom had been Protestant
• African Americans were typically the main targets of extreme violence from the KKK
• Its members committed acts of intimidation, violence and murder
• Jewish and Catholic people were also terrorised, attacked and murdered by members of the KKK
• Lynching


  A horrific form of violence used by the KKK and other white supremacists against African Americans, frequently done under the claim of an alleged offence, but without holding a legal trial
• In most instances these brutal murders were not stopped or investigated by the police
• In total, over 400 black Americans were lynched by the KKK throughout the 1920s
• Ida B Wells campaigned for a federal anti-lynching bill, which was not passed, but she helped to raise awareness of the injustice of lynching through her writings
• In 1909 she became a co-founder of the civil rights organisation the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which campaigned and pressed for African American equality
• Marcus Garvey


  A Jamaican man living in the USA who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) in 1914
• The UNIA-ACL created its own weekly newspaper to publicise its ideas, created businesses and held international conventions
• At its peak in the early 1920s it had over 1,900 branches worldwide, with the majority in the USA
• Garvey encouraged African Americans to be proud of their African heritage and to return to their 'rightful homeland' of Africa, where his aim was to start a new country