Fighting "Jim Crow": The Battle for Racial Equality

FIGHTING "JIM CROW": THE BATTLE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY

Segregation

During the 1910s African Americans suffered under a system of legalized race control that sought to deny them equal political, social, educational, and economic opportunity. Invidious methods of racial oppression were in place across the nation but especially in the South. During the 1910s more than 85 percent of African Americans lived in southern states, which had adopted what were known as "Jim Crow" laws in the 1890s and 1900s. While many of their white fellow Americans enjoyed the fruits of the nation's wealth, freedom, and opportunity, blacks were systematically denied civil and political rights, and their labor was exploited. The basis for legalized social segregation of the races was the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which declared the legality of separate facilities for black Americans. Following this ruling, southern states passed laws forcing black Americans to sit in less desirable seats in theaters (often in back balconies) and in railroad cars (in separate cars or in smoking sections) and to attend black-only public schools, which received much less funding than public schools for whites.

Disfranchisment

States also passed laws that denied African Americans' political rights by disfranchising them. Legislatures across the South passed laws instituting the poll tax and the literacy test and were backed up by white-on-black violence. By 1910 black voters had been effectively disfranchised in all southern states. The denial of black civil, educational, and political rights, together with the economic exploitation of African Americans in the sharecropping system, fueled an exodus of blacks from the South. During the 1910s more than three hundred thousand African Americans fled to northern cities to find work in wartime industries. This Great Migration began broad-based demographic changes that continued for the rest of the century. Amid the horrors of an America divided by racism, African Americans organized and achieved political victories.

Legal Battles

Founded in May 1910, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) emerged from the Niagara Movement and the National Negro Committee and focused its efforts on education, litigation, and legislation. In November 1910 W. E. B. Du Bois began publishing The Crisis, the NAACP monthly journal, and by 1918 the magazine had one hundred thousand subscribers. In 1911 the National Urban League was founded to help southern black migrants adapt to city life and the realities of urban politics. In 1915 the NAACP had its first major victory when in Guinn and Beale v. United States the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the "grandfather clause" in the Oklahoma state constitution, which exempted citizens from certain voting qualifications if their grandfathers had voted. The effect of this "grandfather clause" (and others like it) had been to disenfranchise African Americans whose grandfathers had been slaves while giving voting rights to whites who could not meet qualifications (such as literacy) that were enforced for blacks. In Buchanan v. Warley (1917), another case argued by NAACP lawyers, the Supreme Court struck down segregationist housing laws in Louisville, Kentucky. In State v. Young (1919) the Court declared that black Americans should be allowed to serve on juries.

The Antilynching Crusade

The NAACP also focused attention on the need for antilynching legislation. The gruesome legacy of vigilante "justice" by lynching is a sordid chapter in American history. There were seventy-six recorded lynchings in 1910, sixty-seven in 1911, thirty-eight in 1917, sixty-four in 1918, and eighty-three in 1919. In 1917 ten thousand African Americans marched silently down Fifth Avenue in New York City to protest lynchings. Still, Congress passed no antilynching legislation, despite an atmosphere of racial violence that sometimes boiled over into race riots.

Race Riots

In 1917 a riot started in Houston after police beat an African American soldier. Seventeen whites and two blacks were killed in the ensuing mayhem. Thirteen blacks were executed, and many more were given life terms in prison for their roles in the riot. (The last African American soldier imprisoned as a result of these riots was released from prison in 1938.) In 1917 race riots in East Saint Louis broke out after African American replacement workers were brought in to take the jobs of white workers who were striking at a defense plant. Spurred by the intense racism of white union leaders and others in the city, tensions were running high when word spread that an black man had shot a white man in a robbery. A vigilante mob gathered and rampaged through the streets beating black citizens and shooting into and setting fire to the homes of many African Americans. Blacks mobilized in response to the violence. The National Guard was called in, and when the riots subsided, thirty-nine black and nine white citizens lay dead. Twenty-five major race riots occurred in 1919—among them, a riot in Chicago that started when four black youths tried to cross onto a "white" beach on Lake Michigan. A black swimmer was killed, and a week of violence followed. The militia was called out, and thirty-eight people were killed in the rioting. Despite such treatment at home African Americans served their country loyally when called to do so during World War I. The Ninety-third Division—a segregated force of African American soldiers—was the only U.S. contingent allowed to fight as part of the French army.

Sources:

Allen D. Grimshaw, ed., Racial Violence in the United States (Chicago: Aldine, 1969);

Donald G. Nieman, Promises to Keep: African-Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).