The Nadir Period (1888-1920)
Reconstruction
http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction
Jim Crow: Banning Interracial Marriage
Jim Crow in the Nadir Period
1896: Plessy v. Ferguson
What these theories tell us
- Plessy attempted to sit in an all-white railroad car
- Plessy was arrested for violating an 1890 Louisiana law that provided for segregated “separate but equal” railroad accommodations.
- Raises question: Can the states constitutionally enact legislation requiring persons of different races to use “separate but equal” segregated facilities?
- Court decision: Yes.
- Theories that attempt to explain violence based on objective data - i.e. economics, politics, region, population, legal mechanisms of social control - do not have ample evidence.
- The Subculture of Violence (1967) Marvin E. Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti
- discusses the psychological, cultural, and otherwise subjective motives behind lynching that can’t be explained through objective data
- This approach is able to explain "the sadism and extraordinary savagery that was evident in it.”
- racial segregation state and local laws enacted during the Nadir period in Southern United States
- three major themes
- separation of races in public places such as schools, parks, accommodations and transportation
- disenfranchisement of adult black males through poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tricks
- banning of miscegenation, or interracial marriage
- Nebraska 1911 - “Marriages are void when one party is a white person and the other is possessed of one-eighth or more negro, Japanese, or Chinese blood.”
- Mississippi 1920 - “Any person...presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six months or both fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court.”
- also a violation of the First Amendment
Post-war civil-rights legislation
- After the Civil War, Southern states attempted to combat the 13th Amendment with "Black Codes"
- The Federal Government responded by passing a series of Acts and Constitutional Amendments to protect the rights of black citizens
- From 1876-1906 much of this legislation was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court using the 10th Amendment as justification.
- Conform to community
- Consequences
- Sexual division of labor, denial of jobs
- Gender inequalities
- "Black Spaces"
Example: Civil Rights Cases (1883)
- The 14th Amendment applies to State (not private ) affairs
- The 10th Amendment reserves rights not granted to the federal government to the state and to the people
- “The 13th Amendment has respect, not to distinctions of race…but to slavery.…” The abridgment of rights presented in this case are to be considered as “ordinary civil injur[ies]” rather than the imposition of badges of slavery,” (Donald, 1977, 16). - Justice Joseph P. Bradley
- Sets the stage for Jim Crow and extralegal methods during the Nadir period
Lynching and Black Women's Voices
Jim Crow : Separation in public places
241 people were lynched across 26 states
-160 of these individuals were Black
Ida B. Wells published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
Anna Julia Cooper published A Voice from the South
Personal Explorations
Structural Theories to the Surge in Violence
Jim Crow: Poll taxing & Literacy tests
1863
Emancipation Proclamation
- “The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis”
- Studies have rejected the original justification that it was the post-wartime socio-economic stress that caused the increase in violence
- “The Power-Threat Hypothesis” (1967) Hubert Blalock
- studies have rejected the theory that violence stemmed from competition over economic resources and/or political power
- it supposes that lynching would increase exponentially as black population increases in a given area
- Lauren - Psychological Effect
- Sheila - Personal Narratives
- Liz - Laws and Legislation
- Nicole - Racial and Gender Violence
- Tennessee 1891 - “All railroads carrying passengers in the state (other than street railroads) shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the cars by a partition, so as to secure separate accommodations.”
- Oklahoma 1915 - “The Corporate Commission is hereby vested with power to require telephone companies in the State of Oklahoma to maintain separate booths for white and colored patrons when there is a demand for such separate booths.”
- Louisiana 1898 - Grandfather Clause: No male person who was on January 1st, 1867, or at any date prior thereto, entitled to vote under the Constitution or statutes of any State of the United States, wherein he then resided, and no son or grandson of any such person not less than twenty—one years of age at the date of the adoption of this Constitution... shall be denied the right to register and vote in this State by reason of his failure to possess the educational or property qualifications prescribed by this Constitution;
- every state formally belonging to the Confederacy required some sort of poll tax by 1904
1888-1920: Nadir
Movie clip from The Secret Life of Bees
- meaning “lowest point” or “the time of greatest dejection”
- regarded as lowest point in American race relations after slavery
- Southern states enforced legal segregation as well as racial violence and intimidation
- "According to the NAACP, 3,290 people were lynched in the South between 1889 and 1931, (NAACP, 1919, 1920-32). Of these victims, 2,789 (or 85%) were black."
- During this time, African American women were the most overlooked population, doubly oppressed by their race and gender
"Extralegal" methods of subjugation
During the Nadir Period, African American women were denied the basic rights of American citizenship through legal, social, and cultural discrimination as well as racial and gender violence. Reflecting on this history provides a clearer definition as to what it means to be an American citizen and what exactly is deprived when those rights are withheld.
- Threats of violence
- Humiliation
- Dehumanization
- Rape culture
- black women were "unrapeable"
- Lynching
- Intimidation: Public display of violence
The Rise of Social Darwinism
- Became popular in the 1890s --> forward
- The ideology that science supported the subjugation of blacks because they are intellectually inferior and destined to die out anyway