The Darker Side of the 1920s

Sharecropping Blacks rented land & equipment from

white farm owners in exchange for a portion of the crop or a share of the profits

Farm owners overcharged and cheated the African-Americans so badly … They finished the year in debt Only method of payment - labor

Racist Politicians Interested in stripping African-Americans

of all their rights Example – Carter Glass of Virginia

“The people of the original thirteen southern states curse and spit upon the 15th Amendment and have no intention of letting the Negro vote. White supremacy is too precious a thing to surrender for the sake of a theoretical justice that would let a brutish African deem himself the equal of white men and women in Dixie.”

“Grandfather Clause” One way Southern states prohibited

African-Americans from voting If a man’s grandfather had voted pre-1867, he

was exempt from harsh voting requirements African-American men did not have the right

to vote until 1870, so they had to meet these requirements while whites did not

Guinn v. US overturns these in 1915

Voting Requirements Poll Taxes

Men had to pay to vote and many African-Americans couldn’t afford this tax

Literacy Tests A man had to prove he could read before he was

allowed to vote Many African-Americans couldn’t read and those who

could were given very difficult or foreign language passages to read (Results scored by white men)

http://kpearson.project.tcnj.edu/interactive/imm_files/test.html

Lynching The murder of

individuals by mob action without lawful trial

Means to control African-Americans’ “resistance” to oppression

3,000 “documented” cases from 1882-1920

More Lynching Exposed the ugliest side

of human nature Newspapers announced

dates and locations A festive occasion for the

entire family Prevailing belief –

They’re all rapists Most guilty of minor

offenses (at best) http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=bTxU5_hjCQE&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1

Reaction to Lynching “We have crawled and pleaded for justice and we have been cheerfully spit upon and murdered and burned. If we are to die, in God’s name let us perish like men and not like bales of hay.”

-Du Bois

More Reaction to LynchingStrange Fruit By Lewis Anderson, sung by Billie Holiday Southern trees bear strange fruitBlood on the leavesBlood on the rootBlack bodies swinging in the southern breezeStrange fruit hanging from the poplar treesPastoral scene of the gallant southThe bulging eyes and the twisted mouthThe scent of magnolia sweet and freshThen the sudden smell of burning fleshHere is a fruit for the crows to pluckfor the rain to gatherfor the wind to suckfor the sun to rotfor the tree to dropHere is a strange and bitter crop

Birth of a Nation – 1915 Showed KKK as saviors Showed blacks as violent rapists of

white women Most profitable film 1915-1937 “It is like writing history with

lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true.”

Woodrow Wilson http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=E4s2zl2trn0&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1