*Due to the numerous events in this unit, this post will be split into 4 parts: New South, Disenfranchisement, Early Civil Rights, and WWI.*
The South tried as much as it could to hold on the white supremacy that should have ended long before it started. The end of slavery angered many white people in Georgia, as well as the rights making African Americans legal citizens. The people of Georgia thought of a new plan. A plan that could take away the rights of African Americans, but look like it didn't. What they came up with was disenfranchisement. Disenfranchisement was a system to keep blacks from voting. There were several different ways that whites limited blacks' votes:
- White Primaries
- Poll Tax
- Grandfather Clause
- Literacy Test
White Primaries kept blacks from voting because it said that African Americans can't vote in big elections, such as presidential or gubernatorial (governor) races.
The Poll Tax was the most effective and longest lasting form of disenfranchisement. It's pretty obvious what it did: it made you pay to vote. This meant that African Americans, who had it hard to find jobs and make money, couldn't be able to pay the tax. This did, however, also affect Whites as well. There were and are poor people of all races, so this meant that if you were poor, you couldn't pay. However, this found a solution, for they didn't even charge white people (remember, disenfranchisement was meant to keep African Americans from voting, not whites!).
The Grandfather Clause worked pretty well in the earlier days, but it died out quickly. It said that if your grandfather was a slave, you couldn't vote. This didn't last long because time went on, meaning that grandfather would be great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and so on.
The final main form of disenfranchisement affected whites as well, but it was solved in the same way as the poll tax. Back then, you had to take a literacy test to be able to vote, literacy meaning the ability to read and write. This meant that blacks, who had to work all the time and didn't have time for learning, couldn't read. This system cheated even for literate blacks. Whites, who were giving the tests, made them outrageously hard. Even if the African American passed with flying colors, the white would either make it even harder or would just deny their literacy.
There were most likely other ways to keep blacks from voting, including the picture provided of intimidation. Luckily, disenfranchisement became illegal later on, even though it went against the 15th amendment. You will read later on about the end of Poll tax and other forms of disenfranchisement.
Unfortunately, whites didn't end their spite for African Americans with voting. This is where the Jim Crow laws came in. Jim Crow laws were a set of laws set throughout the South. Their main goal was to enforce segregation. Segregation is a term that means you keep a select group of people separate. Segregation was enforced everywhere: restrooms, drinking fountains, railcars, theaters, restaurants, buses, schools, and so on. Anywhere you went in public would most likely have some sort of segregation. The Jim Crow laws were very powerful and influential in Georgia and throughout the South, and would end in the late 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement.
Homer Plessy was a main who had duel lineage: he was white, but he had some black ancestors in his family. As you can see from the picture, he looked white. But having any black in you meant that you had to be in the "colored only" sections of public places. In 1896, Homer Plessy was sitting in the whites only section of a rail car. When the conductor talked to Plessy, he told him that he had African American descent, and was proud of it. The conductor then tried to make him move to the colored only section of the railcar. Plessy refused, and was jailed. He then had a trial, which moved all the way to the US Supreme Court. The court case was entitled "Plessy vs Furguson." The case said that segregation was legal as long as the facilities were equal in quality. This is where the term "separate but equal" comes in, and stuck until the late 1960s. This case was a landmark because it made white supremacists happy, but it also started a long list of African Americans to get equal freedom for their people.
Let's go now to 1906. The location is Atlanta. The claim came from a rumor stating that black men were assaulting white women.
This lead to a huge outrage among white supremacists, who then took action. On September 22 through September 24, many African Americans were attacked and killed by vigilantes. They destroyed businesses, and garnered much attention. The event started even more African Americans to prove that they are equals, and that white people can be just as "evil" as they are.The Poll Tax was the most effective and longest lasting form of disenfranchisement. It's pretty obvious what it did: it made you pay to vote. This meant that African Americans, who had it hard to find jobs and make money, couldn't be able to pay the tax. This did, however, also affect Whites as well. There were and are poor people of all races, so this meant that if you were poor, you couldn't pay. However, this found a solution, for they didn't even charge white people (remember, disenfranchisement was meant to keep African Americans from voting, not whites!).
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| Disenfranchisement Symbolism |
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| Intimidation, a rarer type of Disenfranchisement |
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| Segregation of a drinking fountain |
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| Homer Plessy |
Homer Plessy was a main who had duel lineage: he was white, but he had some black ancestors in his family. As you can see from the picture, he looked white. But having any black in you meant that you had to be in the "colored only" sections of public places. In 1896, Homer Plessy was sitting in the whites only section of a rail car. When the conductor talked to Plessy, he told him that he had African American descent, and was proud of it. The conductor then tried to make him move to the colored only section of the railcar. Plessy refused, and was jailed. He then had a trial, which moved all the way to the US Supreme Court. The court case was entitled "Plessy vs Furguson." The case said that segregation was legal as long as the facilities were equal in quality. This is where the term "separate but equal" comes in, and stuck until the late 1960s. This case was a landmark because it made white supremacists happy, but it also started a long list of African Americans to get equal freedom for their people.
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| 1906 Atlanta Race Riot News Headline |
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| Leo Frank |
Blacks weren't the only ethnic group to be attacked. Such example of this would be the lynching of Leo Frank. Leo Frank was a Jewish businessman who came from the north. He owned a pencil factory in Marrietta, Georgia where several teenage girls worked. Such a teenage girl was Mary Phagan. In 1913, a janitor who worked at the factory found Mary Phagan killed with her body in the basement. This caused an uproar in Georgia, and Leo Frank was put in prison. In 1915, while in prison and awaiting trial for life, the white anti-Semitic (meaning anti-Jewish) group called the "Knights of Mary Phagan" took Leo out in the middle of the night and drove his several hours away. At the location the group took Frank and lynched (meaning hanged) him without any evidence against him. This group later on reformed into the new era of the KKK. Several decades later Georgia pardoned him for the crime. This meant that he was forgiven for the crime, but not necessarily innocent.
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