UW-Madison SOC 220 - African American History Lecture Notes

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African American History Lecture NotesPamela Oliver Sociology 2201880s. Populist movement. threatened s'n planter elite. class interests: ideology of smallfarmers transcending race. [some truly biracial groups, others racist.] intense conflict betweenPopulists and planters. black vote went either way. eventually both sides of whites agreed ondisenfranchising blacks. Democratic planter elite appeals to white supremacy and racial purity,were effective so that Populists were effectively painted as nigger party. After 1890, efforts toget rid of black vote are very explicit. One delegate to Virginia constitutional convention of1900 openly says that goal is to eliminate every Negro voter who can be gotten rid of legallywithout materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate. Working aroundfederal constitution. e.g. Louisiana 1896, 130,344 blacks registered; after 1898 revision of Laconstit, only 5,000 blacks registered, with ultimate low of 1,772 in 1916. In 1896, blacks amajority of voters in 26 parishes, by 1900 in zero. ! Planter divide and conquer strategydestroyed the Populist movement and preserved cotton tenancy. Consequences: destroyedability to bargain politically, or to lay whites against each other; allowed violence against blacks,because no electoral threat; because only 10% of blacks lived outside south in 1900,disenfranchisement in south was also national disenfranchisement. Although white southerners refused to vote Republican, Rep party after 1876 disavowedits radical wing, including its blacks, and tried to appeal to southern whites. Parties aboutbalanced nationally, Reps needed some southerners to govern nationally. After 1892, gave uptrying to get white southerners, especially as their efforts were threatening to alienate blacks,their one loyal, natural constituency. Became a northern party. Around 1900, all but six stateswere effectively one-party states, governed by one or other. 1896-1928, blacks had no politicalsignificance: disenfranchised in south, where there were many, concentrated mostly in one-partyareas.Blacks: 90% rural, 90% southern. No political leverage. Economicallydependent. Illiterate. Threat of numbers in southern areas leads to extrememeasures to keep them suppressed.There is resistance to Jim Crow. There are bus boycotts against segregation in the cities. Rhetoric of citizenship, equality. Northern, educated blacks speak out for equality, citizenship. But lose.Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, black nationalist, demanded $40 billion in reparations forslavery, preached God is black, involved in "African Fever", organized International MigrationSociety for a dollar-a-month plan to pay for passage to Liberia; not feasible, but facilitatedpassage of 500+ to Liberia 1895-1896.Assimilationist vs. Separatist Impulses. Whites define the boundary. Blacks have toreact to it. Assimilationist: stress common cultural heritage, desire for citizenship, share"American values" Separatist: stress value of own culture, look back to homeland (Africa), stresseconomic development, political self-determination.Assimilationist/Integrationist Separatist/NationalistAccommodationist today's "black conservatives" Booker T. WashingtonReformist Urban LeagueNAACPRadical, Militant Martin Luther King, Jr.W.E.B. DuBoisA. Philip RandolphMarcus GarveyMalcolm XLouis FarakhanRevolutionary Black communists Freedom Fighters1895-1915. Booker T. Washington. challenged by William Monroe Trotter and William E BDuBois, high middle-class origin.[Source: Louis Harlan "Booker T. Washington and the Politics of Accommodation" in BL]. Atlanta Compromise, concedes social, civil, political inequality. calls for black economicadvancement, white money to black economic development. no need for right for blacks to go tothe opera when you don't have money for the ticket. black solidarity, mutual aid, institution-building. Tuskeegee, all-black, not white missionary school. educated blacks for independencewhile not threatening whites, who really wanted uneducated sharecroppers. built a real machine,controlled virtually all white money for blacks. had to go through him, advised presidents. gotfederal jobs for this people. used financial subsidies essentially to control black press. allianceswith white and black business elites. had no real sympathy for working class or working classmovements. operating in period of lynching, massive repression. would tell stereotypic raciststories to disarm whites. Did attack lynching, and work privately against segregation laws anddisenfranchisement. But also spied on, sabotaged other black leaders, used Pinkerton detectives. Did try to build black business and use politics to "get what he could get."WEB DuBois. Source: Elliott Rudwick, "WEB DuBois: Protagonist of the Afro-AmericanProtest." Fisk College. Harvard Ph.D., German University training. never considered for job atmajor univ; Atlanta Univ. He plus Trotter founded Niagra Movement 1905, then NAACP, 1909. Organized critics of Washington. prophet of pan-Africanism, problems of black masses,interested in socialist and Marxist approaches. black intellectual who oriented himself to themasses. critic of gradualism. at first did social research to publicize problems of blacks. ignored, situation deteriorated. became convinced that protest was necessary. Washington usedcontrol over black press to stymie efforts to get message out to masses. When Niagra movementwas failing, brought in a few prominent white sympathizers to found inter-racial NAACP. publicity, courts, lobbying. membership overwhelmingly black, but leadership white-funded andwhite-dominated, with DuBois only black in inner circle. he provided link to small band ofblack radicals. chief propagandist. calls for resistance to oppression to make oppression toocostly. The Crisis is NAACP magazine; his forum. Also Pan-Africanist, cultural nationalist:should maintain culture and institutions, and make a distinct African contribution to humanity. "see beauty in black" 'different kind of people'. Also economic nationalist, black capitalism;later when socialist, advocated black consumer and producer coops. cultural nationalismresonated among blacks, but socialism never widely accepted. [cf black accounts of involvementwith CP, which explicitly attacked racism and had programs for blacks, but usually ended upbeing criticized for white-domination.] Got attacked by Garvey for being too


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