Expert Topic A: Segregation and Violence

Expert Topic A: Segregation and Violence

Article #1

Session Topic
Protection of American Citizens

Negro expulsion from railway car, Philadelphia.Artist unknown.Wood engraving, inIllustrated London News, September 27, 1856.LC-USZ62-45698.
Federal efforts to ensure the rights of African-Americans in the South came to an end in 1877. Over the following four decades, without significant objection from the courts or the federal government, white supremacists enacted "Black Laws" which imposed strict segregation. Schools, churches, restaurants, hotels, public transportation, rest rooms, and water fountains were labeled "white only" or "colored." In hospitals, blacks could not nurse whites, nor could whites nurse blacks. Legal obstacles were erected and terrorism used to keep African-Americans from voting: in Louisiana in 1896 there were 130,334 blacks registered to vote; by 1905 only 1,342 were registered.
Pamphlet Excerpt
from"The Black Laws"byBishop B. W. Arnett
Members [of the Ohio House of Representatives] will be astonished when I tell them that I have traveled in this free country for twenty hours without anything to eat; not because I had no money to pay for it, but because I was colored. Other passengers of a lighter hue had breakfast, dinner and supper. In traveling we are thrown in "jim crow" cars, denied the privilege of buying a berth in the sleeping coach. This monster caste stands at the doors of the theatres and skating rinks, locks the doors of the pews in our fashionable churches, closes the mouths of some of the ministers in their pulpits which prevents the man of color from breaking the bread of life to his fellowmen.
This foe of my race stands at the school house door and separates the children, by reason of color, and denies to those who have a visible admixture of African blood in them the blessings of a graded school and equal privileges...We call upon all friends of Equal Rights to assist us in this struggle to secure the blessings of untrammeled liberty for ourselves and prosperity.

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Biography
Bishop B. W. Arnett(1838-1906)
B. W. Arnett was an African-American educator, minister, and elected official. He was born a free man in 1838 in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, where he taught school from 1859 to 1867. In his youth, Arnett lost a leg to cancer.
As an African Methodist Episcopal pastor, Arnett served parishes in Toledo, Cincinnati, and Columbus. In 1888, he was elected bishop, a position he held until his death in 1906.
In 1872 Arnett became the first black man to serve as foreman of an all-white jury, and in 1885 he was elected to the Ohio State Legislature from a district with a white majority. He was the author of the bill which repealed the Black Laws of Ohio. A forceful and compelling speaker, he was influential in Republican politics, thanks, in part, to his friendship with fellow legislator (and later president), William McKinley.

Expert Topic A: Segregation and Violence

Article #2

Session Topic
Mob-violence and Anarchy, North and South

George Meadows, "murderer & rapist," lynched on scene of his last crime. L. Horgan, Jr. (dates unknown). Photograph, c. 1889. LC-USZ62-31911
In the South, lynching was one of the terrorist tactics used to control and threaten the African-American. Between 1889 and 1918, a total of 2,522 black Americans were lynched, 50 of them women. These people were hanged, burned alive, or hacked to death. According to the mythology popular at the time, black men were lynched because they had raped white women, yet historians find that in eighty percent of the cases there were no sexual charges alleged, let alone proved. People were lynched for petty offenses such as stealing a cow, arguing with a white man, or attempting to register to vote. Social critic H.L. Mencken described the practice as one which "in sheer high spirits, some convenient African is taken at random and lynched, as the newspapers say, 'on general principles.'" No one was punished in the South for taking part in a lynching until 1918.
Pamphlet Excerpt
from"Lynch Law in Georgia"byIda B. Wells-Barnett
During six weeks of the months of March and April just past, twelve colored men were lynched in Georgia, the reign of outlawry culminating in the torture and hanging of the colored preacher, Elijah Strickland, and the burning alive of Samuel Wilkes, alias Hose, Sunday, April 23, 1899.
The real purpose of these savage demonstrations is to teach the Negro that in the South he has no rights that the law will enforce. Samuel Hose was burned to teach the Negroes that no matter what a white man does to them, they must not resist.

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Biography
Ida B. Wells-Barnett(1862-1931)

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931).
LC-USZ62-107756 DLC.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an African-American woman of striking courage and conviction. She achieved nationwide attention as leader of the anti-lynching crusade.
Raised in Mississippi after the Civil War, Wells worked her way through Rust College and taught school in Memphis, Tennessee. A writer, she became part-owner of a newspaper, the MemphisFree Speech. In May 1892, in response to an article on a local lynching, a mob ransacked her offices and threatened her life if she did not leave town.
Moving to Chicago, Wells continued to write about Southern lynchings. While investigating, she would go directly to the site of a killing, sometimes despite extreme danger. In 1895, she publishedThe Red Record, the first documented statistical report on lynching.
A forceful speaker, Wells lectured widely in the North and in Great Britain. She was a founding member of the National Afro-American Council, served as its secretary, and was chairman of its Anti-Lynching Bureau. Wells was also a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Wells married African-American rights advocate Ferdinand Barnett, and the couple published the ChicagoConservator. They were considered pillars of the black community of Chicago. Ida B. Wells-Barnett had several children, including Ida B. Wells, Jr.

Expert Topic B:Solving the Race Problem

Article #1

Session Topic
Industrial Education

Men working in a corner in the electrical division, Tuskegee Inst., Ala. Photographer unknown.Photograph, ca. 1913.LC-USZ62-25655.
The Civil War emancipated the slaves, but it did not prepare them to live as free men. Most were poor, illiterate, and skilled only in agriculture. To meet the immediate needs of these rural African-Americans, training schools were established across the South. One of the most important was Tuskegee Institute, headed by Booker T. Washington, who was appointed principal in 1881.
Students at Tuskegee Institute learned, in Booker T. Washington's words, "to do a common thing in an uncommon manner." The institute taught basic farming, carpentry, brickmaking and bricklaying, print shop, home economics, and other practical subjects, as well as basic secondary school courses. Manual training courses developed at Tuskegee served as models, not just in the United States, but in nations all over the developing world.
Presidents and dignitaries visited Tuskegee. The major philanthropic figures of the day -- such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie -- contributed heavily to its operation, confirming, in the words of a 1916 report of the U.S. Bureau of Education, "the partiality of donors in the North for schools of this order."
African-American critics charged that Tuskegee did little more than train its students to comply with the white social order of the South and that Tuskegee graduates, denied access to industrial positions, became domestic workers and manual laborers. However, Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington insisted that progress was being made.
Pamphlet Excerpt
from"Nineteenth Annual Report of the Principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute"byBooker T. Washington
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The chief value of industrial education is to give to the students habits of industry, thrift, economy and an idea of the dignity of labor. But in addition to this, in the present economic condition of the colored people, it is most important that a very large proportion of those trained in such institutions as this, actually spend their time at industrial occupations. Let us value the work of Tuskegee by this test...Our students actually cultivate every day, seven hundred acres of land, while studying agriculture. The students studying dairying, actually milk and care for seventy-five milch cows daily...and so I could go on and give not theory, nor hearsay, but actual facts, gleaned from all the departments of the school.
Biography
Booker T. Washington(1856-1915)

Washington, Booker Taliaferro. Cheynes Studio. Photograph, ca. 1903.LC-USZ62-49568.
For decades, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was the major African-American spokesman in the eyes of white America. Born a slave in Virginia, Washington was educated at Hampton Institute, Norfolk, Virginia. He began to work at the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 and built it into a center of learning and industrial and agricultural training.
A handsome man and a forceful speaker, Washington was skilled at politics. Powerful and influential in both the black and white communities, Washington was a confidential advisor to presidents. For years, presidential political appointments of African-Americans were cleared through him. He was funded by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, dined at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt and family, and was the guest of the Queen of England at Windsor Castle.
Although Washington was an accommodator, he spoke out against lynchings and worked to make "separate" facilities more "equal." Although he advised African-Americans to abide by segregation codes, he often traveled in private railroad cars and stayed in good hotels.

Expert Topic B: Solving the Race Problem

Article #2

Session Topic
Higher Education

Students seated at desks in class room, Tuskegee, Ala. Underwood & Underwood. Photograph, 1906.LC-USZ62-26266.
After the Civil War, there was a great and immediate need for teachers to educate emancipated slaves. To meet this need, the Freedmen's Bureau -- an agency of the federal government -- the American Missionary Society, and various churches established normal schools and colleges throughout the South.
In 1868, the Hampton Institute was established by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. In 1881, Tuskegee Institute began operation, with Booker T. Washington, -- an alumnus of Hampton -- serving as principal. These two schools provided what was called "practical education" -- training in agriculture, domestic science, and manual and industrial arts. Heavily endowed by industrial philanthropists, Tuskegee and its principal soon achieved worldwide importance and influence.
The question of whether the education of African-Americans should focus upon practical training or the liberal arts was to dominate discussions among black intellectual leaders for a generation. To many white leaders of the day, practical education meant a continuation of the black's status as domestic servant and manual worker. To the black leaders of the Niagara Movement, liberal education offered hope of true advancement.
Pamphlet Excerpt
from"The Primary Needs of the Negro Race"byKelly Miller
The first great need of the Negro is that the choice youth of the race should assimilate the principles of culture and hand them down to the masses below. This is the only gateway through which a new people may enter into modern civilization...The Roman youth of ambition completed their education in Athens; the noblemen of northern Europe sent their sons to the southern peninsulas in quest of larger learning...The graduates of Hampton and other institutions of like aim are forming centers of civilizing influence in all parts of the land, and we confidently believe that these grains of leaven will ultimately leaven the whole lump.
Biography
Kelly Miller(1863-1939)

Kelly Miller (1863-1939). Photo courtesy of Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
Kelly Miller was a force in the intellectual life of black America for close to half a century. Miller was a mathematician, a sociologist, an essayist, and a newspaper columnist. Born in South Carolina in 1863, he worked his way through Howard University, then did postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins, the first black ever admitted to that university.
Appointed professor of mathematics at Howard in 1890, Miller introduced sociology into the curriculum in 1895, serving as professor of sociology from 1895 to 1934. As dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, he modernized the classical curriculum, strengthening the natural and social sciences.
Miller was a prolific writer whose articles appeared in the major newspapers and magazines of the day. In the 1920s and 1930s, his weekly column appeared in more than 100 newspapers. On African-American education policy, Miller aligned himself with neither the "radicals" -- Du Bois and the Niagara Movement -- nor the "conservatives" -- the followers of Booker T. Washington. Miller sought a middle way, a comprehensive education system that would provide for "symmetrical development" of African-American citizens by offering both vocational and intellectual instruction.

Expert Topic C: Solving the Race Problem

Article #1

Session Topic
Address to the Country
Booker T. Washington's controversial address at the opening ceremonies of the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, September 18, 1895, argued the importance of material advancement over integration: " The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house." He called agitation for social equality "the extremest folly," and assured his white audience, "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."
The New YorkWorldcalled Washington's speech "a revelation," "epoch-making," and a "turning point in the progress of the Negro race." It was met with "unanimous approval." President Grover Cleveland had similar praise: "I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address...Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your race..."
Black leaders were not so enthusiastic. The brilliant W.E.B. Du Bois framed the terms of a heated debate when he warned that Washington was "leading the way backward." In an influential 1903 essay, Du Bois wrote, "So far as Mr. Washington preaches thrift, patience, and industrial training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him...But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinction and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds -- so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this -- we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them."
Pamphlet Excerpt
from"An Address Delivered at the Opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition""byBooker T. Washington
Our greatest danger is, that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands...No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top...To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down your bucket where you are...Cast down your bucket among these people who have...tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities...As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Learning Guide Answer Key: 1898 African American Council Meeting

Segregation and Violence session:

Protection of American Citizens Pamphlet- "The Black Laws" by Bishop B. W. Arnett

1. What occurred when federal enforcement of the 14th Amendment stopped in 1877?
   "Black Laws" were passed which imposed strict segretion. These legal acts, combined with terrorism, overcame any progress that had been made.
2. Name three significant accomplishments of Bishop B. W. Arnett.
   He was the first African American to serve as a foreman of an all-white juty.
3. He was elected to the Ohio State Legislature from a predominantly white district.
4. He was the author of the bill which repealed Ohio's Black Laws.

Mob-violence and Anarchy, North and South Pamphlet- "Lynch Laws in Georgia" by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

1. Name three offenses for which African Americans were lynched.
   Stealing a cow, arguing with a white man, attempting to register to vote.
2. What was the real purpose of the savage demonstrations toward African Americans?
   To teach them that, in the South, African Americans had no rights which the law would enforce.
3. For what is Ida B. Wells best known?
   Her crusade against lynching.
4. In the photograph of George Meadows, the title given to him, "murderer and rapist," is significant because. . .
   Because all Black men lynched were accused of heinous crimes when, in fact, most had committed only minor offenses.

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Solving the Race Problem session:

Industrial Education Pamphlet- "Nineteenth Annual Report of the Tuskegee Institute" by Booker T. Washington