4-4+USH

Abby Regan 11/10/11 USHCP Mr. Masterson

Key Terms: Sharecropping: A farmer worked in a piece of land in exchange for a share of the crop, a cabin, seeds, tools, or livestock. Crop-Lien System: To get the supplies that they needed, they had to promise a share of their crops to merchants, who in turn sold them goods on credit. Poll taxes: Fixed taxes on every voter. Literacy Tests: Tests that kept people who couldn't read from voting. Segregation: Separation of races Jim Crows: Segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson: African American Homer Plessy was refused a seat in a first class railway car and brought his case to Court, but they ruled that "separate but equal facilities didn't violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Key People: Madame C.J. Walker: A leading African American entrepreneur who was one of the first women in the United States to become a millionaire. Booker T. Washington: An African American leader who believed that they should concentrate on becoming ecomonically independent, and not protest against discrimination.
 * Ida B. Wells: An African American leader who focused on stopping the lynching of African Americans, and urged her people to leave the South.

Summary:

Changing Economies in the South
 * When some planters lost their land because they couldn't pay the taxes, and other planters or northern investors ended up taking the lands.

Sharecropping
 * All planters faced labor shortages because they couldn't afford to pay their workers much.
 * Many planters solved their labor shortage with share cropping.
 * Sharecroppers had no income until harvest time, and the crop-lien system wasn't working well for them.
 * The system wasn't working well because sharecroppers couldn't gain independence or work their way out of poverty, and merchant only wanted certain crops, usually cotton.

Industrial Growth
 * One crop agriculture kept the south in poverty and dependent on the North, so Henry W. Grady suggested that the South make it's own goods.
 * This didn't work well, as white industrial workers earned much less than the Northern workers, most African americans couldn't find any factory work at all, and some industrial workers had to buy good on credit from the company store.

The Rise of Jim Crow
 * African Americans were still forced to work on farms, and Democrats took control of the state legislatures in order to take rights away from african Americans.
 * There were poll taxes and literacy tests made to keep African americans from voting.
 * State laws enforced Jim Crow laws, which kept African Americans separate from whites: i.e. they couldn't ride the same train as whites.
 * African Ameicans often sued because they were being treated unfairly, but the Court said that the treatment of them wasn't against the Fourteenth Amendment.

African American Life
 * In some cities of the South, the African American middle class was growing.

Farmers and Planters
 * Most African Americans didn't have the oppertunity to improve their economic status, but some purchased farm land and large plantations.
 * Some African Americans formed coopertives, who provided for the the care of sick members and imposed taxes to help the poor, in order to buy farmland.

Industry and Business Walker and her daughter, A'Lelia founded a beauty school called Leila College, and later opened a lab and a beauty salon and had African American women selling her products.
 * Some African Americans also organized Chespeake, Marine, and Dry Dock Company, which raised and borrowed a lot of money to buy a shipyard and a marine railway.
 * A few African Americans also owned small businesses, such as barber shopsor blacksmith shops.
 * Born Sarah Breedlove, Walker was born in 1867 in Louisiana, married at age 14, and worked as a cook and laundress for the nexty 17 years after her husband died.
 * Walker developed a hair conditioner for women, and opened a hair preparations company, and married journalist C.J. Walker.
 * Walker often contributed to African American causes such as school, until she died in 1919.

Responses tom the Jim Crow Era
 * Even though some of their people were successful, many African Americans still faced discrimination.
 * Many African Ameicans didn't like Washington's idea of cooperating with the whites, and wanted to protest unfair treatment.