On the eve of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin describes the intense deliberations that went into two historic Court decisions: Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and the Dred Scot decision of 1857.
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Following the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, "Jim Crow laws," which discriminated against African Americans, were justified as offering "separate but equal" accommodations. Overturned in 1954 by the case Brown v. Board of Education, segregation began long before Plessy. Answer these questions on the history of Jim Crow.
1. The term "Jim Crow" originally referred to:
b. A popular burlesque song and theatrical dance number
White actor, singer, and dancer, Thomas D. Rice, wrote and performed "Jim Crow" (sometimes called "Jump Jim Crow" because of the first line of the chorus) in 1829 or 1830. To perform the song, Rice dressed in tattered rags and frolicked comically to impersonate a very low caricature of a black man. His performances became an overnight sensation among white audiences, and he performed all over the country. He then took his act to Britain and France, where it became an even bigger hit.
One dismayed English drama critic in the London Satirist, however, wrote: "Talent is of no country, neither is folly; and were 'Jim Crow' of English creation, we should have assuredly dealt as severely with it as we have now done with the bantling of the new world--perhaps more so, for we would have strangled it in its birth to prevent it begetting any more of its own species to offend the world's eye with their repulsive deformities. The circumstance of its being an exotic, the production of the pestilential marshes of backwood ignorance, has had no effect with us in giving our opinion. There is no concealing the fact, that Jim Crow owes its temporary triumph in this country to one of those lapses of human nature which sometimes occurs, when the senses run riot, and a sort of mental saturnalia takes place." Quoted in "Jim Crowism," Spirit of the Times (New York), February 4, 1837.
2. "Jim Crow cars" were separate railway passenger cars in which blacks were forced to travel, instead of in the passenger cars in which whites took their seats. The term "Jim Crow cars" first came into use:
a. In the mid-1830s, in Massachusetts and Connecticut
Segregated public transportation began in the North before the Civil War. In many parts of the South, a black could not travel at all, unless he or she was accompanying (or accompanied by) a white, or carrying a pass from a white person.
The inconsistencies themselves bred conflict. One Massachusetts newspaper editor wrote, "South of the Potomac, slaves ride inside of stage-coaches with their masters and mistresses—north of the Potomac they must travel on foot, in their own hired vehicles, or in the 'Jim Crow' car. … What a black man is, depends on where he is. He has no nature of his own; that depends upon his location. Moreover the contradictions that appertain to him, produce corresponding contradictions in the white man. … Seriously, very seriously—do not the incongruities, the strange anomalies, in the condition of the coloured race, clearly show there is terrible wrong somewhere? … The confusion of tongues is terrible; the confusion of ideas is worse." From "Incongruities of Slavery," The Friend, March 26, 1842, quoting the [Worcester] Massachusetts Spy.
3. Among the very first deliberate African American challengers to Jim Crow practices in public transportation was:
b. Frederick Douglass, who refused, in 1841, to give up the first-class seat on the Eastern Railroad he took when he boarded the train at Newburyport, MA, and move to the train's Jim Crow car
Douglass may not have been the very first, but he appears to have been one of the first. African Americans in New England, beginning in late 1839, along with white abolitionists, with some successes, deliberately challenged extra-legal but fairly common Jim Crow accommodations on railroads, on stagecoaches, in churches ("Negro pews"), and in schools. The persistence of Jim Crow practices in the North, however, gave Southern slave-holding whites the opportunity to reproach even abolitionist Northern whites for "not treating their free blacks better."
4. After the Civil War, the practice of formally segregating whites and blacks working in Federal Government offices was instituted during the administration of which U.S. President?
c. Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson, who had been born in Virginia, soon after he took office in 1913, began a government-wide segregation of blacks and whites in Federal workplaces, restrooms, and lunchrooms. The policy appears to have been instituted after Wilson's Georgia-born wife Ellen visited the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington and "saw white and negro women working side by side." Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, William McAdoo (also Georgia-born, and soon to be the Wilsons' son-in-law) took the hint. Shortly thereafter, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John Skelton Williams issued an order segregating the races in the Bureau. A Washington-wide order, covering all Government offices, followed, and soon all Federal offices everywhere in the country were covered by the same order.
Looking for more on Jim Crow laws and the impact of segregation on African Americans' lives? Try American Public Media's Remembering Jim Crow, for excerpts of oral histories from those who lived through segregation. Their close-to-an-hour-long radio program, Radio Fights Jim Crow, also looks at segregation—this time, at World War II-era radio programs that challenged civil rights abuses and stereotypes of African Americans.
The History of Jim Crow, created to accompany the PBS documentary miniseries The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, goes beyond guides to the series' four parts, providing essays, interactive maps, and lesson plans.
Race and Place: An African-American Community in the Jim Crow South: Charlottesville, VA, maintained by the University of Virginia, traces racism and segregation through the history of one city, with primary sources including oral histories, personal papers, newspapers, images, census data, maps, city records, and political materials.
For six lesson plans on segregation and education in a one-room Virginia schoolhouse, visit Teaching at Laurel Grove, from the Laurel Grove School Association.
Arriving in the U.S. by choice or against their will, minority groups sought ways to express their uniqueness and maintain a sense of community. How better to come together than as an audience—or as a group of performers? Answer the following questions on multicultural performing arts in the U.S.
1. During World War I, New York City audiences (if they knew the language of the performance) could attend patriotic musicals with titles like ____ War Brides and ____ Martyrs of America. What ethnic group fills in the blanks?
a. Jewish
From the late 1880s to around 1940, Yiddish-language theatre found a home in New York City—as did the wave of Jewish immigrants who brought the performance form to the U.S. Fleeing persecution in Russia, these immigrants, whether they chose to be performing artists or audience members, developed a unique theatre culture. Unlike the short variety acts of contemporary vaudeville, Yiddish theatre presented full-evening-length plays, accompanied by music or broken up with song-and-dance numbers. Plays adapted popular works by authors like Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov, drew from folklore and folk customs, and/or commented on recent events in the U.S. and abroad. Some addressed issues of assimilation, such as intermarriage and generational gaps, while others praised the virtues of the immigrants' adopted country—as did the musicals mentioned above.
2. In 1852, a 42-member opera troupe arrived in the U.S. After giving successful performances to immigrants from its country of origin, it traveled to New York City, where non-immigrants panned its performances. Where did the troupe come from?
d. China
In 1852, the Tong Hook Tong Dramatic Company arrived in California, following the stream of Chinese immigrants who had come to the state with the 1848 gold rush. Greeted warmly by immigrant audiences, they accepted a contract to perform in New York City. In New York, they discovered the contract was a scam, and secured their own theatre space, performing for New Yorkers independently. Chinese opera bears little resemblance to European opera, and even less to the "Oriental" image of China then popular on the mainstream stage. Confused by what they were seeing, New Yorkers rejected genuine Chinese theatre that did not match up with contemporary media stereotypes.
3. In the 1960s and 1970s, a grassroots theatre movement, beginning in efforts to educate migrant farmers and encourage them to form unions, took off, spreading across the United States. Which minority group did this movement represent?
c. Chicanos
In 1965, Luis Valdez, the son of Chicano migrant farm workers, founded the theatrical company El Teatro Campesino. El Teatro Campesino took theatrical performances—often without props, sets, or written scripts—directly to the camps of migrant farm workers. In its performances, the company sought to inspire farm workers to form a farm workers' union, but it also performed pieces based on Mexican popular theatre: corridas (dramatized ballads), peladitos (comic skits with an underdog protagonist), and religious pageants.
El Teatro Campesino's success led to the growth of a national Chicano theatre movement, which peaked in the 1970s.
4. In the late 1910s and the 1920s, record companies including Okeh, Paramount, Vocalion, and Columbia began releasing records by performers from which minority group?
c. African Americans
Prior to the Great Migration of the early 20th century, when African Americans came north in search of a better life, major record companies released African American music, but only as performed by white performers. Sensing the potential for a new market, the companies began to record African American performers and release their music on special labels targeted at African American audiences. Called "race records," these records were later marketed to white audiences as well. African Americans also established their own companies to distribute records—the first African American owned label, Black Swan, was established in 1921. Many styles of music associated with race records would later be recategorized as "rhythm and blues."
The Library of Congress's American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 includes a subsection just for Yiddish-language playscripts. It encompasses 77 unpublished manuscripts, as well as an essay on Yiddish theatre. Brown University Library has digitized a collection of sheet music covers, including many songs from Yiddish musicals.
Today, only one professional Yiddish theater remains in the U.S.—the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, in New York City. Founded in 1915, the company now promotes the preservation of the Yiddish language and theatre traditions.
Also from the Library of Congress, The Chinese in California, 1850-1925 archives approximately 8,000 primary source images and documents on Chinese immigrant life in California from the gold rush years through the early 20th century. Try searching by keyword "theater" or "theatre" to find images of theatrical (though not operatic) productions. For other resources on Chinese immigrants, enter "Chinese" as a keyword in NHEC's History in Multimedia search for online lectures, podcasts, and other presentations or in the Website Reviews search for websites with valuable primary sources.
For more on the influx of Chicano migrant workers in the mid-20th century, refer to NHEC's blog post on teaching Mexican American history with the Bracero Program (the Bracero Program was the largest guest worker program in U.S. history). Also look at PBS' The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers' Struggle, made to accompany the documentary of the same name, for information on Cesar Chavez, Mexican American labor activist. Luis Valdez established El Teatro Campesino to support and further Chavez's goals.
PBS' Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns, also designed to accompany a documentary, features an article on race records. NPR offers a short audio presentation on the first recorded blues song sung by an African American artist—"Crazy Blues," sung by Mamie Smith—one of the first steps in the establishment of the race records market.
In March 2010, the 23rd U.S. census went out—220 years after the first census, in 1790. What do census questions tell us about American society and values? Look at the categories of census data below and select the year in which the information was collected.
1. 1790
families with 11 or more members
families holding 2-4 slaves
avg. slaves per slaveholding family
free colored slaveholding families
persons of Scotch nationality
persons of Hebrew nationality
2. 1840
white persons 20 years of age and over who cannot read and write
scholars in primary and common schools
female slaves 55-99 years of age
free colored females under 10 years of age
men employed in newspaper production
persons employed in navigation of canals
3. 1870
male citizens 21 years of age and over
persons born in Africa
persons 10 and over who cannot read
total state taxation
public debt of the county
youths employed in manufacturing
4. 1880
persons born in China
Indians
colored persons
farms 500-999 acres rented for fixed money rental
average hours labor per week in iron and steel manufacturing
average youths and children employed in manufacturing
5. 1900
other colored females 5-20 years of age
illiterate foreign-born alien males 21 years of age and over
native white illiterates 10 years of age and over of native parentage
farms of colored owners and tenants
capital invested in buildings used in manufacturing
salaries of salaried officials, clerks, etc. in manufacturing
6. 1910
rural population
white persons born in asian turkey
native white males of voting age of mixed parentage
Indian, Chinese, Japanese and male of all other races of voting age
persons 15-17 years of age attending school
farms of foreign-born whites
In 1790, federal marshals collected data for the first census, knocking by hand on each and every door. As directed by the U.S. Constitution, they counted the population based on specific criteria, including "males under 16 years, free White females, all other free persons (by sex and color), and slaves." There was no pre-printed form, however, so marshals submitted their returns, sometimes with additional information, in a variety of formats.
In 1810 and 1820, additional categories appeared, collecting information on "free White males and females under 10 years of age," as well as those "10 and under 16," "16 and under 26," "26 and under 45," and "45 years and upward." "Free colored persons" and slaves were now counted separately as were "all other persons, except Indians not taxed" and "foreigners not naturalized." Through the decades, the census continued to expand, including a growing number of questions on agriculture, manufacturing, living conditions, education, crime, mortality, and increasingly, race and ancestry.
The census has always had political implications, informing conscription, Congressional representation, and the collection and allocation of taxes. It has also always both reflected and shaped social divisions. Before 1960, census enumerators interviewed families in person and without consulting the individuals, selected which box to check for "race." Starting in 1960, largely for financial reasons, the Census Bureau mailed forms directly to households, thereby allowing individuals to select their own boxes. This led to a fundamental change in the way race was categorized and measured. In 2000, for the first time, individuals could select more than one box and about 6.8 million Americans did so, reflecting the complex nature of racial and ethnic categories today.
The 2010 census is designed to count all residents and will ask a small number of questions, such as name, sex, age, date of birth, race, ethnicity, relationship and housing tenure. The longer American Community Survey will collect socioeconomic data annually from a representative sample of the population.
For searchable (and map-able) databases of historical census data from 1790 to 1960, refer to the University of Virginia's United States Historical Census Data Browser. For more current information, try the official website of the U.S. Census Bureau..
I am trying to find a good website that have the demographics during 1890-1915. Could you please give me a direction to go in?
Luckily, population studies play a role in many facets of government funding and studies. The wealth of information on U.S. demographics is rooted in the U.S. Census Bureau. The first census was taken in 1790 and included men, women, free, and enslaved persons. For more information on the history of one of the first government agencies, read the Teachinghistory.org article, Stand Up and Be Counted: Teaching with the Census which also provides guidance on lesson plans.
In the early twentieth century, Carter G. Woodson, son of former slaves with a PhD from Harvard University, established Black History week, the precedent for Black History Month. Countless online resources probe the narrative of African American history.
Gilder Lehrman Institute offers essays on the Civil Rights movement from The Historian's Perspective, lesson plans, and an interactive jukebox of songs of the Civil Rights movement through the online quarterly journal, History Now.
The Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library offers access to a wealth of digital materials and online exhibits, including In Motion: the African American Migration Experience and Images of African Americans from the 19th Century.
The Library of Congress has consolidated diverse primary source materials, thematic presentations, and multimedia options for exploring African American history through the gateway African American History Month.
EDsitement, a resource of the National Endowment for the Humanities, offers a compendium of resources and featured lessons from the antebellum period through the Civil Rights era, including lesson plans teaching history through music and literature.
The History Channel minisite, Black History includes highlights of the establishment of Black History month among video clips with prominent African Americans, brief essays, and related materials.
From the Facing History and Ourselves website:
"Educators are invited to join this free online workshop designed to introduce the resources and interactive features of Facing History's newly revised website, Choosing to Participate.
Choosing to Participate: Facing History and Ourselves is an engaging interactive multimedia exhibition that has won national praise for encouraging people of all ages to consider the consequences of their everyday choices and for inspiring them to make a difference in their schools and communities. The exhibition focuses on four individuals and communities whose stories illustrate the courage, initiative, and compassion that are needed to protect democracy and human rights."
From the Lincoln and New York website:
"This course introduces teachers to the scholarship behind the groundbreaking exhibitions Slavery in New York and New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War. Beginning with a survey of Dutch, British and American practices of slavery, teachers will explore the varied experiences of the enslaved men and women who built New York. In Part II of the course, teachers will examine key themes of the exhibition New York Divided, including New York City's economic and social connections to Southern slavery; the co-existence of anti-black and abolitionist sentiment in New York; and major events in New York during the Civil War, including the Draft Riots and the raising of African-American regiments."
"Teachers wishing to receive professional credit must register online with the New York After-School Professional Development Program; visit their website: https://pci.nycenet.edu/aspdp/. Teachers who do not wish to receive credit may register on Ed-Net, available at http://www.nyhseducationdb.org/login.aspx."
NOTE: The dates for this program are not yet set. It will take place in Spring 2010.
From the Lincoln and New York website:
"This course introduces teachers to the scholarship about the history, legacy, and memory of the Underground Railroad. Beginning with a survey of the history of slavery in this country to provide historical context for further learning, participants will then explore the workings of the Underground Railroad. Through document and object analysis, case studies, use of online resources, guest speakers, and field trips, participants will examine key figures in the Underground Railroad and the effects of their actions on the nation. Participants will receive scholarly resources and reproductions of primary source materials."
"Teachers wishing to receive professional credit must register online with the New York After-School Professional Development Program; visit their website: https://pci.nycenet.edu/aspdp/. Teachers who do not wish to receive credit may register on Ed-Net, available at http://www.nyhseducationdb.org/login.aspx."
NOTE: The dates for this program are not yet set. It will take place in Spring 2010.
From the National Humanities Center:
Slave narratives comprise one of the most influential traditions in American literature, shaping the form and themes of some of the most celebrated and controversial writing, in both autobiography and fiction, in the history of the United States. In recent years, as their importance has been recognized, slave narratives have appeared on more and more high school literature curricula. How did they evolve? What are their major themes? How do narratives written by men differ from those written by women? How do they portray slavery and freedom? How have they influenced later writing, and what can they say to students in the 21st century?