A Divided Society

III – Racism and the Ku Klux Klan

ARGUMENT 1.  A Time of Oppression  [SHACKLE]

1. Supremacism and routine racism

   • At this time in America's history 'WASP' Americans believed (and were told by 'eugenicist' scientists) that they were genetically superior to other races, and that they were harder-working, more intelligent and more civilised that other races.  Discrimination was EMBEDDED throughout American society, not only towards immigrants and African Americans (see below), but also – though not stated topics in your GCSE specification – towards Native Americans and Mexicans. 

 

2. Hostility to Immigrants

   • and the 'Red Scare' – see this page for more information. 

 

 

3. American Government and laws

   • the government refused to pass laws banning lynchings or giving Black Americans the vote.

   • in 1926 a Supreme Court judgement (Corrigan v. Buckley) upheld racial covenants in housing, allowing neighborhoods to remain segregated.

   • racial minorities faced discriminatry policing and harsher court sentences.

   • many unions, notably the American Federation of Labor barred non-white workers from joining t.

 

4. Jim Crow Laws

   • the name for laws passed in the southern states which prevented Black Americans from mixing with whites ('segregation'), marriage between the races ('miscegenation'), denied them equality of education and civil rights, and prevented them from voting.

 

5. Ku Klux Klan

   • an organisation to maintain WASPs supremacy, which had 5 million members by 1925.  Some supporters were poor whites, who did not want Black Americans to be their equals/feared they would take their jobs, but most were educated, middle-class white Americans.  They wore white sheets and hoods, and marched with burning crosses.  They spoke with each other in a secret language which they called 'Klonversations'.  At the local level, they campaigned for better schools and local improvements.  They also intimidated, attacked, tortured and killed Black Americans, but also Jews and Catholics and 'immoral' people such as alcoholics.

•  WHY DID THE KKK GROW SO QUICKLY 1920-24?   [AWESOME AS]

  • Anglo-Saxon white racism and nativism

  • WWI disillusionment

  • Economic Instability caused by immigration

  • Social community of the Klaverns

  • Opposition to modernism and cultural change

  • Media and theatricality

  • Enforcement of prohibition and morality

  • Anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish Protestant prejudice

  • Support for local political issues

 

6. Lynchings

   • mobs of white people often hanged ('lynched') Blacks Americans whom they suspected of a crime (usually the police turned a blind eye).

 

7. Even in the North

   • Black Americans ended up with the low-paid menial jobs, such as janitors, bootblacks, cooks, houseboys, baggage handlers, waiters, doormen, dishwashers and washroom attendants.  In 1919, white Americans in Chicago rampaged through Black neighbourhoods after a drowning black man clinging to a log had drifted into a whites-only swimming area.

Going Deeper

The links below will help you widen your knowledge:

BBC Bitesize on Prejudice and intolerance against African Americans and their responses

Historiography of the Second KKK

'Black' and 'White' - extensive resources on race in America

'Ku Klux Klan' - extensive resources on the KKK

  Essay: To what extent did African Americans share in the Boom of the 1920s?

YouTube

The Harlem Renaissance

Source A

A lynching (1935) - note the children.

ARGUMENT 2.  A Time of Flowering [RHINO]

1. Role models

   • some Black Americans became famous – the sprinter Jesse Owens, the baseball player Jackie Robinson, the dancer Josephine Baker.  They were an inspiration to other Black Americans. 

 

2. Harlem Renaissance

   • a cultural flowering in the New York Black neighbourhood of Harlem, based on jazz, but also excellent Black architects, novelists, poets and painters.  Many of these believed in 'Artistic Action' – winning equality by proving they were equal.

 

3. Identity

   • in 1925 Alain Locke wrote The New Negro, who had to smash the old image of 'Uncle Tom' and 'Sambo', and develop a new identity, 'uplift' the race and fight for equality.  There were Black newspapers and magazines.  This was the time when the phrase was coined: 'Black is Beautiful'.

 

4. NAACP and UNIA

   • Set up in 1909 after the Springfield race riot of 1908, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) challenged discrimination in the courts, organized mass protests, and produced artistic material.  It published a magazine called The Crisis, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois.

   • UNIA was founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914.  Through its newspaper Negro World, it was very influential before Garvey was deported in 1927; pledging to protect the rights and heritage of people of African descent, both in Africa and in the New World.  The movement planned to repatriate African Americans back to Liberia, Africa ... until in 1924 the government of Liberia did a deal with the Firestone Rubber Company for the land it had promised to lease to UNIA.

5. One-and-a-half million...

   • Black Americans migrated from the south to the north.  Although many of them ended up in low-paid jobs, some of them formed a new Black middle class, and were educated at university.