Leader
Glenda Gilmore
Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History
Yale University
National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
African Americans emerged from Reconstruction in the 1870s with the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. They took their places as free and increasingly successful citizens in the 1880s. During that decade in the South, African Americans voted, served on juries, won public office, pursued education, and improved their economic status. In response to these successes, in the 1890s, white Southerners undertook the systematic implementation of white supremacy under a regime that became known as Jim Crow.
By 1910 African Americans in the South were effectively disenfranchised and segregated from whites in public spaces. Analyzing primary resources from the Library of Congress and the National Humanities Center, this seminar will explore how this happened, why it happened, and how African Americans responded.
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Assigned Readings
- Black Codes.
- Ku Klux Klan Violence in Georgia, 1871.
- Congress Passes Civil Rights Act of 1875.
- African American Progress after Slavery.
- Harlan's Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.
- "Jim Crow" Car, Richmond Planet, poem.
- "Colorphobia in the Memphis Schools," Cleveland Gazette, 1884. Ohio Historical Society.
- "Separate Waiting Rooms," Wilmington Messenger, 1906. Going to the Show.
- "Jim Crow Cars," Wilmington Messenger, 1899. Going to the Show.
- "Is it a Boycott?" Wilmington Star, 1907. Going to the Show.
- "To Fight Segregation," Cleveland Advocate, 1917. Ohio Historical Society.
- "Chicago Whites Urge Race Segregation," Cleveland Advocate, 1919. Ohio Historical Society.
- Ida B. Wells Railroad case.
- Ida B. Wells with widow of Tom Moss, lynching victim, c. 1893.
- Lynch Law in All its Phases.
- Ida B. Wells in England.
- North Carolina's white supremacy campaign, 1898.
- “Somewhere” in the Nadir of African American History, 1890-1920,” Glenda Gilmore. Freedom's Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. We also recommend: Jim Crow in America. A Library of Congress Primary Resource Set.