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Jim Crow, Resistance & the Great Migration

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The nadir: Jim Crow and disfranchisement

The decades around 1900 are often called the nadir of African American life. Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws mandating segregation and used poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses to strip Black men of the vote. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal," giving constitutional cover to a deeply unequal system. Lynching — racial terror murder — enforced this order through fear.

Competing strategies of response

Black leaders debated how to respond. Booker T. Washington, in his 1895 Atlanta address, urged accommodation and economic self-help, arguing Black progress should come through vocational skill and patience. W.E.B. Du Bois rejected accommodation, demanding full civil and political rights now, championing higher education for a "Talented Tenth," and helping found the NAACP. Ida B. Wells launched a fearless data-driven anti-lynching campaign, exposing the violence through investigative journalism. Their differences framed Black political thought for a century.

The Great Migration

Between roughly 1916 and 1970, some six million African Americans left the rural South for cities in the North, Midwest, and West — the Great Migration. They were pushed by Jim Crow, racial violence, and the collapse of cotton tenancy, and pulled by wartime industrial jobs and the promise of greater freedom. The migration reshaped American cities, built new Black communities and political power, and set the stage for cultural movements like the Harlem Renaissance.

Worked example

In 1895 Booker T. Washington said, "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." W.E.B. Du Bois later criticized this stance. Analyze the disagreement.

  1. 1.Interpret Washington: the "separate as the fingers" metaphor accepts social segregation in exchange for economic cooperation and gradual advancement — an accommodationist strategy.
  2. 2.Identify the audience and context: a largely white audience in the segregated South of 1895, where open demands for equality invited violent reprisal.
  3. 3.State Du Bois’s critique: he argued accommodation surrendered the vote and civil rights, and that only agitation for full equality and higher education would secure real progress.
  4. 4.Weigh the debate: Washington emphasized survival and self-help under constraint; Du Bois emphasized rights and protest. Their split reflects a genuine strategic dilemma, not simply right versus wrong.
Answer: Washington accepted social segregation to pursue economic uplift within the constraints of the violent Jim Crow South, while Du Bois insisted that only immediate demands for full civil and political rights could bring real progress. The clash represents two enduring strategies — accommodation versus protest — for confronting oppression.
Checkpoint

The 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson is significant because it:

Watch out

Do not flatten Washington and Du Bois into "wrong" and "right." Both sought Black advancement under brutal constraints and disagreed on strategy. The exam rewards analyzing the trade-offs each accepted, not picking a winner.

Checkpoint

Which pair of factors best explains the Great Migration?

On the exam

Use the push/pull framework for any migration question, and connect the Great Migration forward: the new urban Black communities it created became the seedbed for the Harlem Renaissance and the mid-century civil rights movement.

Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.

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