A Child's Life in a Segregated Society, 1880s-1930s (lesson 4)

A Child's Life in a Segregated Society, 1880s-1930s (lesson 4)

Students will recognize that segregation was a system supported by both law and custom that threatened African American people in all parts of their lives. Students will examine photos and other primary sources, read excerpts from oral histories of African American people who lived during segregation, and reflect on how African American people managed to raise, care for, educate, and try to protect their children and young people even within this system.

Students will:
1. Consider both secondary and primary sources to understand the system of Jim Crow segregation.
2. Use a variety of primary sources including photos and especially oral histories to investigate how African Americans manage to raise families in this harsh system.

grades 4, 7, 11

Grade 4: Virginia Studies

VS.1 The student will develop skills for historical and geographical analysis including the ability to: (a) identify and interpret artifacts and primary and secondary source documents to understand events in history; (d) draw conclusions and make generalizations; (e) make connections between past and present; (g) interpret ideas and events from different historical perspectives; (h) evaluate and discuss issues orally and in writing.

VS.8 The student will demonstrate knowledge of the reconstruction of Virginia following the Civil War by: (a) identifying the effects of Reconstruction on life in Virginia; (b) identifying the effects of segregation and "Jim Crow" on life in Virginia.

Grade 7: United States History II – 1877 to the Present

USII.1 The student will demonstrate skills for historical and geographical analysis, including the ability to: (a) analyze and interpret primary and secondary source documents to increase understanding of events and life in United States history from 1877 to the present; (b) make connections between past and present; (d) interpret ideas and events from different historical perspectives.

USII.3 The student will demonstrate knowledge of how life changed after the Civil War by: (c) describing racial segregation, the rise of "Jim Crow," and other constraints faced by African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South.

Grade 11: Virginia and United States History

VUS.1 The student will demonstrate skills for historical and geographical analysis, including the ability to: (a) identify, analyze, and interpret primary and secondary source documents, records, and data, including artifacts, diaries, letters, photographs, journals, newspapers, historical accounts, and art to increase understanding of events and life in the United States; (c) formulate historical questions and defend findings based on inquiry and interpretation; (h) interpret the significance of excerpts from famous speeches and other documents.

VUS.8 The student will demonstrate knowledge of how the nation grew and changed from the end of Reconstruction through the early twentieth century by: (c) analyzing prejudice and discrimination during this time period, with emphasis on "Jim Crow."

Estimated time is two, 1-hour lessons, but feel free to adapt this lesson to your needs.

Segregation was more than an attitude – it was a system supported by both law and custom, and its purpose was to control newly freed African American people. The system of racial domination was carefully constructed to accomplish its goal.
Its economic component was meant to control black labor, and included job discrimination that limited African Americans to agricultural and service jobs. Sharecropping, an essential part of this system, assured white planters of continuing black farm labor by establishing a cycle of debt. This was accomplished by “fixing the books,” debt peonage, vagrancy laws, a credit system, and a convict lease system. These tactics prevented black people from receiving wages due them or moving when their situation worsened. Often these laws were modeled on Slave Codes during slavery.
Politically, segregation disfranchised freedpeople and suppressed black political action – especially the expression of newly gained rights as citizens (14th Amendment) and the right of black men to vote (15th Amendment). Disfranchisement was a two-stage process. First the Ku Klux Klan and other related groups used violence and the threat of violence to suppress black political action. Lynching and other violence was justified by the threat of miscegenation, and the alleged need to protect white women against rape by black men. The second kind of disfranchisement came in the form of laws designed to prevent blacks from voting, including literacy requirements, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and all-white primaries. These laws were carefully crafted to avoid the 15th Amendment – they could not explicitly use race as a barrier to voting.
A key piece of this system of control was Jim Crow laws and customs. More than a series of strict anti-black laws – it was a way of life that affected whites as well as blacks. There were many state laws touching all aspects of life, including these typical Jim Crow laws:

o Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia).

o Blind Wards. The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race (Louisiana).

o Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons (Georgia).

NOTE: Eleven additional Jim Crow laws are available at http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm

During Jim Crow segregation African Americans were not passive; they responded, resisted and negotiated in a variety of ways. Among the most famous responders were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. They represent two different approaches. Washington, born a slave in Virginia, became a well-known educator and founded Hampton Institute in Virginia then Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In his important and influential Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895, he stressed accommodation rather than resistance to the racist order under which southern African Americans lived. Acutely conscious of the narrow limitations whites placed on African Americans’ economic aspirations, he stressed that blacks must accommodate white people’s – and especially southern whites’ – refusal to tolerate blacks as anything more than sophisticated menials. In this 1895 speech to the predominantly white audience, Washington said:

“Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are… to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen… [I]n our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. 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. DuBois, on the other hand, was born free and was the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. In 1903 as an influential black leader and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois published an essay in his collection The Souls of Black Folk with the title “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.” DuBois rejected Washington’s willingness to avoid rocking the racial boat, calling instead for political power, insistence on civil rights, and the higher education of Negro youth. In 1905 DuBois and other middle-class but militant Black intellectuals, including Ida Wells Barnett, and some whites organized the Niagara Movement, and later the NAACP. Included in their “Declaration of Principles” was this statement on the Color-Line:

“Any discrimination based simply on race or color is barbarous, we care not how hallowed it be by custom, expediency or prejudice. Differences made on account of ignorance, immorality, or disease are legitimate methods of fighting evil, and against them we have no word of protest; but discriminations based simply and solely on physical peculiarities, place of birth, color of skin, are relics of that unreasoning human savagery of which the world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed.”

Many African Americans resisted Jim Crow segregation. Among their strategies and tactics were collective protest, migrating north (or west) especially to urban communities, creating their own institutions, especially educating their children for a better life. Education particularly offered African Americans hope and a sense of possibility. Chafe, Gavins, and Korstad, in their introduction to Remembering Jim Crow, recognize:

• “The extraordinary resilience of black citizens, who individually and collectively found ways to endure, fight back and occasionally define their own destinies…”

 “The enduring capacity of families to nurture each other, and especially their children, in the face of a system so dangerous and capricious that there were no rules one could count on for protection. Under these circumstances parents still managed to convey a sense of right and wrong, strength and assurance.”

 “The incredible variety, richness and ingenuity of black Americans’ responses to one of the cruelest, least yielding social and economic systems ever created.”

1. For HS students an opening activity might be: place students in small groups and give each group a total of three Jim Crow laws. Fourteen examples of Jim Crow laws (including the three included in the Historical Background) are available at http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm Students should read the laws together and discuss what they think was the intent of each law and its impact on both blacks and whites.

2. Next tell students that they will be using a selection of primary source images to decide/answer the question: what was segregation? And note that we’ll start by working together on the notice/question/context process.

3. Give each student a copy (and possibly have a copy on a smart board or overhead projector) of the three signs without the full caption. For each image provide the place and date where given, but save the full caption until students discuss what they noticed and ask their questions.

4. Direct students to work in pairs and distribute the chart. Request that students begin by thinking on their own. (This is a Think-Pair-Share activity.) Ask students to jot down on the chart what they notice and also make a note of any questions they have. These are purposely open-ended tasks, with the goal being for students to focus and think first on their own, and then to have pairs of students discuss what they found.

5. Examples of things students might notice and question include: these are public signs, likely found in a variety of places commonly used including transportation (trains, busses), housing, hotels and restaurants; it seems important that no one gets these directions wrong (big, clear signs). Questions might include – where were these signs, in the south and/or beyond? What happens if one does not follow these instructions?

6. Reconvene the class as a whole and ask students to share what they noticed and the questions they had, and write their basic points on the board under Notice and Questions. Provide the rest of the caption. For HS students a variation for steps # 4-6 is to complete this activity in a large group setting. Students could call out what they notice about the various signs, and the teacher could record this information in the first column on a T chart under Notice on the board. In the second column, list the Questions the students have. For ES and MS students it would be useful first to scaffold their analysis of the primary source images. This could be done by breaking down the process into four steps:
 Take an overview look at the image
 Divide the image into four parts (a quadrilateral view) and examine each piece separately to note what one actually sees
 Gather together all the information that they actually saw: what is actually there?
 Put their information together and make inferences: what conclusion(s) can they draw?

Best to have the teacher model this first, then teach students to do it, and next have students practice this process independently in their small groups.

7. Have students work in small groups using the same process, and give each group one of the other six primary source images. OR give each small group a set of the six images to work on. Note that once each group will be reporting out what they noticed and their questions – and that together they will be able to hypothesize an answer to the question – what was segregation?
• Drawing/cartoon “One Vote Less”
• Photo of KKK Parade in Washington
• Ballot “No Negro Equality”
• Poll Tax Receipt
• Photo of colored drinking fountain
• Photo of older black woman and little white girl

8. Examples of things students might notice, question, and what was segregation include can be found in attachment, "Chart for Images, Students & Teacher."

9. Reconvene the class as a whole and ask students to share what they noticed and the questions they had, and write their basic points on the board under Notice and Questions. Provide the complete captions for each image.

10. Based on students’ observations and questions ask them to answer the question: what was segregation?

11. The next step is to connect students’ observations and questions to the historical context. Use the Historical Background and the Three-Part Time Line to do this in whatever method makes sense to you and your class. Be sure to acknowledge where students came up with historically accurate conclusions on their own from the primary sources.

12. Once they have a clearer sense of the system of segregation, tell students that they will be working with oral histories. Explain that oral history is the process in which people interview others about their experiences during a particular period, having framed questions thoughtfully and then listen carefully to what they say and record their answers. They will look particularly at what it was like growing up as an African American in this society. There are a variety of oral history excerpts to choose from, and you can select as many as is practical. We have also included a poem. If you choose both the oral history and the poem, best to make the distinction between the two.

13. For HS and possibly MS students it is useful for the teacher to model how to read and/or listen to the oral history excerpts before students begin to work on their own. Written excerpts from some people are also recorded: Olivia Cherry and Charles Gratton. The teacher should select one of these, give students written copies, and have students follow along as they listen. Next work with students and together answer these guiding questions:
a. What happened?
b. Who was involved?
c. What does this piece of history tell us about growing up in a segregated society?
d. What strategies, ways of thinking and acting did people use to deal with the harshness of segregation?

The remaining excerpts could be placed around the room at stations. Students could travel in groups from station to station reading and analyzing the documents by answering the above guiding questions.

14. Distribute copies of one of the oral history excerpts and/or set up speakers with your computer to hear the audio. Direct students to read/ listen carefully to what is happening.
• After reading/listening to the excerpt, ask students to answer the above guiding questions which you can write on the board or a flip chart. ES teachers might read selected oral history excerpts aloud and direct their students to listen to and be able to describe the experience of the child in each excerpt. Then in a language arts lesson, students could select one excerpt and write a journal entry about how they might feel if confronted with a particular situation. Many students by this age have faced – or seen – some form of prejudice or discrimination, so this is a good opportunity to make connections between their struggles and challenges and those faced by young people of a different era. HS students might skip the next activity for the sake of time. It is likely to work better with MS and ES students.

15. Direct students to work in their groups. Directions for students:
• If needed, refer to guidelines for effective group practice, such as noting various roles, the task of including all opinions, listening to each other, etc.
• Distribute copies of one or two excerpts of oral history per group of four or five students so that all students in a group have the same information. They can read it aloud or listen to an audio version, then discuss using the four guiding questions noted above what happened in the story, and what they think the story means in terms of what it was like to live in this society.
• The students’ next task will be to select one of the stories to retell, dramatize or draw/illustrate to share with the whole class.
To dramatize the story, they can use some of the retelling strategies, but the point here would be to have a narrator and perhaps some of the key people in the story speak about and/or act out the events. To draw or illustrate, students would need the appropriate materials (chart paper, markers, etc.), and they would decide on the key people and events, and draw them in sequence (as in a story board) or select one scene. To share their drawing, students would need to narrate some of the key points for emphasis.
• Have each group of students share their stories by using their chosen method, providing support and encouragement as they do this. Best if teachers can note key points made by each group to use in summary.

16. To debrief this activity the teacher should orally go through these questions with students so that they can sort out and reflect on what they have learned about growing up in the Jim Crow era. Specifically:
• What aspects of segregation were most challenging to raising resilient children and youth?
• What did these people value in their lives? • How did these families convey their values to their children?
• How did parents try to protect their children from the harshness of segregation? To what degree do you think they succeeded?

Wrap up
1. The activity above that asks students to work in small groups to read and represent.
2. To assist students in making connections between the experiences growing up in a segregated society and their own lives, have students end this lesson by working on their own and writing in their journals using these sentence stems.
[Note: For elementary students, this can be done as a language arts activity or as a discussion if time is short.]
• From reading, seeing and listening to these stories and presentations, I have learned that/ I will remember that …
• One or two events that stand out for me from these stories is/are … because…
• One thing in these stories that is like my experience growing up is … That is most different from my life experience is …
• The person/people I most admire from these stories is/ are… because…
• If I had lived during this era I probably would have…

3. Once students have completed this activity, ask for volunteers to share any one piece with the whole class.

4. HS students could work in pairs or individually to create a political cartoon on a child’s life in segregated America.
Additional sources to explore the economic aspect of Jim Crow segregation ES students could use this information to teach the cycle of debt in a math lesson, with the teacher making a debt wheel. Use the vocabulary: opportunity and opportunity costs, and credit/debt/debt peonage. From Prof. Wendi Manuel-Scott’s PowerPoint Presentation: Cycle of debt
 “fixing the books”
 “settlin’ time”
 Debt peonage
 Credit system
 Vagrancy laws
 Convict lease system
 Involuntary servitude Sharecropper Contract, 1882

To every one applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be read, and agreed to. To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to furnish the team, plow, and farming implements . . . The croppers are to have half of the cotton, corn, and fodder (and peas and pumpkins and potatoes if any are planted) if the following conditions are complied with, but-if not-they are to have only two-fifths (2/5) . . . All must work under my direction. . . . No cropper is to work off the plantation when there is any work to be done on the land he has rented, or when his work is needed by me or other croppers. . . . Every cropper must feed or have fed, the team he works, Saturday nights, Sundays, and every morning before going to work, beginning to feed his team (morning, noon, and night every day in the week) on the day he rents and feeding it to including the 31st day of December. ...for every time he so fails he must pay me five cents. The sale of every cropper's part of the cotton to be made by me when and where I choose to sell, and after deducting all they owe me and all sums that I may be responsible for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds. Work of every description, particularly the work on fences and ditches, to be done to my satisfaction, and must be done over until I am satisfied that it is done as it should be.
SOURCE: Grimes Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in Robert D. Marcus and David Burner, eds., America Firsthand (1992), pp. 306—308. From Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South.

Books & Media

Chafe, William H., Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad, eds. Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South. New York: The New Press, 2001. Includes both the book and two accompanying CDs with selections from this oral history collection. Used for the Historical Background and the oral history excerpts.

Manuel-Scott, Wendi. The Civil Rights Movement, Race and the Tradition of Black Protest, and Teaching Jim Crow. PowerPoint Presentations for Fauquier and Alexandria, VA Teaching American History grants, 2005-06, and the Laurel Grove School Curriculum Project, 2008.

Taylor, Mildred. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. New York: Puffin Books, 1997. This often-read classic is set in the Jim Crow south during this period and told from the vantage point of a child/children. Particularly: an account of what it was like to receive your first books at school and find what was written by white children in the front – and how to cope with this situation in dignity, pp.15-31; and an account of what it’s like to be ignored and dismissed at your local store because of your race – and how children had to carefully weigh their responses, pp. 109-116.

The Great Debaters, a 2007 film that captures both the considerable challenges of living in the Jim Crow south, as well as the strategies that blacks developed for overcoming these challenges. “A wonderful cast and top-notch script elevate The Great Debaters beyond a familiar formula for a touching, uplifting drama.”

Websites

http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/index.html Online exhibition from the National Museum of American History’s exhibit Separate is Not Equal.

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm
Offers definitions, explanations, photos, examples of laws and Jim Crow etiquette.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/
Especially useful sections on Jim Crow Laws, Lynching and Riots, and Jim Crow Stories. The lesson plans and activities are also useful.

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org
The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has an extensive digital collection.

Primary Sources:

• Photographs and other images of segregated society

• Photos of restrictive signs

• Drawing/cartoon “One Vote Less”

• Photo of KKK Parade in Washington

• Ballot “No Negro Equality”

• Poll Tax Receipt

• Photo of colored drinking fountain

• Photo of older black woman and little white girl

Chart to Examine Seven Images

• Selected oral history excerpts from Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South

• Bitter Truths: Ralph Thompson on experience as a child (drinking water out, parents shielding children and ice cream with no stools story), Lillian Smith, Charles Gratton (pp. 4-7), Anne Pointer on going to elementary school, housing, baths, clothes, food, and especially pride in selves (pp. 43-47).

• Families and Communities: Maggie Dulin on going to the movies (p. 100), David Matthews on determination of parents to educate their children and daily experience of going to school (pp. 107- 109).

• Lessons Well Learned: Ann Pointer on walking to school and passing white schools (p.155), William J. Coker Jr., on valuing reading (p. 158), Delores Thompson Aaron on good teachers (pp. 169-170).

• Resistance and Political Struggles: Olivia Cherry on the importance of one’s name (pp.296-298).


Poem:
"We Wear the Mask" (1896), by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

Students will understand that segregation was a system supported by both law and custom that threatened African American people in all parts of their lives. Even so, many of these people found ways to endure, fight back, and even define their own destinies. Students will recognize that, in a world that seemed unsafe and unpredictable, education offered hope that a better day might come.