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Dean Rowley, Historian
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site
National Park Service, Atlanta Georgia
I.Segregation impossible under Slavery.
A.Intimacy needed for control.
1.House slaves looser, field hands tighter.
2.Harsh control, little harmony.
B.Urban slaves and urban free Blacks lived in segregation.
1.segregation not legal or total.
2.Reaction to levelling of differences between Races.
a.New Orleans lifestyle typical of Urban South.
(1)Mixed racially and ethnically
(2)No racially based superiority
b.More Black women than men, More White men than women.
C.Segregation more prevalent in North.
1.Legal and extra-legal means used.
2.Harsher segregation farther West.
3.Based on theories of Racial superiority.
D.Even Lincoln supported Black inferiority.
E.End of Civil war opened relations between races somewhat.
1.More use of previously segregated facilities at first
2.More friendly meeting between races.
3.Really Exceptional Period.
II.Between 1877 and 1890 many experiments and changes took place.
A.NO settled form of race relations in the South.
1.Mixed housing and work common.
2.Ex-slaves still could be recognized.
B.Much evidence of contemporary observers that Blacks were well treated in the Southern states as late as the late 1880's.
1.Evidence of friendly, even close personal relations.
2.Evidence of STRONG resistance to lynching.
C.Three alternate theories of Race relations.
1.Liberal - attacked segregation and demanded full equality - rejected.
2.Conservative - based on White superiority combined with Black acceptance.
a.Permitted limited Black success including voting
and resistance to worse aspects of segregation.
b.Dominant theory until 1890's.
3.Radical - based on appeal to Blacks as part of an oppressed class of laborers and farmers.
a.Pragmatic appeal for cooperation to improve conditions - Populist party.
b.Failed.
D.Possibilities other than segregation existed in the South at least from 1870 to mid 1890's.
III.Segregation justified by racism and prejudice.
A.Racism prevalent social theory of time.
1.Debate over existence of separate races at high point.
2.Assumption that each European nation was different
race, so national differences racial.
3.Appearance, skin color, location made a race.
B.Assumption that control needed to preserve best race.
1."Inferior" races breeding faster than "Superior".
2."Inferior" would overwhelm due to inherent barbarism and evil.
3."Superior" race must dominate or destroy "Inferior" for survival of Civilization itself.
C.Prejudice - separate from racism - due to conditions.
1.Blacks in U.S. mostly started as uneducated ex-slaves.
2.Blacks held menial jobs and had poor housing.
3.Blacks did not know well how to live in freedom.
4.Prejudice exaggerated problems of Black population as signs of inferiority.
IV.Segregation - legal separation of the races - developed slowly in the South.
A.Northern opinion developed to support of segregation.
1.Northerners accepted racism and White superiority.
2.Supreme Court decisions made between 1873 and 1898 provided background for Plessy v. Ferguson that legalized segregation.
3.In 1898 U.S. started imperialistic colonies.
a.Cuba, Philippines, Puerto Rico taken.
b.Rational for subjecting dark-skinned peoples of these islands applied to Blacks in U.S.
B.Southern Conservative position eroded.
1.Financial scandals in Southern governments in 1880's.
2.Conservatives attacked for helping Blacks.
3.Conservatives attacked as arrogant economic elite.
C.Young Southern Politicians and social leaders used White supremacy to reunite Southern Whites.
1.Black Disenfranchisement movement of 1890's first step.
2.Propaganda started about Black bestiality - Rape.
3.Blacks intimidated by terror - race riots of 1890's and early 1900's were Whites attacking Blacks.
4.Voteless, intimidated Blacks then compared to upstanding, moral Whites - unfavorably.
D.New literature developed glorifying the Pre Civil War South and Blacks of Slavery, not modern conditions.
E.Blacks accommodated to new conditions.
1.Frederick Douglass lived until February 1895 and opposed increasing racism and segregation until his death.
2.Booker T. Washington made Atlanta Compromise speech
in September 1895, accepted lesser status in exchange
for promise of chance to work out of it.
V.Segregation always based on more than laws.
A.Many laws were passed.
1.Atlanta had separate Bibles for Blacks and Whites to
swear oath in city courts.
2.Despite this, amount of segregation varied from place to place in South.
B.Real change was disappearance of friendly social relations.
1.White supremacy was enshrined as only proper relation between races.
2.Blacks had to show subordination.
a.Use of back doors in many stores.
b."Stephen Fetchit" behavior - smiling and dumb.
3.Any resistance to system smashed.
C.Treatment of Blacks in North not legal segregation, often not better.
VI.By the time Martin Luther King, Jr. born, segregation in full force in the South.
A.In 1915 Maurice S. Evans wrote on race relations in the South.
1.He was an Englishman from South Africa.
2.He found no difference between U.S. South and Africa South.
B.People who grew up under segregation were starting to accept it.
1.NO major racial upheavals in the South between 1906 and 1930's.
2.No Southern based protest organizations: NAACP in New York, Urban League in Chicago.
VII.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led his fight against this resistance.