Should the Gilded Age simply be seen as a period of reaction and lack of progress in African American civil rights? (OCR interpretation question)

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  • Created by: Alasdair
  • Created on: 05-06-17 21:01
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  • Should the Gilded Age simply be seen as a period of reaction and lack of progress in African American civil rights?
    • Yes
      • White democrats regained political control of South
      • Black voters dependent on livelihood from white people were subject to wholesale economic coercion
      • 1880s, white planter class, or 'Bourbon' aristocracy enjoyed political power across South
        • State government in South sought to exclude black people from political life altogether
      • New laws introduced meaning applicants for voter registration had to pass literacy tests
        • Declared constitutional by Supreme Court
      • Constitutional guarantees not enforced
      • West was more indifferent to black people than South
    • No
      • AAs found law infrequently ineffective weapon for addressing racial injustice
      • Used buying power as leverage against white businesses
        • e.g. setting up insurance and banking companies as well as all-black unions
      • Georgia AAs built 1,544 schools that educated more than 11,000 students
      • AAs established African Methodist church in 1816
        • Grown dramatically at end of Progressive Era
          • Segregated from white Protestant Church
      • All-black universities such as Howard (1867), Spelman (1881) and Fisk (1866)
        • Fact they had developed own businesses and universities had developed sophisticated debate over nature of full and equal place for AAs in society
      • Achieved constitutional guarantees even if not enforced
      • Support given by Booker T. Washington by Alabama for his institute and success of many educational establishments laid basis for great deal of civil rights agitation later on
      • Economic success in North
      • Part played by AAs in Westward Expansion
      • Up to a quarter of 'cowboys' on Western ranches were AAs
      • AA trappers, farmers, miners and shopkeepers
      • One AA cowboy, Nat Lowe (or 'Deadwood ****') wrote about Western adventures and was a formidable  shot and cattle roper
      • All black towns in West such as Allenworth, California, and Dearfield, Colorado
      • Former slave, Mary Fields, was stagecoach driver who earned formidable reputation
      • AA lawmen, e.g. Bass Reeves, who was Deputy US Marshal who won reputation for arresting thousands of criminals and shooting fourteen outlaws

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