Problem
I. Discuss the process by which black southerners lost their political rights after Reconstruction. How gradual or immediate was the process? How was the process justified? What measures were adopted to disenfranchise black voters without technically violating the Fifteenth Amendment?
II. Discuss black southerners' political activities in the decades following Reconstruction. In what instances did they retain or even increase their political influence? In what instances and under what circumstances were white southerners willing to work politically with black southerners? What did blacks' political fortunes reveal about the respective significances of race and class in late nineteenth-century southern society?
III. Violence against black Americans intensified at the same time that the United States began to expand its power overseas by military force. Compare the imperialist movement with the violence against black Americans. Was there a connection between the two trends? Were they two sides of the same coin? If so, why did black soldiers assist in the expansion of the American empire, and why did some prominent blacks support American imperialism?
IV. As a result of segregation, the textbook argues, "a white identity was perceived and treated as synonymous and commensurate with the broader public...while a black identity was defined in terms of the 'Negro's place.'" Explain what is meant by this statement, using political, social, and economic historical evidence.
V. Discuss the origins and outcome of thePlessyv.Fergusoncase. On what basis did the Supreme Court make its decision in that case? Was the Court's decision in line with its earlier rulings on questions of race and civil rights? Did the activists who instigated the case place too much faith in the fairness of the Supreme Court? What other means for seeking redress, if any, were open to them?
VI. How widespread was racial violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Should racial violence during this era be regarded as an occasional aberration, a systematic means of subjugation, or was it a combination of the two?
VII. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large numbers of African Americans migrated to southern cities. What new challenges did they face there? How did they respond to those challenges? Was urban life a substantial improvement over rural life?