Lesson 2:
The West and the South and the Peoples in Them in the Gilded Age
Cautions:
·
As
you look at this, keep in mind what happened to labor and business in Lesson 1.
·
In
this era, racism and sexism is national (and international) and supported by
fake sciences.
·
Do
not assume the dates are things you have to recall on a test. Dates are so you
can recognize order of events. Don’t memorize dates; think about meaning and
order.
·
Tests
do not cover all facts, but facts that are representative of major issues.
Facts that will be on the test are highlighted in yellow. To succeed, don’t memorize the facts but
figure out the whole.
·
This
content determines the course of America through today, but all things about
the Gilded Age are usually very hard for students.
What’s
covered on this webpage:
The
West - Native Americans from the Great Plains to the Rockies
The
South – Whites (Usually Native Born) and African Americans
The
South – African-Americans (Including the Reality of 1865-1877—and the Future)
1. What are the ways to make a living in
the West other than
agriculture? How do they start out and how to they end?
o
Gold
and silver mining in Colorado and Nevada
§ Initially at the surface by
individuals
Highly diverse immigrants and moving to the next gold or silver strike
§ Commercial mining
o
Cattle
to the east
§ Initially by cattle drives to the
railhead in Abilene
§ Later by big business (note: barbed
wire)
2. What are the ways to work in the West
in agriculture?
How do they start out and how to they end?
o
Homesteaders (the law involved?) – the challenges in the west? (interest
rate in Midwest = 25%)
Note: farmers’ revolt by 1890s (covered in the next Lesson)
o
Commercial
farming/Bonanza farms
3. Racial/Economic Targets in the West
o
Chinese,
specific local laws against
§ 1877, California anti-Chinese mobs
§ 1882, Chinese Exclusion Act
o
Mexican-Americans
1. Where did the Indians who are there
come from? Example: the Cherokees
2. What did the Constitution say and had been the policies
before 1865?
3. 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty – Plains
Indians allow passage along “wagon trails” (means?)
4. Sampling of events
o
1862
“hungry Sioux warriors” – Minnesota Valley
o
1864
Colorado – “Indian camp flying a white flag of truce” (means?)
o
1867
Attempt –- creation of the “Indian Peace Commission” – solution distant reservations (means?)
o
1867
– Some move to western Oklahoma, some Dakota Territory (means?)
o
1876
– Custer and Sioux – Little Bighorn, Montana Territory
o
1890-
Ghost Dance movement – Wounded Knee, South Dakota – “nervous soldiers fired
into a group of Indians who had come to surrender”
o
1881
– Attempt – Helen Hunt Jackson – A
Century of Dishonor
5. Finishing blow 1887 – Dawes Severalty Act (what’s
severalty?) – 160 acres (where have you heard that number?) to heads of
families
o
Reformers
approved it
o
Westerners
approved it
o
Reality:
1887-1934 – Indians lost 86 million of 130 million acres
1. What are the ways to make a living in
the South other than
agriculture? How do they start out and how to they end?
o
Textile
mills
o
Tobacco
(cigarette factories/American Tobacco Company)
o
Steel
(Birmingham—“Pittsburgh of the South”)
o
Timber
(pine) – Northern investors bought up vast pine forests throughout the region
and set about clear-cutting them.
2. What are the ways to work in the
South in agriculture?
o
Landowner/store
owner/controller of the math (interest rate in the South = 50%)
o
Crop-lien system
§ Restriction to grow only the cash
crop
§ small farmers
§ tenant farmers
§ share croppers
o
By
1900 fewer than 30% own land
3. Why are the prices of crops (like
cotton) going down? (Why doesn’t that apply to manufactured goods? – what’s the
law involved?)
4. What are the realities for working
folk in the South?
o
60%
of national average per capita
o
11%
illiterate (50% of blacks)
Look at the
past data on African Americans in the South. What do these things tell you?
o
1865-1877
§ Black
males vote
§ Amendments to the Constitution–the supreme
law of land (means?)
·
13th amendment
·
14th amendment
·
15th amendment
§ What led to the 14th and
15 amendments?
§ Civil
Rights Act of 1875 –
blacks could sue in federal (means?) courts if denied access to public accommodations
(term?) in a state
§ 1879+ – Exodusters
to Kansas farms (and eventually to Kansas towns)and black cowboys in the West
o
1883
– Supreme Court declares Civil
Rights Act unconstitutional. Consequence to public accommodations?
o
1890
Mississippi Plan
§ Grandfather
clause
Date: January 1, 1867 if could vote when blacks could not
§ Residency
§ Poll
tax
o
Democratic primary – an all-white primary
o
Lynching –why is it so powerful (more than fear as a weapon)?
§ Look at the pictures of the 1893
lynching (and of the 1898 Willmington Insurrection) and
realize their views of those photographs.
§ Also see the 1893 newspaper article
on lynching
§ In the primaries, if you doubt the
1890s reality of African Americans in the South, read Ida Wells Barnett (black
newspaper editor) and the racist Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman in a speech on
the Senate floor.
o
1896
Plessy v. Ferguson – Supreme Court supports segregation as “separate
but equal.” (How equal is it?)
Justice Harlan, the
only dissenter, defines the error for the future: the Constitution is “color
blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of
civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” He also warns of hate
under the “sanction of law.”
o
1900
“Willmington Insurrection” – majority
(means?) of voters are black; city has an elected black council.
o
State
and local Jim Crow laws
o
Two
black voices:
§ Booker T. Washington – Tuskegee
Institute, Atlanta Compromise and the “five fingers on the hand” argument
§ W. E. B. Du Bois – sociologist,
professor, among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (His role will continue into the 1920s.) – Wrote Souls of Black Folk. Most associated
with “Talented 10th” phrase.
|
Copyright C. J.
Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2017 |
|
WCJC Department: |
History – Dr. Bibus |
|
Contact Information: |
281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu |
|
Last Updated: |
2017 |
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