Post US Civil War

1. Reconstruction and Its Aftermath

1.1. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were.

1.2. The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society.

1.3. After the civil war, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, actively participate in the political process, acquire the land of former owners, seek their own employment, and use public accommodations.

1.4. They soon rallied against the former slaves' freedom and began to find means for eroding the gains for which many had shed their blood.

2. Plessy v. Ferguson

2.1. The 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case was extremely important. It was a legal case in which the Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" facilities satisfied the guarantees of 14th Amendment, thus giving legal sanction to "Jim Crow" segregation laws.

2.2. The Plessy decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal."

2.3. The 14th amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality.

2.4. The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act "unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states".

2.5. Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled that Louisiana was free to regulate such actions and that Homer Plessy was guilty as charged.

3. “How Did Jews Become White Folks?"

3.1. Jews, as of the early 1900s, were categorized as inferior to the Nordic race even though both belong to the European ancestry.

3.2. America had become economically stronger with a strong middle class and the government and the public sympathy to the sufferings of Jews created legal and social opportunities for them, the most important being equated with other Caucasian ethnicities.

3.3. Their racial identity has been shaped by the experience of being not white in relation to the dominant culture and white with regard to blackness.

4. Jim Crow

4.1. African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens.

4.2. Represented the legitimization of anti-black racism.

4.3. Whites were superior to blacks in all important ways, including but not limited to intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior.

4.4. Sexual relations between blacks and whites would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America.

4.5. Treating blacks as equals would encourage interracial sexual unions.

5. The Spanish War

5.1. Although the Maine was only a second-class battleship, it was the largest ship ever to enter Havana harbor.

5.2. Two hundred fifty-four seamen were dead, and fifty-nine sailors were wounded. Eight of the wounded later died.

5.3. The papers had been painting in lurid detail the horrors of Cuban life under oppressive Spanish rule. The Spanish had confined many Cubans to concentration camps. The press called them "death camps."

5.4. The United States Army was not prepared for war. After the Civil War, the country had drastically reduced its army. Most army units had been scattered throughout the west, where they had fought and confined Native Americans.

5.5. The Spanish defended the San Juan hills, a long ridge east of Santiago. The Americans, arrayed in the valley below, sent up an observation balloon to study the city's defenses.

6. White negros and Smoke Irish

6.1. The penal laws, regulated every aspect of Irish life, civil, domestic, and spiritual. In effect they established Ireland as a country in which Irish catholics formed an opressed race.

6.2. Irish Catholics came to this country as an oppressed race yet quickly learned that to succeed they had to in turn oppress their closest social class competitors, free Northern blacks.

6.3. Becoming white meant losing their greenness, i.e., their Irish cultural heritage and the legacy of oppression and discrimination back home.