1
00:00:01,764 --> 00:00:05,984
When the president issued the
Emancipation Proclamation,

2
00:00:05,984 --> 00:00:10,044
it was not really something
that had effect in Georgia

3
00:00:10,044 --> 00:00:14,284
because it was more aspirational,
and it was more strategic.

4
00:00:14,284 --> 00:00:20,824
President Lincoln was trying to increase
the number of freed slaves

5
00:00:20,824 --> 00:00:25,024
in parts of the South who could 
fight against the Confederacy.

6
00:00:25,024 --> 00:00:31,774
But the Emancipation Proclamation
did very little in terms of freeing slaves

7
00:00:31,774 --> 00:00:35,824
at the time it was issued in 1863.

8
00:00:35,824 --> 00:00:40,504
And finally in April of 1865,

9
00:00:40,504 --> 00:00:44,824
when General Lee surrendered
to General Grant in Virginia,

10
00:00:44,824 --> 00:00:51,824
we began to see in Georgia a real 
movement towards the freeing of slaves.

11
00:00:51,824 --> 00:00:53,424
But it was a slow process.

12
00:00:53,424 --> 00:00:59,824
Emancipation came almost
place by place slowly

13
00:00:59,824 --> 00:01:06,134
because there were, in many parts
of Georgia, not enough federal troops

14
00:01:06,134 --> 00:01:11,124
to enforce the end of slavery,
to enforce the Emancipation.

15
00:01:11,124 --> 00:01:13,724
So it became a very slow process.

16
00:01:13,724 --> 00:01:16,214
By 1868 in Georgia,

17
00:01:16,214 --> 00:01:22,224
there were enough federal troops
to enforce the US Constitution.

18
00:01:22,224 --> 00:01:25,014
And there was the beginning, the passage

19
00:01:25,014 --> 00:01:28,824
of federal amendments
to the US Constitution.

20
00:01:28,824 --> 00:01:33,204
There was what we call today a 
Reconstruction Constitution

21
00:01:33,204 --> 00:01:37,224
adopted in Georgia in 1868.

22
00:01:37,224 --> 00:01:41,824
And that recognized 
the equality of people.

23
00:01:41,824 --> 00:01:46,224
It recognized the right of people to work 
and be paid for their work.

24
00:01:46,424 --> 00:01:50,024
And at that point, there began to be
some African Americans

25
00:01:50,024 --> 00:01:51,824
who were actually elected to office

26
00:01:51,824 --> 00:01:55,424
because they were then
able to have the vote.

27
00:01:55,424 --> 00:01:59,484
And there was great 
white resistance to this.

28
00:02:00,194 --> 00:02:06,174
The whole society in Georgia was built
on the notion that white people

29
00:02:06,174 --> 00:02:09,624
were superior and black people
were inferior.

30
00:02:09,624 --> 00:02:20,824
And between 1876 and 1896, 
there was a back and forth.

31
00:02:20,824 --> 00:02:25,954
It was a 20-year period in which
this whole notion

32
00:02:25,954 --> 00:02:31,994
of the equality of every citizen
was in play every day.

33
00:02:31,994 --> 00:02:37,224
Whether it was someone trying to vote,
someone trying to go to school,

34
00:02:37,224 --> 00:02:41,924
someone trying to get a job
that paid a decent wage,

35
00:02:41,924 --> 00:02:47,824
someone trying to get a house
that they could own themselves.

36
00:02:48,324 --> 00:02:50,784
Every part of society,

37
00:02:50,784 --> 00:02:56,384
there was an uncertainty about just 
how much equality under the law

38
00:02:56,384 --> 00:02:57,824
the state would permit.

39
00:02:57,824 --> 00:03:02,364
And white folks generally
wanted no equality for African Americans.

40
00:03:02,364 --> 00:03:06,214
And black folks obviously wanted
their full citizenship,

41
00:03:06,214 --> 00:03:12,414
the rights that they were entitled to
under the new Reconstruction Amendments.

42
00:03:12,414 --> 00:03:15,812
And generally that fight went on,

43
00:03:15,812 --> 00:03:20,114
and there was an uncertainty
about what it actually meant,

44
00:03:20,114 --> 00:03:24,024
until a case went before 
the US Supreme Court.

45
00:03:24,824 --> 00:03:29,824
And that case we now remember 
as Plessy vs. Ferguson.

46
00:03:32,424 --> 00:03:36,124
Plessy vs. Ferguson
was a Supreme Court case in 1896

47
00:03:36,124 --> 00:03:39,224
involving an African-American man
named Homer Plessy.

48
00:03:39,224 --> 00:03:40,824
It took place in Louisiana.

49
00:03:40,824 --> 00:03:45,124
And Homer Plessy
sat in a white-only railroad car.

50
00:03:45,424 --> 00:03:48,124
In Louisiana, this railroad car company,

51
00:03:48,124 --> 00:03:50,324
they had separate cars
for whites and blacks.

52
00:03:50,324 --> 00:03:54,134
And so he sat in the white-only
railroad car, refused to leave

53
00:03:54,134 --> 00:03:56,424
the case ends up going 
through the lower court.

54
00:03:56,424 --> 00:03:58,124
It gets to the US Supreme Court.

55
00:03:58,124 --> 00:04:02,124
And the US Supreme Court decided 
that it did not violate

56
00:04:02,124 --> 00:04:04,824
the Equal Protection Clause 
of the Fourteenth Amendment.

57
00:04:04,824 --> 00:04:09,124
So what they decided
is separate-but-equal doctrine came to be.

58
00:04:09,124 --> 00:04:11,444
That as long as you have equal facilities,

59
00:04:11,444 --> 00:04:14,024
and they were anything
but equal in the South,

60
00:04:14,024 --> 00:04:17,624
as long as you had equal facilities,
it was okay to separate the races.

61
00:04:17,624 --> 00:04:20,064
Basically, what it allowed
the southern states to do

62
00:04:20,064 --> 00:04:23,153
were some things they were already doing
with their Jim Crow laws.

63
00:04:23,153 --> 00:04:27,244
They make African Americans 
to be second-class citizens.

64
00:04:27,524 --> 00:04:31,024
Jim Crow separated folks on streetcars.

65
00:04:31,024 --> 00:04:33,424
They separated folks in bathrooms.

66
00:04:33,424 --> 00:04:36,724
Black folks would not be allowed
to use a spigot

67
00:04:36,724 --> 00:04:39,594
where water was flowing
just to get a drink,

68
00:04:39,594 --> 00:04:43,724
even if it was used by white folks
in any way.

69
00:04:43,724 --> 00:04:50,224
They just simply wanted to separate 
black people from all of white folks.

70
00:04:50,224 --> 00:04:53,904
And then assure that in Jim Crow laws

71
00:04:53,904 --> 00:04:59,064
that they were unable to influence society
so that they could change any of this.

72
00:04:59,064 --> 00:05:01,914
Some Jim Crow laws were passed
during this time

73
00:05:01,914 --> 00:05:04,224
to disenfranchise African Americans.

74
00:05:04,224 --> 00:05:08,504
Disenfranchise means to deny
African Americans the right to vote,

75
00:05:08,504 --> 00:05:10,224
to deny a certain group of people.

76
00:05:10,224 --> 00:05:14,324
And we associate it with our society to 
deny African Americans right to vote.

77
00:05:14,324 --> 00:05:17,124
There were several different ways
to disenfranchise.

78
00:05:17,124 --> 00:05:19,224
One of the laws was the poll tax.

79
00:05:19,224 --> 00:05:23,624
Well, these former slaves just coming out
of slavery did not have a lot of money.

80
00:05:23,624 --> 00:05:28,224
They could not afford the fee
to pay in all these different elections.

81
00:05:28,224 --> 00:05:30,024
Another was the white primary.

82
00:05:30,024 --> 00:05:33,524
In the white primaries, you had to
be a white person to vote in it.

83
00:05:33,524 --> 00:05:37,324
So African Americans were not even 
allowed to vote in the primary elections

84
00:05:37,324 --> 00:05:39,924
to even pick the candidate
that they wanted.

85
00:05:39,924 --> 00:05:41,715
And then you had literacy tests,

86
00:05:41,715 --> 00:05:45,734
which again it was illegal as slaves
to learn how to read and write

87
00:05:45,734 --> 00:05:47,694
to teach a slave to read and write.

88
00:05:47,694 --> 00:05:51,824
So the majority of African Americans
could not pass these literacy tests

89
00:05:51,824 --> 00:05:54,824
because they could not
read and write legibly.

90
00:05:55,324 --> 00:06:01,413
What Jim Crow era did was
establish a way with the sanction

91
00:06:01,413 --> 00:06:03,614
of the Supreme Court
in Plessy vs. Ferguson,

92
00:06:03,614 --> 00:06:10,424
in which to indirectly
infringe upon those rights,

93
00:06:10,424 --> 00:06:15,249
with the blessings of the rest of the
country and the US Supreme Court...

94
00:06:15,249 --> 00:06:17,859
until Brown vs. the Board.