WEBVTT

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When the president issued
the Emancipation Proclamation,

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it was not really something
that had effect in Georgia

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because it was more aspirational,
and it was more strategic.

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President Lincoln was trying to increase

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the number of freed slaves

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in parts of the South who could
fight against the Confederacy.

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But the Emancipation Proclamation

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did very little in terms of freeing slaves

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at the time it was issued in 1863.

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And finally, in April of 1865,

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when General Lee surrendered
to General Grant in Virginia,

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we began to see in Georgia

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a real movement
towards the freeing of slaves.

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But it was a slow process.

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Emancipation came almost

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place by place slowly

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because there were,
in many parts of Georgia,

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not enough federal troops
to enforce the end of slavery,

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to enforce the Emancipation.

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So it became a very slow process.

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By 1868, in Georgia,

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there were enough federal troops

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to enforce the US Constitution.

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And there was the beginning, the passage

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of federal amendments
to the US Constitution.

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There was what we call today
a Reconstruction Constitution

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adopted in Georgia in 1868.

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And that recognized
the equality of people.

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It recognized the right of people to work
and be paid for their work.

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And at that point, there began
to be some African Americans

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who were actually elected to office

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because they were then
able to have the vote.

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And there was great
white resistance to this.

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The whole society in Georgia
was built on the notion

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that white people were superior
and black people were inferior.

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And between 1876

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and 1896,

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there was a back and forth.

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It was a 20-year period
in which this whole notion

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of the equality of every citizen

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was in play every day.

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Whether it was someone trying to vote,
someone trying to go to school,

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someone trying to get a job
that paid a decent wage,

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someone trying to get a house
that they could own themselves.

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Every part of society,

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there was an uncertainty
about just how much equality

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under the law the state would permit.

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And white folks generally
wanted no equality for African Americans.

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And black folks
obviously wanted their full citizenship,

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the rights that they were entitled to

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under the new Reconstruction Amendments.

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And generally, that fight went on,

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and there was an uncertainty
about what it actually meant,

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until a case went before
the US Supreme Court.

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And that case we now remember
as Plessy vs. Ferguson.

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Plessy vs. Ferguson
was a Supreme Court case in 1896

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involving an African-American man
named Homer Plessy.

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It took place in Louisiana.

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And Homer Plessy
sat in a white-only railroad car.

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In Louisiana, this railroad car company,

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they had separate cars
for whites and blacks.

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And so he sat
in the white-only railroad car,

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refused to leave, the case ends up
going through the lower court.

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It gets to the US Supreme Court.

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And the US Supreme Court
decided that it did not violate

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the Equal Protection Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment.

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So what they decided
is separate-but-equal doctrine came to be.

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That as long as you have equal facilities,

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and they were anything
but equal in the South,

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as long as you had equal facilities,
it was okay to separate the races.

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Basically, what it allowed
the southern states to do

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were some things they were already doing
with their Jim Crow laws.

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They make African Americans
to be second-class citizens.

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Jim Crow separated folks on streetcars.

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They separated folks in bathrooms.

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Black folks would not be allowed
to use a spigot

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where water was flowing
just to get a drink,

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even if it was used
by white folks in any way.

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They just simply wanted
to separate black people

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from all of white folks.

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And then assure that in Jim Crow laws

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that they were unable to influence society

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so that they could change any of this.

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Some Jim Crow laws
were passed during this time

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to disenfranchise African Americans.

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Disenfranchise means to deny
African Americans the right to vote,

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to deny a certain group of people.

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And we associate it with our society
to deny African Americans right to vote.

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There were several different ways
to disenfranchise.

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One of the laws was the poll tax.

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Well, these former slaves just coming out
of slavery did not have a lot of money.

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They could not afford the fee
to pay in all these different elections.

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Another was the white primary.

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In the white primaries, you had
to be a white person to vote in it.

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So African Americans were not even
allowed to vote in the primary elections

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to even pick the candidate
that they wanted.

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And then you had literacy tests,
which again,

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it was illegal as slaves
to learn how to read and write,

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to teach a slave to read and write.

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So the majority of African Americans
could not pass these literacy tests

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because they could not
read and write legibly.

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What Jim Crow era did

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was establish a way with the sanction

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of the Supreme Court
in Plessy vs. Ferguson,

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in which to indirectly

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infringe upon those rights,

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with the blessings
of the rest of the country

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and the US Supreme Court...

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until Brown vs. the Board.