African American History: Organizations & Aid

• Study notes on African American History

Freedmen’s Bureau

• Established in 1865 as a federal agency.
• Aided formerly enslaved people in their transition to freedom.
• Provided education, housing, medical aid, and legal assistance.
• Faced resistance from Southern whites.
• Experienced limited success.
• Suffered from underfunding and political opposition.

Black Cross Nurses

• Founded in 1920 as part of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA.
• Provided healthcare and promoted public health within Black communities.
• Symbolized Black self-reliance.
• Showed international solidarity with African descendants worldwide.

National Association for Colored Women (NACW)

• Established in 1896 by leaders like Mary Church Terrell.
• Fought for Black women’s rights, education, and social welfare.
• Their motto was “Lifting as We Climb”.
• The motto reflected their mission to advance racial and gender equality through moral uplift and community service.

Burdened Individualities

• Describes how Black individuals in the post-slavery era were seen as responsible for their success or failure while still facing systemic racism.
• Highlights the contradiction between American individualism and the structural barriers imposed on Black people.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

• Landmark Supreme Court decision.
• Upheld racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.
• Legitimized Jim Crow laws and institutionalized racial discrimination.
• Overturned in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Tuskegee Institute

• Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881.
• Vocational school provided practical education to Black students.
• Washington emphasized economic self-sufficiency over political activism as a means of racial advancement.

UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association)

• Founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914.
• Promoted Black pride, economic independence, and Pan-Africanism.
• Advocated for a return to Africa.
• Promoted Black self-determination through business ownership and cultural unity.
• Was the largest Black nationalist movement in history.
• Inspired later movements for Black empowerment and self-determination.

Mary Church Terrell

• Prominent activist and educator.
• Co-founded the NACW.
• Advocated for civil rights, women’s suffrage, and racial uplift.
• Fought against segregation.
• Among the first African American women to earn a college degree.
• Played a crucial role in bridging racial and gender activism.
• Fought for both Black and women’s rights.

Talented Tenth

• Concept developed by W.E.B. Du Bois.
• Argued the most educated and elite 10% of Black Americans should lead the race to social and political equality.
• Contrasted with Booker T. Washington’s emphasis on vocational training and economic advancement.
• Influenced debates on Black leadership and education.

Ida B. Wells

• Journalist, activist, and co-founder of the NAACP.
• Was a fierce anti-lynching advocate who exposed racial violence through investigative reporting.
• Fought for women’s rights.
• Challenged the mainstream suffrage movement’s exclusion of Black women.
• Work was instrumental in bringing national and international attention to lynching in America.

W.E.B. Du Bois

• Leading intellectual and civil rights activist.
• Co-founded the NAACP.
• Emphasized political activism, higher education, and racial pride.
• His works, including The Souls of Black Folk, critiqued systemic racism and advocated for Black leadership.
• Advocated for immediate civil rights and intellectual leadership.
• Shaped the modern civil rights movement.

Booker T. Washington

• Influential educator and leader.
• Promoted vocational education and economic self-sufficiency for Black Americans.
• His Atlanta Compromise speech (1895) suggested Black Americans should focus on economic progress rather than immediate civil rights.
• Accommodationist approach shaped racial policies in the early 20th century.
• Was criticized for conceding too much to white supremacy.

Madam C.J. Walker

• The first self-made Black female millionaire.
• Built a hairstyling empire that empowered Black women economically.
• Used her wealth to support civil rights causes and Black institutions.
• Challenged stereotypes of Black women’s economic dependency.
• Invested in racial and gender activism.

Ma Rainey/Blues Women

• Used music to express Black female agency, love, struggle, and resilience.
• Challenged gender norms and reflected the realities of Black life in the early 20th century.
• Played a crucial role in shaping American music.
• Provided a space for Black women’s self-expression.

“New Negro” (Onishi)

• A term associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
• Represented a shift towards racial pride, self-expression, and cultural assertion.
• Rejected older notions of Black subservience.
• Called for political and artistic self-determination.
• Marked a cultural awakening that rejected stereotypes.
• Demanded civil rights and artistic recognition.

Scottsboro Boys

• Nine Black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931.
• Their trials highlighted the deep racial injustices of the legal system.
• Their case became a rallying point for civil rights activism.
• Exposed the failure of due process for Black Americans.
• Became a symbol of racial injustice.

Mary McLeod Bethune

• Educator and civil rights leader.
• Founded a school for Black girls.
• Later advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Advocated for Black education and women’s rights.
• Played a key role in the New Deal’s Black Cabinet.
• Was a key advocate for Black education.
• Was a powerful voice in the New Deal’s Black Cabinet.

Raw Deal

• Critique of the New Deal’s failure to fully address racial inequality.
• Highlights how Black Americans were often excluded from its benefits.
• Discriminatory policies in housing, employment, and federal programs limited Black economic progress.
• Underscores the limitations of liberal reforms in addressing systemic racism.

Respectability Politics

• A strategy used by Black leaders to counter racism by emphasizing moral behavior, dress, and speech to gain acceptance from white society.
• Helped challenge stereotypes.
• Often excluded poorer and less conventionally “respectable” Black individuals.
• Reinforced class divisions within Black communities.

Mutual Aid Society

• Community-based organizations that provide financial and social support to Black communities, especially in times of crisis.
• Helped fund funerals, medical care, and education.
• Fostered collective resilience.
• Were essential in sustaining Black communities economically and socially before government welfare programs.

Imagined Community

• Concept describes how Black identity was shaped through shared media, literature, and cultural expressions despite geographic and social divisions.
• The Black press played a significant role in fostering this sense of collective identity.
• Highlights the role of Black newspapers, music, and literature in fostering racial unity.

Andrew Johnson

• U.S. president after Lincoln’s assassination.
• Opposed Reconstruction.
• Vetoed civil rights legislation to protect Black Americans.
• His lenient policies toward the South allowed white supremacy to persist.
• His policies allowed white supremacy to persist, undermining Black progress after the Civil War.

Mutual-Aid Societies

• Community-based organizations that provided financial and social support to Black communities, especially in times of crisis.
• Helped fund funerals, medical care, and education.
• Fostered collective resilience.

Harlem Renaissance

• Cultural movement of the 1920s and 1930s centered in Harlem.
• Black artists, writers, and musicians celebrated Black identity and challenged racial stereotypes.
• Figures like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston played key roles.
• Was a defining moment for Black artistic and intellectual expression in the U.S.

KKK (Vigilantes & Rougarou Club)

• Ku Klux Klan was a white supremacist vigilante group.
• Used terror, violence, and intimidation to suppress Black political and social progress.
• Some local groups, like the Rougarou Club, operated similarly.
• Reinforced racial hierarchy through fear.
• Played a major role in enforcing racial hierarchy through fear and systemic violence.

Marcus Garvey (Negro World)

• A Pan-African leader and founder of the UNIA.
• Used his newspaper Negro World to promote Black pride, self-reliance, and his Back-to-Africa movement.
• His ideas influenced later Black nationalist movements.
• Laid the groundwork for later Black nationalist and Pan-African movements.

Black Press

• The Black press played a crucial role in shaping African American identity, activism, and political consciousness.
• Newspapers like The Chicago Defender helped foster a sense of imagined community among Black Americans.
• Fostered a sense of imagined community.
• Provided an alternative to mainstream media’s racist narratives.

Churches (Elsa Barkley Brown)

• Historian Elsa Barkley Brown highlighted how Black churches served as spaces for political activism, education, and community support.
• Central to organizing resistance against racial oppression.
• Central to organizing resistance against racial oppression and fostering leadership.

Double “V” Campaign (Victory at Home and Abroad)

• World War II-era campaign advocating for victory against fascism abroad and racial discrimination at home.
• Highlighted the hypocrisy of fighting for democracy while denying rights to Black Americans.
• Linked Black military service to demands for civil rights, highlighting American hypocrisy.

Italo-Ethiopian War (Haiti & Leslie Alexander)

• The 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia was seen as a racial struggle, inspiring Black solidarity worldwide, including Haiti.
• Historian Leslie Alexander connects this to broader Pan-Africanist movements resisting colonialism.
• Reinforced Pan-Africanist movements and resistance to European imperialism.

Birth of a Nation

• A 1915 film that glorified the Ku Klux Klan and reinforced racist stereotypes.
• Sparked protests from the NAACP and Black activists.
• Its impact on racial violence and white supremacist narratives was profound.
• Had a lasting impact on racist imagery in American media and justified racial violence.

Great Migration

• The mass movement of Black Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the North and West between 1916 and 1970.
• Driven by racial violence and economic opportunities.
• Reshaped Black political and cultural life.
• Transformed Black political power, culture, and labor patterns in the U.S.

Black Codes

• Laws enacted in the South after the Civil War to restrict Black freedom and maintain white supremacy.
• These laws limited Black economic and political rights, paving the way for Jim Crow segregation.
• Laid the foundation for Jim Crow laws and economic exploitation of Black labor.

Racial Nadir

• The late 19th and early 20th century marked the lowest point for Black civil rights.
• Rise of Jim Crow, lynchings, and the loss of political power.
• Represented a backlash against Reconstruction-era progress.
• Was a period of extreme racial violence and systemic disenfranchisement.
• One of the most brutal forms of forced labor.
• Disproportionately targeted Black men.

Convict Leasing

• A system where Southern states leased Black prisoners to private industries, effectively continuing slavery under a new guise.
• Harsh conditions and exploitation made it one of the most brutal forms of forced labor.

Sharecropping

• A post-Civil War labor system.
• Black farmers worked land owned by white landlords in exchange for a share of the crops.
• Often trapped Black families in cycles of debt and economic dependency.
• Kept many Black families trapped in cycles of debt and economic dependency.

Study notes on organizations and aid in African American history, including the Freedmen’s Bureau, Black Cross Nurses, and National Association for Colored Women (NACW). Covers the establishment, functions, and impact of each organization. Also touches on the concept of Burdened Individualities.