The nineteenth century marked a period of significant transformation in the political and legal status of African Americans. Following the Civil War, Black people were freed from slavery and began to gain more rights as citizens. Despite these dramatic developments, many economic and demographic characteristics of African Americans at the end of the nineteenth century remained similar to those in the mid-1800s.
Let's delve into the economic limitations faced by African Americans between 1865 and 1900, supported by census data and historical context.
Demographic and Economic Landscape in 1900
According to the Census of 1900, ninety percent of African Americans still resided in the Southern US, mirroring the percentage from 1870. A large majority, three-quarters of black households, were located in rural areas. Only about one-fifth of African American household heads owned their homes, which was less than half the percentage among whites.
In terms of employment, about half of black men and around thirty-five percent of black women who reported an occupation to the Census worked as farmers or farm laborers, compared to about one-third of white men and approximately eight percent of white women. Outside of farm work, African American men and women were primarily concentrated in unskilled labor and service jobs.
Additionally, most black children had not attended school in the year before the Census, while white children were much more likely to have attended. A typical African American family at the start of the twentieth century lived and worked on a farm in the South and did not own their home.
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In contrast, by 1990, the economic conditions of African Americans had dramatically changed. They had become much less concentrated in the South, in rural places, and in farming jobs and had entered better blue-collar jobs and the white-collar sector. They were nearly twice as likely to own their own homes at the end of the century as in 1900, and their rates of school attendance at all ages had risen sharply.
These changes in the lives of African Americans did not occur continuously and steadily throughout the twentieth century. As was the case in the 1800s, African American economic life in the early 1900s centered on Southern cotton agriculture.
The following tables illustrate the demographic and economic characteristics of black and white Americans in 1900 and 1990:
| Characteristic | Black Americans (1900) | White Americans (1900) | Black Americans (1990) | White Americans (1990) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage living in the South | 90% | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Percentage in rural areas | 75% | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Homeownership rate | 20% | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Occupation | Black Men | Black Women | White Men | White Women |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Farmer or Farm Laborer | 50% | 35% | 33% | 8% |
| Unskilled Labor and Service Jobs | High Concentration | High Concentration | N/A | N/A |
Agricultural Labor and Manufacturing
African Americans grew cotton under a variety of contracts and institutional arrangements. Some were laborers hired for a short period for specific tasks. Many were tenant farmers, renting a piece of land and some of their tools and supplies, and paying the rent at the end of the growing season with a portion of their harvest. Records from Southern farms indicate that white and black farm laborers were paid similar wages, and that white and black tenant farmers worked under similar contracts for similar rental rates. Whites in general, however, were much more likely to own land.
A similar pattern is found in Southern manufacturing in these years. Among the fairly small number of individuals employed in manufacturing in the South, white and black workers were often paid comparable wages if they worked at the same job for the same company.
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How Did Jim Crow Laws Impact Economic Opportunity? - Your Civil Rights Guide
Jim Crow Laws and Segregation
While the concentration of African Americans in cotton agriculture persisted, Southern black life changed in other ways in the early 1900s. Limitations on the legal rights of African Americans grew more severe in the South in this era. The 1896 Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson provided a legal basis for greater explicit segregation in American society. This decision allowed for the provision of separate facilities and services to blacks and whites as long as the facilities and services were equal.
Through the early 1900s, many new laws, known as Jim Crow laws, were passed in Southern states creating legally segregated schools, transportation systems, and lodging. The requirement of equality was not generally enforced, however. Perhaps the most important and best-known example of separate and unequal facilities in the South was the system of public education. Through the first decades of the twentieth century, resources were funneled to white schools, raising teacher salaries and per-pupil funding while reducing class size. Black schools experienced no real improvements of this type.
Black codes and Jim Crow laws were laws passed at different periods in the southern United States to enforce racial segregation and curtail the power of Black voters.After the Civil War ended in 1865, some states passed black codes that severely limited the rights of Black people, many of whom had been enslaved. These codes limited what jobs African Americans could hold, and their ability to leave a job once hired. Some states also restricted the kind of property Black people could own.
The Reconstruction Act of 1867 weakened the effect of the Black codes by requiring all states to uphold equal protection under the 14th Amendment, particularly by enabling Black men to vote. During Reconstruction, many Black men participated in politics by voting and by holding office.
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Reconstruction officially ended in 1877, and southern states then enacted more discriminatory laws. Efforts to enforce white supremacy by legislation increased, and African Americans tried to assert their rights through legal challenges. However, this effort led to a disappointing result in 1896, when the Supreme Court ruled, in Plessy v. Ferguson, that so-called “separate but equal” facilities-including public transport and schools-were constitutional.
From this time until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination and segregation were legal and enforceable. One of the first reactions against Reconstruction was to deprive African-American men of their voting rights. The grandfather clause said that a man could only vote if his ancestor had been a voter before 1867-but the ancestors of most African-Americans citizens had been enslaved and constitutionally ineligible to vote.
Another discriminatory tactic was the literacy test, applied by a white county clerk. These clerks gave Black voters extremely difficult legal documents to read as a test, while white men received an easy text. Finally, in many places, white local government officials simply prevented potential voters from registering. By 1940, the percentage of eligible African-American voters registered in the South was only three percent. As evidence of the decline, during Reconstruction, the percentage of African-American voting-age men registered to vote was more than 90 percent.
African Americans faced social, commercial, and legal discrimination. Theatres, hotels, and restaurants segregated them in inferior accommodations or refused to admit them at all. Shops served them last. Segregated public schools meant generations of African-American children often received an education designed to be inferior to that of whites-with worn-out or outdated books, underpaid teachers, and lesser facilities and materials. In 1954, the Supreme Court declared discrimination in education unconstitutional in Brown v.
