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The USA, 1954–75: Conflict at Home and Abroad

The position of Black Americans in the early 1950s

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

The Jim Crow laws and Plessy v. Ferguson, segregation in daily life, literacy tests, poll taxes and fear as barriers to voting, the work most Black Southerners did, the NAACP and CORE and their methods, and the lawyer Thurgood Marshall.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Name three everyday places in the South where Black Americans were kept apart from white Americans in the early 1950s.

Key term

What was a literacy test and how was it used against Black voters?

Key term

What was a poll tax?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What were the Jim Crow laws?

    Model answer

    State and local laws in the Southern states that forced Black and white people to use separate facilities in almost every part of daily life.

  2. 2

    What did the ‘separate but equal’ principle allow after the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of 1896?

    Model answer

    It made separate facilities lawful so long as they were said to be of equal quality, although those provided for Black people were almost always far worse.

  3. 3

    Name three everyday places in the South where Black Americans were kept apart from white Americans in the early 1950s.

    Model answer

    Schools, buses and public facilities such as restaurants, waiting rooms and drinking fountains.

  4. 4

    What was a literacy test and how was it used against Black voters?

    Model answer

    A reading and writing test taken before a person could register, marked so harshly by white officials that Black applicants failed while white applicants passed.

  5. 5

    What was a poll tax?

    Model answer

    A fee that had to be paid before a person could vote, which many poor Black families in the South could not afford.

  6. 6

    Apart from the law, what stopped Black Southerners from registering to vote?

    Model answer

    Fear of losing their job, home or credit, and the risk of beatings or worse from white neighbours and the Ku Klux Klan.

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