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2 pages/≈550 words
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Style:
MLA
Subject:
History
Type:
Essay
Language:
English (U.S.)
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Topic:

Struggles of African Americans in the South from 1865 to 1940

Essay Instructions:

This is a friendly reminder that your first exam is due by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, October 4.
This exam requires students to write three essays. Read the UNC Writing Center’s handout on writing Essay Exams.
Include a Works Cited page at the end of your exam; that is, after you finish writing all four essays. Consult the MLA Citation Guide in D2L. Format your Works Cited page to MLA format to the best of your abilities.
Make reference to all the sources required for each essay prompt.
Submit one single document, but identify your four separate essays. In other words, do not write one long essay, but instead, write four separate essays and save them into one single file. Save your exam in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or as a PDF. Do not plagiarize. Plagiarizing will earn you a “zero” in the discussion and an "F" in this course.
Each of your three essay answers must be no less than 150 words in length. Keep in mind that everybody writes differently; some people convey a lot of meaning in a few words while others (like me) need to write long essays to express simple ideas. Make sure you feel confident about having rigorously studied the assigned materials and about having done your best effort at answering the prompts.
You will not need to pay for any sources needed to successfully complete this course. The professor does not encourage students to look up additional sources related to the essay prompts. Grading is based on the careful study of the sources required for these assignments.
Write in your own words. If you include textual quotes from the sources, those must be no less than 10% of your discussion. All quotes must be within quotation marks and must include a reference. Example:
According to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, lynching “represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.”
You will need the following materials for this exam. They are available in D2L and through the links below.
1) The PDF version of Openstax: U.S. History, available in D2L.
2) Douglas Blackmon’s film, “Preview: Slavery by Another Name,” at https://www(dot)pbs(dot)org/video/tpt-preview-slavery-another-name/
3) Juan Gonzalez’s film, “Short Harvest of Empire,” available at https://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=wEAJWs3GiJU
3) Ida B. Wells Barnett’s article, “Lynch Law in America,” at
http://www(dot)americanyawp(dot)com/reader/18-industrial-america/ida-b-wells-barnett-lynch-law-in-america-1900/
4) The PowerPoint slideshows in D2L.
Essay Prompts.
1. Discuss the struggles of African Americans in the South from 1865 to 1940. How did white Southerners use lynching, vagrancy laws, and convict leasing to subjugate African Americans after emancipation? Why is the anti-lynching crusade of Ida B. Wells Barnett, an African American woman, so important in U.S. History? This prompt is based on your careful study of Ida B. Wells Barnett’s article, “Lynch Law in America” (1900) and the excerpts of Douglas A. Blackmon’s PBS’s documentary in “Preview: Slavery by Another Name.”
2. Describe the multiple groups and leaders that emerged in the fight for the Progressive agenda, including women’s rights, African American rights, and workers’ rights. How were the philosophies, agendas, strategies, and approaches of these leaders and organizations similar and different? What made it difficult for al Progressive activists to present a united front? This prompt is based on your careful study of chapter 21 of Openstax: U.S. History, and the slideshow "The Progressive Era."
3. Illustrate the ways in which the United States established economic and military hegemony in regions such as Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. How did U.S. intervention affect the inhabitants of those regions? Is it accurate to argue that the immigration of people from Latin America to the United States is largely the harvest of United States imperialism? This prompt is based on your careful study of chapter 22 of Openstax: US History, the slideshow “U.S. Imperialism,” and the excerpts of Juan González’s documentary in “Short Harvest of Empire.”

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American History
Struggles of African Americans in the South from 1865 to 1940
New laws put into place in the South criminalized all aspects of black life. Furthermore, the implementation of ‘pig laws’ put misdemeanors as punishable felony offenses with enormous consequences such as corporal punishment or even lynching. Vagrancy statutes also punished black people in instances when they could not prove their employment status. With States beginning to charge high fees to lease black prisoners to work under white Southerners, it served as a source of free labor and motivated the capture of more blacks (Blackmon). Furthermore, the peonage involving the use of debts to enslave black people ensured their placement in conditions that would not allow them to pay their debts, thus forcing them into labor.
On the other hand, the anti-lynching crusade of Ida B. Wells-Barnett exposed the systematic failure of America that allowed the murder of black people under the guise of punishment for crimes. Furthermore, the lynching was performed with fanfare with white people enjoying the practice to the extent or receiving body parts as souvenirs (Wells-Barnett). Therefore, Wells-Barnett showed an agenda to disgrace black people, especially on claims of raping white women, which could not be adequately proven.
The Progressive agenda
The Muckrakers shone a light on different problems affecting people in America to provoke outrage and responses that forced them into national agendas through journalism. They highlighted social inequalities and the flawed approach by the federal government to address these problems. Apart from that, the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were formed to use a direct-action approach to force the government to act on worker rights by electing their people to force change or worker strikes to halt production. Apart from that, the formation of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) also put momentum on the suffrage movement by making it a priority (Corbet et al.). They aimed to use media for marketing their message and pushing the passage of an amendment to the constitution. Additionally, other women, such as Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony also put their voices to fight in the suffrage movement.
Regarding the rights of African-Americans, Booker T. Washington took a more civil appro...
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