Following the end of the Civil War, Southern whites sought to control the former slaves in the South and undermine the influence of the Republican Party. A favorite method was to use mob violence or its threat by informal groups or organized groups such as the Klu Klux Klan. Gradually, following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, these extra-legal methods, although never completely abandoned, were replaced with the systematic building of legal restrictions to segregate African- Americans from white society. Popularly referred to as Jim Crow laws they affirmed the second-class citizenship of the former slaves and their descendents by denying them even the most basic civil rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These restrictions were upheld by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v Ferguson (1896) by declaring that separate but equal public accommodations were sanctioned by the United States Constitution.
Mob violence was never accepted by African-Americans. One of the most outspoken and tireless leaders against lynch law was Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Born a slave in 1862 she managed to gain a college education and pursued her love of journalism. First in editorials, in her Memphis, Tennessee newspaper Free Speech, she spoke out forcefully about the practice of lynching and exposed its darkest inspirations and intense brutality. After her newspaper’s office was burned she moved to Chicago where she continued her crusade until her death in 1931.
Segregation also was never accepted by African-Americans. Beginning in the 1880s, a debate over how best to fight segregation animated the black community. The most prominent African-American in the late Nineteenth Century was Booker T. Washington. Born a slave, he worked his way through Hampton Institute and in 1881 became the President of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Living in the South and depending on Southern philanthropy, Washington followed a cautious route, but his goal always remained to end the system of racial segregation. His Atlanta Exposition Address (1895) was widely circulated and met with an overwhelming favorable response throughout the United States