When the Jim Crow Laws were instituted many of the white politicians supported and enforced the laws. Many African Americans were promised equal rights but were unsatisfied.
The government began to separate the races. First the buildings put up colored entrances. Separating the whites from the blacks. Then the public began to segregate the blacks on the street. Special lanes were built. Buildings of entertainment were built separately to the white ones. Bathrooms and drinking fountains were built separately. Schools were built for each individual race.
These are two stories from the people that had to live through this difficult time.
Mary McLeod (later Bethune) was the daughter of former slaves, born into a family of seventeen children. She graduated from Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College) in Concord, North Carolina, in 1893 and from the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1895. Begging and borrowing whatever she could, Bethune opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach. She worked tirelessly to build the school, winning support from both the African-American and white communities. She became politically active and fought for women's suffrage, especially for African-American women. Since a literacy test was also required, Bethune held special classes to instruct voters on how to pass the test. The Ku Klux Klan, hearing of her activities, threatened to burn down her school. She stood all night in front of the campus ready to defend it, but the Klan never arrived. The next day, she led some 100 people to the polls to vote. In 1923 the school was merged with the Cookman Institute for Men, then in Jacksonville, Florida, and came to be known as Bethune-Cookman College. At the same time, Bethune became a leader in the women's club movement. She was twice elected president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in the 1920s. Her efforts on behalf of education and of improved racial relations brought her national prominence. She was appointed by Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover to serve on the National Child Welfare Commission.
The government began to separate the races. First the buildings put up colored entrances. Separating the whites from the blacks. Then the public began to segregate the blacks on the street. Special lanes were built. Buildings of entertainment were built separately to the white ones. Bathrooms and drinking fountains were built separately. Schools were built for each individual race.
These are two stories from the people that had to live through this difficult time.
Mary McLeod (later Bethune) was the daughter of former slaves, born into a family of seventeen children. She graduated from Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College) in Concord, North Carolina, in 1893 and from the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1895. Begging and borrowing whatever she could, Bethune opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach. She worked tirelessly to build the school, winning support from both the African-American and white communities. She became politically active and fought for women's suffrage, especially for African-American women. Since a literacy test was also required, Bethune held special classes to instruct voters on how to pass the test. The Ku Klux Klan, hearing of her activities, threatened to burn down her school. She stood all night in front of the campus ready to defend it, but the Klan never arrived. The next day, she led some 100 people to the polls to vote. In 1923 the school was merged with the Cookman Institute for Men, then in Jacksonville, Florida, and came to be known as Bethune-Cookman College. At the same time, Bethune became a leader in the women's club movement. She was twice elected president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in the 1920s. Her efforts on behalf of education and of improved racial relations brought her national prominence. She was appointed by Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover to serve on the National Child Welfare Commission.
In 1951, Barbara Johns was a 16-year-old junior at the segregated Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Frustrated by the refusal of the local school board to build a new high school for black students, she decided that something had to be done to change the situation. The school she attended was constructed to hold slightly more than 200 students, and already had twice that number. Classes were held on school buses and in the auditorium. When parents appealed to the school board for a new school, the board put up several tar-paper shacks as a stopgap measure to accommodate the overflow of students. Johns met with several students she could trust and asked if they would help her organize a student strike; they agreed. Their plan was to get the principal away from the building and then call the entire student body together to vote on the strike. They arranged to have someone report to the principal that some students were downtown causing trouble. When the principal left the building, the strike committee called all the students together in the auditorium and Johns revealed her plans for a strike. The students agreed to walk out and almost all of them received their parents' support.