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Terror, as well as the law, enforced discrimination and injustice. Spectators above survey bomb damage at the home of Birmingham attorney Arthur Shores. It was a warning to African Americans to stop protest activity. (Source: Library of Congress) |
Black people were expected to "know their place." In cities and towns, signage reinforced the system. Below, a young girl at a "Colored" water fountain in Halifax, NC. (Source: Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information, Library of Congress). |
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After the Civil War, the federal government refused to enact agrarian reforms that would have given the land to the people who worked it. The freed people's hopes for "forty acres and a mule" proved illusory. Over the years, landlessness, lack of capital, and lack of education put many rural African Americans at the mercy of planters and merchants. Exploitative sharecropping contracts were common, as was low-waged itinerant labor. (Source: Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information, Library of Congress). |
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