The Status of Black Southerners.

In the decade from 1900 to 1909, black southerners faced increasing restrictions on all aspects of their lives. Indeed, most educational and economic opportunities that had opened up for blacks in the years immediately following the Civil War had closed by the turn of the century. Moreover, in the period after Reconstruction white southern politicians had succeeded in limiting the political power of blacks — most notably by depriving black men in every southern state of the right to vote. Black political leaders fought to keep or regain some civil and economic rights by trying to convince white politicians that persecuting the black citizenry harmed all of southern society. Their efforts ended in failure, however; and the age of Jim Crow segregation had fully arrived by the first years of the twentieth century.

Booker T. Washington.

The most prominent African...