How did segregation and discrimination affect the lives of African Americans at the turn of the 20th century?

African Americans are victimized by voting restrictions, All

Southern states imposed new

voting restrictions and denied

legal equality to African

Americans. Some states, for

example, limited the vote to

people who could read, and

required registration officials

to administer a literacy test to

test reading. Blacks trying to

vote were often asked

difficult questions,

or given a test in a foreign lan-

guage. Officials could pass or

fail applicants as they wished.

African Americans faced not only formal discrimination but also informal rules

and customs, called racial etiquette, that regulated relationships between whites

and blacks. Usually, these customs belittled and humiliated African Americans,

enforcing their second-class status. For example, blacks and whites never shook

hands, since shaking hands would have implied equality. Blacks also had to yield

the sidewalk to white pedestrians, and black men always had to remove their hats for whites.

African Americans who did not fol-

low the racial etiquette could face severe punishment or

death. All too often, blacks who were accused of violating

the etiquette were lynched Between 1882 and 1892, more

than 1,400 African-American men and women were shot,

burned, or hanged without trial in the South. Lynching

peaked in the 1880s and 1890s but continued well into the

20th century.