Assignment:
1. How were black people prevented from voting despite the provisions of the 14th amendment?
2. What effect did the Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson have on the American South?
3. The 13th Amendment states that slavery shall be made illegal, expect for those individuals who were convicted of a crime. After reviewing the Mississippi Vagrant Law, please explain how the 13th Amendment in combination with the aforementioned vagrant law adversely affected the black community.
MISSISSIPPI VAGRANT LAW
Be it enacted, etc., . . . . That all rogues and vagabonds, idle and dissipated persons, beggars, jugglers, or persons practicing unlawful games or' plays, runaways, common drunkards,' common night-walkers, pilferers, lewd wanton, or lascivious persons, in speech or behavior, common railers and brawlers, persons who neglect their calling or employment, misspend what they earn, or do not provide for the support of, themselves or their families, or dependents, and all other idle and disorderly persons, including all who neglect all-lawful business, habitually misspend their time by frequenting houses of ill-fame, gaming-houses, or tippling shops, shall be deemed and considered vagrants, under the provisions of this act, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars, with all accruing costs and be imprisoned at the discretion of the court, not, exceeding ten days.
All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years found on the second Monday in January 1866, or thereafter. with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time, and all white persons so assembling themselves with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, or usually associating with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freed woman, free negro or mulatto, shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined in a sum not exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free negro or mulatto, fifty dollars, and a white man two hundred dollars, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court, the free negro not exceeding ten days, and the white man not exceeding six months. . . .
If any freedman, free negro, or mulatto shall fail or refuse to pay any tax levied according to the provisions of the sixth section of this act, it shall be prima facie evidence of vagrancy, and it shall be the duty of the sheriff to arrest such freedman, free negro, or mulatto or such person refusing or neglecting to pay such tax, and proceed at once to hire for the shortest time such delinquent tax-payer to any one who will pay the said tax
4. How and why the agricultural and the mechanical training offered by Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute gain so much support among both Black and White people? Why did black colleges and universities emphasize learning trades and acquiring skills?
5. Why did ragtime, jazz, and the blues emerge and become popular?