ed States, 1889-1918.” However, racial violence only escalated in 1919. The most violent incident occurred in Phillips County, Arkansas, when over two hundred people, mostly black Americans, were killed by a large group of armed whites. The whites were attacking blacks thought to be organizing to combat social injustice in the South. The NAACP lawyers defended many blacks that were arrested. The court proceedings led to a successful U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1923, Moore v. Dempsey, which overturned the previous conviction of a black. The decision provided a guarantee of legal protection from mob actions. Through the 1920s the NAACP focused on anti-lynching legislation.
The notion of equality before the law in the United States, though supposedly affirmed for black Americans by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution following the Civil War, still had a long way to develop. The emphasis of courts was still on protection of property rights under the Constitution rather than individual rights. In addition to Jim Crow laws enforcing public segregation, other traditional discriminatory practices persisted. Black Americans had limited access to the U.S. judicial system. The system rarely protected blacks in the early twentieth century. For example, blacks were routinely denied the right to fair trial. One way this was done was by prohibiting blacks from testifying in a court of law against a white person. Obviously, mob actions against blacks, including lynchings, were a stark denial of a fair trial when accused of a crime. Black Americans were clearly not treated equally under the law.
Despite the rampant racism in America during the 1920s, a number of black performers became accepted in the entertainment world. Jazz had only recently grown out of black folk blues. Exotic nightclubs featuring black jazz musicians became very popular with white society, such as the Cotton Club in Harlem. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington would become the nation’s leading jazz musicians.
Literary contributions also blossomed. Black writers produced numerous works and in a different style than earlier. Instead of imitating white works, the new works explored black life and culture in both the northern industrial cities and rural South. A striking example of this development in New York City has been called the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement. Notable among the movement’s authors was Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Wallace Thurman, and Claude McKay. The onset of the Great Depression brought an end to the movement, as the writers scattered looking for employment. The musicians, however, grew into legendary figures.
Even with the predominance of racism, acceptance of cultural works by blacks was growing in mainstream American culture. This trend may have served to open the door to some black leaders gaining access by the late 1920s to positions of slightly greater authority.
Voting Patterns of Black Americans
Following the end of the American Civil War the nation adopted the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting black Americans voting rights. However, the amendment was only a brief declaration that races should be treatment equally. The matter of actually establishing voter qualifications was still left strictly to the states. The prospect of a black vote was met with strong resistance throughout the South. Intimidation by such white supremacist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan became increasingly violent in an attempt to prevent blacks from voting. The Klan’s hooded midnight riders terrorized blacks by burning crops, whipping, clubbing, and murdering victims. By 1900 all 11 former Confederate states made it virtually impossible for blacks to vote.
The southern states carefully worded their voting requirements to avoid obvious Fifteenth Amendment violations. As long as state voter eligibility requirements did not openly discriminate on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” they were not considered unconstitutional. Though appearing to apply 