Instead, it drew on racial
stereotypes and flimsy scientific opinion. The conquest of Africa
by Europe and the American acquisition of lands in the Caribbean
and Pacific which were inhabited by darker peoples, were taken as
clear evidence of racial inequality even in the land which had
been founded on the belief in the equality of all men.
Second-class citizenship for blacks had become a fact which was
accepted by Presidents, Congress, the Supreme Court, the
business community, and by labor unions. Segregation was
universal. In the North it was rooted in social custom, but in
the South it had been made a matter of law. Separate facilities
were inferior facilities. The basic political and civil rights
of the Afro-American were severely limited in almost every state.
Perhaps the clearest and cruelest index of the lowest state to
which the black had been relegated was the large number of
lynchings which occurred at the end of the century, In the 1890s
lynchings of both blacks and whites were common. In that decade
one black was lynched almost every two days. It became
universally accepted that the American principles of justice,
liberty, and equality did not have to be applied equally to
whites and blacks.
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