Jim+Crow+Laws

Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow laws are racial segregation laws that were passed after the American Civil War. They were first tested in 1896 because of Homer Plessey. He was convicted for riding on a train for whites only. In the 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People worked on bringing an end to segregation on buses and trains. Then, in 1952, segregation on inter-state railways was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Finally in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a political and social protest that began in 1955 and was intended to oppose the policy of racial segregation to the public transit system.

Jim Crow was not a person, but a symbol that was used to refer to African Americans. The name Jim Crow began sometime in the 1830s when a white show performer danced to a song called “Jump Jim Crow” with his face blackened with charcoal paste. The show performer danced to this song after seeing an old black man that was crippled.

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Examples of Jim Crow Laws:
v Segregation of Public Schools v Segregation of public places and transportation v Segregation of restrooms, restraints, and drinking fountains v White kids couldn’t talk to black kids v In South Carolina, there was a Jim Crow law stating that any person could not serve a meal to a white and a colored person in the same room, on the same table, or on the same counter v Books could not be interchangeable between whites and blacks v Blacks couldn’t ride in the same cars or coaches as whites on trains or any other transportation unit v It is unlawful for any amateur baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or ball diamond within 2 blocks of any playground devoted only to the colored race v Colored people could not be buried on the same grounds of whites.

In 1957, President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and forced the integration of a high school in Little Rock. In 1963, President Kennedy compelled the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, to integrate the state's university system, a move that signaled the beginning of the end of the Jim Crow era. Over the next five years, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 officially ended the ability of any state to discriminate, disenfranchise, or otherwise restrict any individual on the basis of race. ([])

-Jim Crow laws were mainly enforced in the southern states between 1876-1965. -They led to inferior treatment and accommodations for African Americans but they were designed to make things “separate but equal” -In 1896 the Supreme Court said these laws were constitutional. -Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that Whites were the Chosen people, Blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial segregation. -Tennessee passed the first Jim Crow laws -The KKK was started in Tennessee during the time of Jim Crow. The KKK spread to all states in the south and included mayors, judges, and sheriffs. -"We have very dark days here. The colored people are in despair. The rebels boast that the Negroes shall not have as much liberty now as they had under slavery. If things go on thus, our doom is sealed. God knows it is worse than slavery." -- Unknown

The children laugh, almost disbelieving my memories of growing up in Natchez, Mississippi during the 1950s and 60s. Maybe one day I will write a book, just for them. Pictures in a book of "White only" signs above entrances and water fountains are like "whatnots" on a table, harmless and quiet, unable to reveal the real crime against humanity. And I've got a book in me. A "white only" sign above the only bus or train depot entrance in a thunderstorm, with your mama getting soaked, holding a shoebox full of food because restaurants serve "white only" is another matter altogether. Approaching the dentist's office, we would swing to the rear to the "colored" waiting room, the back porch and wooden benches. We couldn't show enough gratitude and we waited in winter coats, rain coats, and in sweltering summer heat. The "white only" public school threw their outdated books to the "colored" schools, instead of in the trash. But our diligent teachers taught us to sand the outer edges so the books would at least appear clean and we made book covers from brown grocery bags. We could buy everything in the dimestore but a soda or a burger from the same dimestore's lunch counter. All hotel rooms were "white only". We watched movies from the segregated "colored" balcony of the theaters. People were beaten and killed or just disappeared because voting was for "whites only". A "white only" ambulance couldn't respond to a "colored" emergency, so local "colored" funeral homes provided this service to our community, though they had no medical training. Most horrendous of all is the still unsolved murder of Wharlest Jackson, whose truck was bombed as he drove home from work, having been recently moved from custodial duties to "a white man's job" of painting tires at the plant. Oh, the murders, all over Mississppi. Like I said, I gotta book in me. Anonymous, Avondale Estates, MS ||
 * **White Only**



Du Bois made THE CRISIS into a militant voice in the crusade for black civil rights and for the rights of all people of color. The publication was a success. Starting with a circulation of 1,000 in its first year of publication, by 1918 THE CRISIS had more than 100,000 readers. ||
 * ||  || 1863 || [|The Emancipation Proclamation] Early in the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was hard pressed by the Radical Republicans -- the party's abolitionist wing -- to abolish slavery by proclamation. Lincoln was opposed. -  ||
 * || [|Ku Klux Klan] - The Ku Klux Klan was originally organized in the winter of 1865-66 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a social club by six Confederate veterans. The Klan grew quickly and became a terrorist organization. ||
 * || [|Civil Rights Act Passed] - In 1875, the lame-duck Republican-controlled Congress, in a last-ditch effort to protect what remained of Reconstruction, managed to pass a civil-rights bill that sought to guarantee freedom of access, regardless of race, to the "full and equal enjoyment" of many public facilities. ||
 * 1883 || [|Civil Rights Act Overturned] - In 1883, The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights act of 1875, forbidding discrimination in hotels, trains, and other public spaces, was unconstitutional and not authorized by the 13th or 14th Amendments of the Constitution. ||
 * || [|Plessy v. Ferguson] - On June 7, 1892, 30-year-old Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy could easily pass for white but under Louisiana law, he was considered black despite his light complexion and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. He was a Creole of Color, a term used to refer to black persons in New Orleans who traced some of their ancestors to the French, Spanish, and Caribbean settlers of Louisiana before it became part of the United States. When Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, legally segregating common carriers in 1892, a black civil rights organization decided to challenge the law in the courts. ||   ||   ||||   ||   ||
 * |||| [|The Crisis] - The magazine for the first twenty years of its existence, THE CRISIS, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was almost synonymous with W.E.B.( William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois. According to Mary White Ovington, a founder of the NAACP, the name of the magazine was the result of a conversation she had had with another founder, William English Walling. Du Bois resigned his professorship at Atlanta University to become editor of the magazine. He was 42 years old, and was already an internationally known scholar, teacher, historian, and spokesman for the cause of African Americans.
 * |||| [|The Red Summer] - The Red Summer refers to the summer and fall of 1919, in which race riots exploded in a number of cities in both the North and South. ||
 * 1929-1939 |||| [|The Great Depression] In 1929, the Great Depression devastated the United States. Hard times came to people throughout the country, especially rural blacks. Cotton prices plunged from eighteen to six cents a pound. Two thirds of some two million black farmers earned nothing or went into debt.

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