Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were a number of state and local laws requiring racial segregation in the Southern United States. These laws existed in multiple different states from 1877 to 1965. The Jim Crow laws provided a systematic legal basis for segregating African Americans and sometimes Native Americans or Asian Americans from European Americans. The laws first appeared after the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era and existed until the mid-20th century. They were about segregating Black and white people in all public buildings.
Overview
[change | change source]Jim Crow was a racial slur used against Black people. Black and other non-white people were usually treated worse than white people. This segregation was also done in the armed forces, schools, restaurants, on buses and in what jobs African Americans and other non-European Americans got. In 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled that such segregation in state-run schools was against the US Constitution. The decision is known as Brown v. Board of Education. The other Jim Crow laws were abolished by the Civil Rights Act of 1964[1] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fought against the Jim Crow laws.
Background
[change | change source]After the Civil War, the U.S. government tried to enforce the rights of ex-slaves in the South through a process called Reconstruction. However, in 1876, Reconstruction ended. By the 1890s, the Southern states' legislatures were all-white again. Southern Democrats, who did not support civil rights for African Americans, completely ruled the South.[2] This gave them a lot of power in the United States Congress.[3] For example, Southern Democrats were able to make sure that laws against lynching did not pass.
Laws against Black Americans
[change | change source]Starting in 1877, Southern Democrats began to pass state and local laws that took away the rights African Americans had gained after slavery was abolished in 1865. These racist laws became known as Jim Crow laws. For example, they included:
- Laws that made it impossible for African Americans to vote (this is called disenfranchisement). Since they could not vote, African Americans also could not be on juries.[4][5]
- Laws that required racial segregation – separation of African Americans and European Americans. For example, African Americans could not:[3]
- Go to the same schools, restaurants, or hospitals as European Americans
- Use the same bathrooms as European Americans or drink from the same water fountain
In 1896, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a case called Plessy v. Ferguson that these laws were legal. They said that having things be "separate but equal" was fine.[6] In the South, everything was separate. However, places like Black schools and libraries received much less money and were worse than places for whites.[6][7][8] Things were separate, but not equal.
Photo gallery
[change | change source]- Hover over each photo to view its label. Click on the picture to make it bigger.
"Negro" area in Shenandoah National Park (Virginia, 1930s)
"Colored" drinking fountain (Oklahoma, 1939)
Blacks and whites were not allowed to stay in the same hotels (Memphis, 1939)
A black man going into a segregated movie theater through the "colored" entrance (Mississippi, 1939)
"White" and "colored" doors at a café (North Carolina, 1940)
North Carolina law said African-Americans had to sit in the back of buses
Clinic "for colored" (Mississippi, 1966)
Related pages
[change | change source]References
[change | change source]- ↑ "Civil Rights Act of 1964". Archived from the original on 2010-10-21. Retrieved 2009-10-09.
- ↑ Stephens Jr., Otis H; Scheb, John M. (2007). American Constitutional Law, Volume II: Civil Rights and Liberties. Cengage Learning. p. 528. ISBN 978-0495097051.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - 1 2 Finkelman, Paul, ed. (2009). Encyclopedia of African American History: 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century (Volume IV). Oxford University Press. pp. 199–200. ISBN 978-0195167795.
- ↑ Perman, Michael (2001). Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807825938
- ↑ Koussecr, J. Morgan (1974). The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300016963
- 1 2 "Timeline of Events Leading to the Brown v. Board of Education Decision, 1954". Teachers’ Resources. United States National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- ↑ Fultz M 2006 (2006). "Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation". Libraries & the Cultural Record. 41 (3): 337–59. doi:10.1353/lac.2006.0042. S2CID 142811711.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ Logan, Rayford W. (1997). The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson. Da Capo Press. pp. 97-98. ISBN 978-0306807589
- "Jim Crow Laws". Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. History: Government and Politics. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Student Resources In Context. Web. November 7, 2013.