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Jim Crow Laws

From Ducksters
What were the Jim Crow laws?
Jim Crow laws were laws in the South based on race. They enforced segregation between white people and black people in public places such as schools, transportation, restrooms, and restaurants. They also made it difficult for black people to vote.

When were the Jim Crow laws enforced?
After the Civil War there was a period in the South called the Reconstruction. During this time the federal government controlled the southern states. However, after the Reconstruction, the state governments took back over. Most Jim Crow laws were put in place in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many of them were enforced until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Why were they called "Jim Crow"?
The name "Jim Crow" comes from an African-American character in a song from 1832. After the song came out, the term "Jim Crow" was often used to refer to African-Americans and soon the segregation laws became known as "Jim Crow" laws.

Jim Crow laws were designed to keep black and white people apart. They touched on many aspects of society. Here are a few examples of laws in different states:

Alabama - All passenger stations shall have separate waiting rooms and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races.
Florida - The schools for white children and the schools for black children shall be conducted separately.
Georgia - The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon the ground set apart for the burial of white persons.
Mississippi - Prison wardens shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the negro convicts.

There were also laws that tried to prevent black people from voting. These included poll taxes (a fee people had to pay to vote) and reading tests that people had to pass before they could vote.

Grandfather Clauses
In order to make sure that all white people could vote, many states enacted "grandfather" clauses into their voting laws. These laws stated that if your ancestors could vote before the Civil War, then you did not have to pass the reading test. This allowed for white people who could not read to vote. This is where the term "grandfather clause" comes from.

Black Codes
After the Civil War, many southern states created laws called Black Codes. These laws were even harsher than the Jim Crow laws. They tried to maintain something like slavery in the south even after the war. These laws made it difficult for black people to leave their current jobs and allowed them be arrested for just about any reason. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment tried to put an end to the Black Codes.

Fighting Segregation

African-Americans began to organize, protest, and fight segregation and the Jim Crow laws in the 1900s. In 1954, the Supreme Court said that segregation of the schools was illegal in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case. Later, protests such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Birmingham Campaign, and the March on Washington brought the issue of Jim Crow to national attention.

The End of Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow laws were made illegal with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Interesting Facts about Jim Crow Laws

The U.S. army was segregated until 1948 when President Harry Truman ordered the armed services desegregated.
As many as 6 million African-Americans relocated to the North and West to get away from the Jim Crow laws of the south. This is sometimes called the Great Migration.
Not all Jim Crow laws were in the south or were specific to black people. There were other racial laws in other states such as a law in California that made it illegal for people of Chinese ancestry to vote. Another California law made it illegal to sell alcohol to Indians.
The phrase "separate but equal" was often used to justify segregation.

Segregation

Vocabulary

segregation
discrimination
Black codes
civil rights movement
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Civil Rights Act of 1964
racism

Segregation means keeping people apart. In many cases it is a form of discrimination because one group of people is treated unfairly.

In the United States the term segregation is most commonly used to describe the way African Americans have been treated, especially in the South, for many years. When slavery ended in the mid-1800s, Blacks continued to live separate from the whites around them. They had no opportunities to get a good education or good jobs to improve their lives. Laws called Black codes kept Blacks from owning property or having certain kinds of jobs.

Beginning in the late 1870s, Southern states passed laws that made segregation official. The laws required whites and Blacks to attend separate schools and to sit in different areas on public transportation. Blacks were not allowed to stay at most hotels or eat at certain restaurants. The laws were known as Jim Crow laws. To escape the laws many Blacks moved to the North, beginning in the early 1900s. This was known as the Great Migration. However, Black people faced another kind of segregation in the North. They were not allowed to buy property in certain areas, for example. That meant that most Blacks lived in neighborhoods that were separate from white neighborhoods. Since students went to schools in their neighborhoods, the schools were segregated as well. In Chicago some beaches were considered off limits to Blacks though there was no actual law. Tensions between Blacks and whites sometimes led to conflicts, as during the so-called Red Summer of 1919.

Blacks were segregated in most areas of life well into the 1900s. They had to serve in separate military units, they could not perform in some theaters or concert halls, and they could not participate in major league sports.

In the 1950s and ’60s the civil rights movement brought an end to some forms of segregation. In 1954 a court case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka said that schools could no longer be segregated. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate against people based on race, color, religion, or national origin (where they come from).

Although official segregation has ended, its effects continue. The many years of segregation led to systemic racism throughout the country. In systemic racism, racist ideas become a part of society’s institutions and systems. These institutions include the government, the educational system, and the criminal justice system. Society’s institutions and deeply rooted practices mean that white people have advantages over Blacks and other people of color. In many cities, for example, Black residents live in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and few services, such as health care, or good schools. The neighborhoods are often so-called food deserts. These are areas that do not have local grocery stores with healthy foods. Systemic racism is also called institutional racism.

The Great Depression