Jim Crowe
One hundred years following the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under the system of legalized segregation know as The Jim Crow Laws. Its racially enforced rules governed nearly every aspect of life, as well as outlined punishments for infractions. The main purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. This paper will document the trials and tribulations African Americans faced, from the beginning stages through the 1940s when segregation and oppression during these times were at some of the highest peaks.
The Background of Jim Crow
Horrified by the changing status of Blacks, before the Civil War’s cannons had wholly cooled, Southerners began a long counterattack aimed at subjugating their former slaves. Their efforts culminated on a calamitously historic day in 1896, when after three decades of fattening, Jim Crow came to maturity armored by the Supreme Court with full force of the Constitution. The Supreme Court upheld the Jim Crow laws and segregation in Plessy vs. Ferguson, which involved a Louisiana law requiring separate sections on trains for African Americans. The courts ruled that segregation was legal as long as African Americans had access to public facilities or accommodations equal to those of whites. The laws limited the rights of freed slaves, and were also known as the Black Codes. The laws were different in each state, but they still had the same form of restriction.
Jim Crow was widely used to identify racist laws and actions in southern America that deprived African Americans of their civil rights. It primarily operated in the southern and border states between 1877 and the mid 1960s. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were regulated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-Black racism. Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that Whites were the chosen people and Blacks were cursed to...
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