...Jim Crow The term Jim Crow was used as a reference to segregation laws hat came about at the end of the reconstruction and came to an end in 1877 and continued until the 1960's. According to diction dictionary.reference.Jim Crow is defined as a practice or policy of segregating or discriminating against blacks, as in public places, public vehicles, or employment. The term Jim Crow was thought to have originated around 1830 from a white minstrel show performer named Thomas Rice put black material on his face and performed a jig singing “Jump Jim Crow.” The character was created from a crippled, elderly black man singing and dancing. People say that Jim Crow owned a slave that gave inspiration for the act. The skit was incorporated into the act and then became a part of the minstrel scene in America. (1), (2), (3) Thomas Rice was one of the first performers to wear blackface makeup in a song and dance routine that turned out to be a success and took him to places like Louisville to Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and to New York in 1832. Jim Crow was later a stock character in minstrel shows with Jim Dandy and Zip Coon. His blackface characters were Sambos, Coons, and Dandies. White audiences were open to portrayals of blacks as singing, dancing, grinning fools. Around 1838, the term "Jim Crow" was being used to refer to blacks, althought not to be as offensive as nigger, but close to coon or darkie. Minstrel shows clearly helped the spread of Jim Crow as...
Words: 1303 - Pages: 6
...After the collapse of Jim Crow, especially seeing the great success experienced by some African Americans, we start to feel the system of racial caste is officially dead and buried. However, that is just an illusion. Behind the rhetoric of institutionalized equity, our criminal justice system is working as the new Jim Crow preventing blacks from participating in our electoral democracy. While Constitutional amendments guaranteed African Americans "equal protection of the laws" and the right to vote, through a web of laws, regulations, and informal rules, all of which are powerfully reinforced by social stigma, they are confined to the margins of mainstream society and denied access to the mainstream economy. During the Reconstruction Era, whites felt threatened and outraged as African Americans were exposed to more social and economic opportunities and started to obtain political power. To turn the table and regain all the black labors they had for free for centuries, southern states drastically increased the penalties for minor offenses. Southern conservatives founded Ku Klux Klan, which fought a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction governments and local leaders, complete with bombings, lynchings, and mob violence. I can never forget those horrible pictures in which some white onlookers were smiling or laughing with the blacks burning or hung on the tree in the background. How sick they had to be to enjoy watching another human being tortured and murdered? Reconstruction...
Words: 693 - Pages: 3
...Jim crow, segregation laws kept the blacks in the subordinate position back nineteen century. Not a person just a word but with the power to kept black people so far from whites. It was frustrating and cynical back them because they did not have the freedom to use the same bathroom as whites. This law was supposed to help them and their culture. Instead, they were having a really bad time with not having the same right as others people. Going to different schools, drinking from different fount water it was enough humiliation. But it did not end right there, they did not even have the same right to vote or to hold public office. Before all that when the construction starts the things were so much easy. They increased the number of black votes but not for so long the next year that number decreased with a notable change. Putting myself in the situation to think about the entire thing that they have to face it, it is just inexplicable. The only thing that those people did wrong was born with a different skin color and they instantly were different as a person and as a human. While I was reading the Jim Crow Laws, I inquired that Black American were doing or operating largely outside the political arena. In another hand, African Americans used the publicity, music, literature and religion to show their feeling. A good example, a lot black singers are singing about how hard they live. This brief example of song singing by a blues black singer: "It was only two minutes and four...
Words: 607 - Pages: 3
...Jim Crow Law Steven Godfrey HIS/125 12/4/11 Mr. Terry J. Bovinet, D.Min. Jim Crows’ laws began taking effect in 1896 at the end of the civil war partially becouse the people of the south didn’t feel that blacks should be treated equal to them. They acted as if the blacks or coloreds had some sort of disease that they might catch from sitting next to them eating, or on the bus. These laws emerged at the end of the civil war by Southerner to help maintain the superiority and dominance over the freed slaves. The Jim Crow laws had quite a few affects on African Americans from only being allowed to eat in certain parts of restaurants and dinners, that is the dinners and restaurant that would allow them to eat there. There was also white only trolly cars and busses that only allowed african americans to ride in the back if there was room. Other establishments and business also had specific seating and service areas for African Americans to keep them separate in the business. The lack of rights had a profound on the African American life for those with jobs not being able to get on the buss or trolly slowed them down and at times cased them to loose there jobs due to being late. Meals at dinners were slower due to the service mainly being aimed at the white customers, and the limited space given for African American customers for lunches and dinners. Entertainment was also confined and the conditions they were expected to sit in. A black male was not allowed to offer his...
Words: 857 - Pages: 4
...Midterm Essay on Jim Crow Laws Brittney Accardo History 12 May 8th, 2015 The year 1896 was the time that the Untied States of America came down as a whole. Many people were hurt and confused by the Jim Crow laws. These laws were established in order or keep the blacks and whites separated in public places. Jim Crow laws made a huge impact on society in the 1930’s. On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the idea of “separate but equal,” which was the base of the Jim Crow laws. This was the case of the Plessy versus Ferguson. The United States Constitution did not allow many types of discrimination such as black people being mistreated. Therefore, the states worked around the rules to include Jim Crow laws without disobeying the United States Constitution. This made African Americans considered as the “lower class” citizens. Many people were judging the blacks because of their skin; they were not respected as human beings. Some of the Jim Crow Laws (Black Code) were very extreme; the laws were so strict it was almost like the African American people were still in slavery. However, some would...
Words: 741 - Pages: 3
...Jim Crow Laws What would you think if you were to go to the bathroom and see a sign stating that there was a separate bathroom for African Americans, likely one that was in much worse shape? This would have been very common in America in the 1930s. According to Clive Gifford, author of “World Issues, Racism”, “Racial discrimination denies members of one racial group access open to others” (Gifford 19). Racial discrimination has taken place several times throughout history, even in the form of laws, such as the Jim Crow Laws. Jim Crow laws were prejudiced laws that supported racial segregation in the United States for several decades. THE START OF JIM CROW LAWS Jim Crow laws began in the United States around the 1880s (“Jim Crow Laws” 1)....
Words: 1665 - Pages: 7
...The Jim Crow Era had not come to an end yet. The unfair and unequal treatment of African Americans was different, but not over. Jim Crow was many things, but specifically Jim Crow was “statutory law in the overly white-supremecist states, namely the old Confederacy and the border states… police and the courts enforced the acts of lawmakers, who represented every kind of jurisdiction from municipal and county administrations to school districts and state legislatures…” (Packard, 2002, pp. 163-164). However, Jim Crow was not just built into legislation. Much of Jim Crow was in fact, customary “largely because most African-Americans rather than being commingled with whites in civil society were enslaved and thus came most directly under the control of owners… Over the additional one hundred years that racism held much of America in thrall, the etiquette of Jim Crow became an unbendingly enforced system of social control” (Packard, 164). The lyrics from the song Uncle Sam speak of Jim Crow laws and how the laws made it acceptable for people to discriminate. “Uncle Sam says, ‘your place is on the ground, when I fly my airplanes, don’t want no Negro around’…” Although the United States at this point was post-slavery, the idea of post-racial...
Words: 1208 - Pages: 5
...The Jim Crow laws during the late 1800s portrayed the American society as broken and separated. The whites were still very racist but they covered up their racism by making it so that the African Americans can be “free”. They mad the Jim grow laws so that it was impossible for the African Americans to actually interacting with the whites. Public places were required to separate the blacks and whites, even in their own homes blacks could not live in a whites neighborhood or with a white. The blacks were considered inferior to the whites even though they were supposed to be then considered equals. Whites gave the blacks the worse conditions on certain things like the train, bus, bathrooms, etc.. Overall, the American society still treated African Americans like they were insignificant to America. Even in today's American society women are considered inferior to men. Men think that women are meant to stay in the house and be housewives. Women are not as strong and are very petite compared to the way the men are built. Other people take a different view on why women are inferior because of religion. In the Bible it specifically states that women were made to be mans helper in the world. So people believe that women were made for men. Men control the way women should be; men believe that women should be in the house. There are no laws in America specifically made for women against men but many companies make it known that women will always be inferior. Just like the Jim Crow laws...
Words: 298 - Pages: 2
...Laws Emerged Jim Crows laws emerged in 1876, after Reconstruction. These laws emerged because of the segregation between whites and blacks, and the Democratic Party legislated these laws. The laws consisted of segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, restrooms and restaurants. With these laws in place, it made life hard for African Americans to survive, let alone live. Finding work was a chore in itself, especially when you’re going up against the white person. Many kinds of employment, such as work in the mills, went largely to whites. Black could enter some white residents but only as servants and hired help. Blacks could bared from juries and usually received greater penalties than whites for the same crime. It was extremely dangerous if any African American to cross the color line; it usually meant violence. The chances of being whipped, beaten, and lynched were highly possibly, especially in the South. African Americans Responds One of our nation’s most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy (Baker, 1996) was Ida B. Wells. In 1884 Wells was asked to give up her seat to a white man and ordered her in the Jim Crow car. Despite the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination, the railroad companies denied the congressional mandate. Wells literally fought for her seat, biting the conductor on the hand after he tried to remove her by hand. Of course after retrieving help from other men, Wells was removed from the train. Wells...
Words: 734 - Pages: 3
...Jim Crow laws are laws that were conceived by white southerners to systematically impede the civil rights of colored American citizens. These laws were made under the guise of “ separate, but equal.” However the people who created these laws did not have equality in mind. Jim Crow laws led to serious violations of civil rights and dehumanized people of color. Jim Crow laws and inequality are the scourge of American society. For nearly a century, Jim Crow laws were the bane of African American lives. These laws withheld opportunities of education, wealth, and even life itself. In 1875, the Civil Rights Act was passed by the Republican party, the Civil Rights Act castigated segregation by granting the freedom to use any public facilities to every US citizen regardless of race, but in 1883 the law was repealed after the US Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional thus impeaching the rights of colored citizens and condemning them to nearly a century of inhumane treatment. With the Civil Rights Act abrogated southern states now had the power to methodically take away the rights of African Americans....
Words: 683 - Pages: 3
...Michelle Alexander, Civil Rights Attorney, details the occurrence of legalized discrimination in her book called "The New Jim Crow." The New Jim Crow indicates that even though slavery has been long abolished, systemized inequalities still exists. There is a strong existence in employment opportunities, educational systems, public assistance, and jury selections across the country. Without taking a closer look, one could easily believe that the prison system is designed to rehabilitate those who have had trouble with the law. However, there is a question as to whether those who are truly rehabilitated have access to equal opportunities when released from correctional facilities. One can further question whether those persons are given fair...
Words: 963 - Pages: 4
...amendments. Followed by the black suffrage, which will eventually become the fifteenth amendment, the freedmen was now equal as the whites under the Constitution. However, the South who had treated freedmen as slaves a while ago experienced difficulties admitting this equality. Although former slaves had rights and freedom, in reality, they weren’t treated equally at all, especially in the South, due to the state-level legal codes of segregation known as Jim Crow Laws. It has brought varying reactions among the African-American community, which they demonstrated resentments as well as minority idea of returning to Africa. “The white man must and will rule.” According to this standard, the southern states enacted literacy requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll to ensure disfranchisement of the black population. Out of all,...
Words: 710 - Pages: 3
...From 1865 to 1900, life as an African-American was horrible. As a result of the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, Black citizens were faced with large amounts of racism that prevented them from moving forward in society. Overall, these laws successfully limited the social, political, and economic influence of African-Americans for more than 35 years. Socially, Blacks were faced with many laws that prevented them from serving on juries, testifying in court, or even marrying white citizens. However, the most notorious of the social roadblocks faced by Blacks were the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. The KKK made it difficult for Blacks to even step outside, for fear of their school being burned, their houses being destroyed while they were outside, or...
Words: 354 - Pages: 2
...Did you know there were fourteen Jim Crow laws that impacted the lives of blacks in that time period? Did you also know that there were 4,730 known lynchings? Currently, in the United States the death penalty is not allowed, but it was acceptable to lynch people in that time period. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee used real-life events as inspiration for her novel. There are similarities to Jim Crow, mob mentality, and the issues of racism in that time period. In To Kill a Mockingbird the first connection to America’s history is the presence of the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were a way to segregate blacks from whites. Some examples of the laws were segregated buses, prisons, mental hospitals, and reform schools. If...
Words: 821 - Pages: 4
...A book “The New Jim Crow” is written by Michelle Alexander, who is a legal scholar and civil rights litigator. It is published in 2010 by The New Press. The name comes from the old Jim Crow laws, which prevailed in the former federal state of the United States by the 1960s. The book covers the race in the United States related to the social, political and legal phenomenon, and tried the term "The New Jim Crow" applies to African Americans in the contemporary American situation. The new Jim Crow told a truth that is the United States has been reluctant to face. The New Jim Crow has lead to millions of African Americans locked behind bars in the United States, then denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement, and at the same time transferred to a permanent second-class status. Alexander's book is in the New York Times bestseller list for 10 consecutive months, and philosopher Cornel West has called it the "secular bible for a new social movement in early twenty-first-century America." And led to the reentry centers, community centers, churches, university, and national prisons raise awareness efforts. Author...
Words: 450 - Pages: 2
