De Jure segregation is a from of legal law based authoritarian viewpoint of controlling African Americans during its running time. A prime example is, " Southern cities during this era had laws requiring African Americans to ride at the back of the bus."( Healey, pg 144) In this quote iit shows how African Americans were forced to comply with the given orders from the authorities such as needing to take a sit in the end of the bus. Some cases such as Rosa Parks were at given times ignored by the indivual ending up sitting either in the middle section or front seats of the vehicle leading other riders primiarily white to feel offended and to have security take them away. By these proccess the violater is forced to either takee a seat in the
Segregation was most visible on the buses in Montgomery. African Americans were told to ride in the back ten rows of the buses. The first ten rows were for white people and the center ten rows were whatever the bus driver wanted them to be. Many times the African Americans had to enter the front door to pay their toll, exit the front door and go in the back door of the bus. The bus drivers would often drive away while the African Americans were walking to the back door. Jim Crow laws prevented blacks from receiving the same rights as all other citizens.
In the late 1800’s, a series of racial policies went into effect known as the Jim Crow Laws. These laws enforced separate but equal treatment among African Americans and Whites. Established by the use of separate facilities such as, schools, hotels, restaurants, restrooms and transportation, many of us know and understand Jim Crow Laws by one word, “Segregation”. Jim Crow Laws were upheld by the government during the Plessy vs. Ferguson case and were cemented through acts of terror by the people who opposed. Although slavery had been abolished, African Americans were still stripped of their civil rights, which is intended to protect citizens from discrimination by the government and people.
Although laws promoting equality were passed, they were merely considered nothing to the people who carried animosity toward the blacks. Living their daily lives under the policy of “Separate but Equal” (Kallen 37), the blacks were treated terribly by their fellow white neighbors. The “Separate but Equal” law, passed in 1896 by the Supreme Court, stated that blacks could be segregated from whites in all public facilities as long as other facilities that were equal in quality were provided (Kallen 37). Prohibited from performing in theatres, attending performances, riding in streetcars, using the restrooms, going to school, playing at the park, and eating at restaurants, blacks were completely segregated from their community by the enforcement of laws known as the Jim Crow Laws (Kallen 38). During this time, the blacks were tired of the oppression and the derision of their natural rights that they were receiving and it motivated many to make a change in society and to have a voice.
“Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Said Justice John Marshall Harlan in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. (“Oyez, Oyez, Oh Yay!”) In 1890 Louisiana surprisingly got the ability to pass a law called the Separate Car Act that said that all railroad companies that carried passengers must provide separate but equal services for both white and non-white passengers. (“Landmark Cases”) The penalty for sitting in a white-designated railroad car when you were not of that ethnicity was a fine of twenty-five dollars or twenty days in jail. (“Landmark Cases”) There was a doctrine passed that everything was “separate but equal.” This doctrine was false however because in almost all situations the
Black Americans were second class citizens ensured by the structure of southern society pre-1955. The southern states had white only restaurants, white only rest zones in bus centers etc. Montgomery, Alabama, buses were segregated with specific areas on a bus reserved for white customers and other seats for black costumers. After a full days work, Rosa Parks got a bus home. The bus was “full” in the sense that all the seats for white Americans were in use. Parks was seated in a seat for Black Americans, a white man got on board and found that there were no open “white” seats. The bus
Enacted by lawmakers bitter about the loss against the North, Jim Crow Laws blatantly favored whites and repressed those of color as many refused to welcome blacks into civic-life, still believing them to be inferior. These laws were essentially a legalized legislative barrier to the freedom promised by our constitution, and the newly won war against the southern states to end slavery. This institutionalized form of inequality spread like a wildfire in the subsequent decades, separating the races in every way imaginable; in all walks of life. Although these laws varied from state to state, we see a common trend of laws keeping blacks and whites separated, particularly in social settings and social institutions. Some of these laws include but are not limited to marriage, hospitalization, restrooms, public transportation, and prisons; all of which isolating blacks from whites. We even find laws regarding liquor licensing such as a law in Georgia which required all persons licensed to sell alcohol, to serve exclusively whites or exclusively colored people; prohibiting sales to the two races simultaneously (NPS, 2015). Laws such as this were not few and far between. Segregation of blacks became a defining custom in nearly every aspect of life in the mid-nineteenth century well into the mid-twentieth century.
After the Civil War, following the Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction, the protection for the rights of African American ended if there was any. Southern States had moved to impose a system of segregation on nearly all areas of life. New laws that required segregation that stirred “separate but equal” doctrine that disenfranchise African Americans for almost six decades. It is hard in this days and age to be able to imagine segregation as a law, but the remnants just change form and name. A petition file on June 7, 1892, in the supreme court Louisiana by a local shoemaker named Homer Plessy against Honorable judge John H. Ferguson. His filling set a test case to challenge Separate Car Act that prompt Plessy v. Ferguson case perhaps one of the most noticeable actions to nullify “separate but equal” doctrine.
Secondly, the character of Mamie Cox portrays a woman who had a clear understanding of the social class and segregation, in the south, under the Jim Crow laws. Using the social-conflict approach, a framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change, I analyzed Mamie’s response to the changes she experienced throughout the novel (Macionis: 12). In Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, I clearly noticed how the segregation laws were instilled in her since birth and how she was effected when those laws began to crumble. The term DeJure is a Latin word meaning segregation by law. For those living in the south, such as Mamie Cox, this meant separate bathrooms, water fountains, and schools.
In 1891 a group of Creole professionals in New Orleans formed the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. They hired Albion Tourgée, a Reconstruction-era judge and social reformer, as their legal counsel. As plaintiff in the test case the committee chose a person of mixed race in order to support its contention that the law could not be consistently applied, because it failed to define the white and “colored” races.
Throughout history there have been many individuals that changed the course of social, economic and public systems for people across Canada and the United States. Segregation has been a long standing issue affecting African American individuals. Segregation is “the institutional separation of an ethnic, racial, religious, or other minority group from the dominant majority.” (Dictionary.com, 2005).
About a hundred years after the Civil War, almost all American lived under the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow Laws actually legalized segregation. These racially enforced rules dominated almost every aspect of life, not to mention directed the punishments for any infraction. The key reason for the Jim Crow Laws was to keep African Americans as close to their former status as slaves as was possible. The following paper will show you the trials and tribulations of African Americans from the beginning through to the 1940’s where segregation was at its peak.
“The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as “Jim Crow” represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the
From the 1880s to about the mid 1960s segregation had taken over American cities and towns. Segregation is the act of setting someone or something apart from other people or things. In America, African Americans were segregated from White people. Segregation was a result of the abolishment of slavery twenty-five years before. Whites still wanted to feel superior to the Blacks, and without slavery to chain them down, they decided to begin segregation by establishing Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws segregated Americans, by the color of their skin, in all public facilities: schools, restaurants, hospitals, schools, restrooms and more. The Whites had their own public facilities and Blacks had their own public facilities.
Segregation was an attempt by white Southerners to separate the races in every sphere of life and to achieve supremacy over blacks. Segregation was often called the Jim Crow system, after a minstrel show character from the 1830s that was an old,
Segregation had noticeably decreased in American schools however other aspects in Black Americans lives were still deprived. In most states, Black people were expected to sit at the back of a bus and give up their seats for a