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Jim Crow Research Paper

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The name Jim Crow was the name of a character created in 1836 by a white American performer. He dressed up in “ill – fitting, tattered garments of a beggar,” and used “burned cork to blacken his face,” playing the part of a stereotypical African American in order to entertain white audiences (Litwack 1998, xiv). The name came to describe “the subordination and separation of black people in the South” as well as laws approved by the government at a state and local level, that enforced racial segregation and allowed for the oppression of blacks in order to stop them from gaining their freedom after the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, was enacted (Litwack 1998, xiv – xv). This was a time where blacks were denied “the basic rights of citizenship …show more content…

Racial stereotyping often crossed over into subjective decision – making processes such as the courts, and it often resulted in devastating consequences (Alexander 2012, 4). The courts would often fail to uphold the law and give whites and blacks unequal punishment. Many times African Americans would take whites to court to dispute situations but the courts often overturned their decision and ruled in favor of the white party. After refusing to move to the Jim Crow section on a train after paying full price for a ticket, Ida B. Wells was put off the train and walks home. Later she takes the train company to court where at first she won, but later the court overturned the ruling. Ida B. Wells responded by writing, “tell my people to flee, there is no justice here” (The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow 2002, Part 1). It was also the norm some crimes that were committed by one race “not to be punishable when committed by the other race. If s white man were found guilty of adultery or bigamy, he might have to serve from 3 – 10 years in the penitentiary, but authorities were apt to ignore such a crime when committed by a black person, dismissing it as a racial defect” (Litwack 1998, 259). A white man could also be convicted of a crime and receive a very light sentence and a black man who was convicted of the same crime would receive a very heavy and unjust sentence. It is only “possible for the white race to prove its own incontestable superiority by appointing both judge and jury and summoning its own witnesses” (Du Bois 1998, 32). During Jim Crow the court system often did this. This is why blacks could be convicted of the same crimes that whites committed and sentenced to jail for several years while the white man walked free. This eventually became better after African American activist Charles Hamilton Houston devised a strategy that forced the courts to uphold the law and

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