The Jim Crow Laws

The topic that I chose for my research paper is the Jim Crow laws. I chose this topic because during this time period the Jim Crow laws were a huge obstacle that our country had to overcome in order to grow. The Jim Crow laws were created to separate whites and blacks in their everyday lives, allowing for no interaction between races. The Jim Crow Laws were enforced in the southern, United States. The laws existed between 1877 and the 1950’s, around the time the reconstruction period was ending and the civil rights movement was beginning.

Jim Crow laws dominated every aspect of African American life from its inception after Reconstruction up to the civil rights era and its affects can still be felt today. During this era of Jim Crow African Americans had different ways of coping with these oppressive laws. These ways of coping included these three methods, migration, agitation and accommodation. Out of these three methods the most effective at defying Jim Crow laws and fighting segregation was agitation.

The Jim Crow laws were everything but fair, and equal. Jim Crow is the name they used in the laws on separating the African Americans from the Caucasian men and women. These laws deprived African Americans from their civil rights because of the many things they were not allowed to experience due to these laws. Jim Crow laws oppressed the educational rights, voting rights, and social freedoms of American citizens, this essay will be discussing the oppression of these rights and freedoms.

Thomas Rico was a famous actor in the 1860’s, who played the character named Jim Crow, in theaters. Around the time that Jim Crow became popular, slave were being free from plantations and new laws were being made in the south. These laws were created to limit the freedom of newly freed African-Americans. White people in the south grew fond of both Jim Crow and the new laws that they started calling these laws “Jim Crow Laws”. Though the African-Americans were freed and had rights, whites would use laws so they could have power over African-Americans,

Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that separated non-colored people from colored people. I feel that these set of laws are very cruel. In this writing prompt i will be talking about the few ways that shows Jim Crow laws separate white from black.

Before there were players such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball was strictly white players only. The color line of Major League Baseball excluded black players until the late 40’s. This didn’t stop the colored men of America from playing the beloved American sport. The creation of the Negro Leagues in 1920 by Rube Foster gave colored men a chance to play in their own professional league, similar to the Major Leagues, but for African-American men. The creation of the Negro Leagues was a result of the Jim Crow Laws, state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period in the U.S., these laws continued in force until 1965. These laws created

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

The whole Jim Crow Law rules were based on the separate but equal properties. Any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the south between the end of reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Jim crow laws affected public places such as schools, housing jobs, parks, cemeteries, and public gathering places. Ohio was one of the first to ban interracial marriage. There was forms of segregation before the laws came into place. For instance some people had the mentality that they could work with a slave as long as the slave knew his or her place. Brown vs. Board of Education is an example of a Jim Crow law being put into action. After the supreme court unanimously held that racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause.

The Jim crow Law, was a system set up mostly in the southern area of america from 1877-1960’s, its goal is to change the way colored people were allowed to live in america after gain their “freedom” from slavery. These so called law are were meant to continue the segregation against those of color so that they don’t start thinking highly of them selfs and don’t come to a place thinking that they own their own lives and it their to do with what they please. Fear is a powerful thing and when learned, it can do some serious harm both physically and emotionally. Many of these law would prevent colored people from doing thing we do now on a day to day…. heck, some of these we do more then once in a day. Things like giving a hand shake, showing affection, eating together and even siting next to someone in a bus or cab was set to be done in a certain way. All this was done just so that a race of people not the same color as you don’t think their equal to you. Even now it make me wonder how people can have so much hate in their heart to live like this and be ok or even happy about it. to give an even more broader look on how bad it was i’m gonna list many of the thing colored be people went’t allowed to do in america back then.

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.

Can you imagine being told where and what to do based on the color of your skin? Many people born between 1800s and 1900s have experienced this. Whites and Blacks were considered completely different species back in those days. People thought that the races being separated was okay, as long as everything each race had was equal. This was never the situation though because blacks always had less than what the white people did. A group of laws that enforced this behavior were known as the Jim Crow Laws.

“The Jim Crow era was one of struggle -- not only for the victims of violence, discrimination, and poverty, but by those who worked to challenge (or promote) segregation in the South” (“Jim Crow Stories”). It is important to know the history of this significant period where everyone was treated differently based on how they looked instead of their character. During the Jim Crow era, the lives of African Americans were severely restricted making it difficult for them to succeed in everyday life.

Frederick Douglas spoke about these problems in 1876. He talked about how slaves were freed and left to live on their own - without land - and lead to face “the wrath of our infuriated masters”, referencing the many attacks against the freed people. Soon after the Civil War, laws known as the “Black Codes” were enforced. These laws prevented African-Americans from renting or keeping a house, holding public meetings, as well as carrying a weapon. These laws showcased the unfair hatred that Southerners directed towards newly freed men and women, similarly to the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws divided our country and as opposed to separating north and south, they parted the south between blacks and whites. This action was an enormous step back in our country’s fight for equality. If you were an African-American, you could not eat, go to the bathroom, or go to school in the same place as a white person. These actions and more were deemed against the law and lead to fines. After finally being considered free, rather than being accepted into society, African-Americans were sadly still seen as lesser than white people in America, and lost many rights as a

Why was it that the white race feels superior to other races, such as Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans? The problem with people is that many don’t like to see other ethical culture succeed. What people don’t know is that if that ethical group does not succeed then they together can not succeed as a racial community. The end of slavery but the rise of Jim Crow laws brought the acts of inequality, separation, and the mistreatment of the colored.

During the 1880s to the 1960s, many American states enforced the Jim Crow Laws that allowed for segregation. A few states affected by this were Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas. Legal punishment could be inflicted if people were to consort with other races. The most common law was to ensure that people would not marry people outside their race and to separate business and public institutions by black and white.