The Strange Career Of Jim Crow Essay

Jim Crow laws made segregation legal in the Deep South, thus enforcing the superiority of whites and the privileges given to them, such as cleaner and better facilities that accommodated them. It was a reaction to the government’s failure to deliver the promises they made. Chicanos and African-American alike had the dignity to not depend on the states to give them their rights, but they were willing to give themselves their own rights, pushing for Chicano and Black Nationalism.

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted that mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in southern states of the former confederacy. The blacks were said to be “separate but equal” and this separation led to conditions for the blacks that tended to be inferior to those provided for whites. Law-enforced segregation mainly applied to the southern United States whereas northern segregation had patterns of segregation in housing that was enforced by the covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination. For decades, this included discriminatory union practices for decades. The Jim Crow laws segregated public schools, public places, public transportation, restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains. Therefore, it did nothing to bring about social or economic equality.

In today’s modern world, many people would be surprised to find out that there is still a racial caste system in America. After witnessing the election of a black president, people have started believing that America has entered a post-racial society. This is both a patently false and dangerous mindset. The segregation and stigma of race is still very much alive in our society. Instead of a formalized institution such as slavery or Jim Crow, America has found a new way to continue the marginalization of blacks by using the criminal justice system. In Michelle Alexander’s book “ The New Jim Crow”, she shows how America’s “ War on Drugs “ has become a tool of racial segregation and how the discretionary enforcement of drug laws has

The Jim Crow laws were local and state laws that were supposedly “separate but equal,” but instead blacks were inferior to the whites due that to the social, educational, and economical disadvantages that they caused. In Woodward’s greatly influential book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, he shows supporters of segregation that this was not the way that it had always been, but instead segregation took time to develop after the Civil war and that the acceptance of the Jim Crow laws was not just because of race, but also included politic aspects. Woodward proves his thesis by showing how the state between the two races was right after the race the war and how slavery required interaction between blacks and whites. Woodward continues to

In his preface to his first edition, he lays out what he is attempting to do. He says “Few have any idea of the relative recency of the Jim Crow laws, or any clear notion of how, when, and why the system arose.” (p. xvi) In his book he seems to be explaining the system and where he believes it arose. With that though comes the responsibility of including all of the facts, which Woodward attempts to do through his revisions.

Black Codes is the mainstream name given to the statutes went by Southern slave states, before and instantly after the American Civil War. From the pioneer time frame, provinces and states had passed laws that oppressed free Blacks. In the South, these were for the most part incorporated into slave codes; the objective was to lessen impact of free blacks as a result of their potential impact on slaves. Restrictions included denying them from voting, remaining battle ready, and assembling in gatherings for love and figuring out how to read and write. A noteworthy reason for these laws was to save slavery. In the initial two years after the Civil War, white ruled southern legislatures passed Black Codes displayed after the before slave codes.

The book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward is an enormously influential book in history. Woodward was born in 1908 in a small town in Arkansas named Vanndale and he died at the age of 91 in December 1999. The most interesting thing about this book is not just the particular events in history, or the misconceptions and myths that Woodward discusses, but rather how badly the problem of race is in America. Since the United States introduced the slaves into their country there has always been a problems or struggles among whites and blacks trying to figure out how to comprehend each other and themselves, on how to share the same place without conflict. This history is very strange and to be able to have a better understanding of why race is still an issue today, because of this book it helps to know how racism, segregation, and civil rights changed over time.

Jim Crow law in U.S. history was 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 was the name of a minstrel routine performed beginning in 1828. The term came to be a derogatory epiblast for African Americans and a designation for their segregated life. Southern state legislatures passed laws requiring the separation of whites from “persons with color”. The Jim Crow law was from 1877 to 1954. (Britannica.com)

In 1865, Louisiana created “Black Codes”, a set of rules that controlled the lifestyle of African Americans. It sounded very similar to slavery, going to extremes such as that every African American had to be of regular service to a white person. The historical significance of these codes is that although they were soon demolished with the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment, Jim Crow laws were soon established after(Document 6). All the states and territories of the

C. Vann Woodward’s book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, has been hailed as a book which shaped our views of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and of the American South. Martin Luther King, Jr. described the book as “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The argument presented in The Strange Career of Jim Crow is that the Jim Crow laws were relatively new introductions to the South that occurred towards the turn of the century rather than immediately after the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Woodward examines personal accounts, opinions, and editorials from the eras as well as the laws in place at the times. He examines the political history behind the emergence of

In The Strange Career of Jim Crow Woodward claimed that the segregation that eventually appeared in the South was not an unavoidable consequence of slavery and Reconstruction. He stated that although slavery was commonly practiced across the region, “segregation would have been an inconvenience and an obstruction to the functioning” of Southern society and systems. Slavery, despite its basis in white superiority, had promoted an unavoidable intimacy and association between the races, as seen from the prevalence in mulattoes and residential intermixing. Woodward went on to theorize that segregation and the notion of Jim Crow were not even original products of the South; instead, they had been developed and advanced in the North before being exported to the South. He pointed to the well-developed system of segregation that

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.

“Jim Crow Laws were statutes and ordinances established between 1874 and 1975 to separate the white and black races in the American South. In theory, it was to create "separate but equal" treatment, but in practice Jim Crow Laws condemned black citizens to inferior treatment and facilities.” The Jim Crows Laws created tensions and disrespect towards blacks from whites. These laws separated blacks and whites from each other and shows how race determines how an individual is treated. The Jim Crow laws are laws that are targeted towards black people. These laws determine how an individual is treated by limiting their education, having specific places where blacks and whites could or could not go, and the punishments for the “crime”

This “war on drugs,” which all subsequent presidents have embraced, has created a behemoth of courts, jails, and prisons that have done little to decrease the use of drugs while doing much to create confusion and hardship in families of color and urban communities.1,2Since 1972, the number of people incarcerated has increased 5-fold without a comparable decrease in crime or drug use.1,3 In fact, the decreased costs of opiates and stimulants and the increased potency of cannabis might lead one to an opposing conclusion.4 Given the politics of the war on drugs, skyrocketing incarceration rates are deemed a sign of success, not failure. I don’t totally agree with the book (I think linking crime and black struggle is even older than she does, for instance) but I think The New Jim Crow pursues the right line of questioning. “The prison boom is not the main cause of inequality between blacks and whites in America, but it did foreclose upward mobility

“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