William Bertolucci
Granados
US History
01 May 2017
21.1 Section Notes: Taking on Segregation
THE SEGREGATION SYSTEM
1890: Louisiana passed law requiring railroads to provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.”
In the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that the “separate but equal” law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment—guarantees all Americans equal treatment under the law.
States throughout nation, armed with the Plessy decision, passed Jim Crow laws—laws aimed at separating the races.
Forbade marriage between blacks and whites and established many other restrictions on social and religious contact between the races.
Separate schools, streetcars, waiting rooms, railroad coaches,
…show more content…
21.2 Section Notes: The Triumphs of a Crusade
RIDING FOR FREEDOM
When a new band of freedom riders rode into Birmingham, policemen pulled them from the bus, beat them, and drove them into Tennessee.
They returned to the bus terminal, and the bus driver refused to transport them.
In protest, they occupied the whites-only waiting room at the terminal for eighteen hours until a solution was reached.
After an angry phone call from US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, bus company officials convinced the driver to proceed.
A mob of whites—many carrying bats and lead pipes—fell upon the freedom riders when they arrived in Montgomery.
President Kennedy arranged to give the freedom riders direct support.
Justice Department sent 400 US marshals to protect the riders on the last part of their journey to Jackson, Mississippi.
The attorney general and the Interstate Commerce Commission banned segregation in all interstate travel facilities, including waiting rooms, restrooms, and lunch counters.
STANDING FIRM:
September 1962: Air Force veteran James Meredith won a federal court case that allowed him to enroll in the all-white University of
Plessy v. Ferguson , a very important case of 1896 in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legality of racial segregation. At the time of the ruling, segregation between blacks and whites already existed in most schools, restaurants, and other public facilities in the American South. In the Plessy decision, the Supreme Court ruled that such segregation did not violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This amendment provides equal protection of the law to all U.S. citizens, regardless of race. The court ruled in Plessy that racial segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities for blacks and whites were “equal.”
They were made to use separate facilities such as restrooms, restaurants, and waiting rooms. Blacks were prevented from renting land outside of the towns. They were forbidden to go anywhere they wanted. They were prevented from marrying any one outside of their race.
Jim Crow Laws legalize racial segregation throughout the South. In Louisiana, the Separate Car Act forced black and white people to sit in separate railroad cars.
Secondly, the Jim Crow laws enforced the demarcation of public facilities due to race, usually to the disadvantage of blacks. Everything, including drinking fountains, restaurants, schools, hospitals, prisons, trains, and buses were color-coded, and failure to comply with the decree usually resulted in arrest, notably more often for blacks than whites. The Jim Crow laws advertised the partition of buildings as “separate but equal”, but considering the fact that blacks were considered inferior at that time in the south and that previous race-related laws stood against blacks, the majority of the buildings made for whites were of noticeably higher quality than the ones made for blacks. Either that, or there were no colored facilities in the area, again leading to limitations for the African American race. Despite this, when Louisiana passed the “Separate Car Law”, which stated that blacks and whites had to sit in different train cars, Homer Plessy, a fairly light-skinned, black man, chose to defy the law by sitting in a white train car. After refusing the conductor’s requests to sit in the designated car, Plessy was arrested for contravening the Separate Car Law. A day
A group of people risked their life to obtain equality for African Americans in the south. The Freedom Riders were a group of around 13 people. Most of them were African Americans but there were always a few white skinned people in the group as well. There was no set leader for the Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into the Southern United States. The south was referred to as the most segregated part of the U.S. The main goal of the Freedom Riders was to desegregate and become “separate but equal.” They had also set out to defy the Jim Crow Laws. The Freedom Riders had a little bit of help from two court cases: Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia. These court cases ruled that it was
There was no clarification on what race would be considered white or what would be considered black. During this incident, “Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act.”(Duignan 2017). Judge Ferguson ruled that the separation was fair and did not violate the fourteenth amendment. The state Supreme Court also backed up this decision. The case was brought to the Supreme Court and "The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. By a 7-1 vote, the Court said that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between the two races did not conflict with the 13th Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, nor did it tend to reestablish such a condition." (History.com Staff 2009). This decision set the key precedent of Separate but Equal in the United States. Racial segregation kept growing.
By passing the Compromise of 1877 and removing federal troops from the south, white southerners reasserted their power over the freed blacks. Most blacks were forced to become sharecroppers. Where they farmed land that they didn't own and when harvest season came had to give most of their profit to the land owner. The fees were so high that the black workers would never get out of debt. Now "free" workers were working under the same conditions and the same families they had been slaves for before the Civil War. In order to further segregate the states enacted the Jim Crow laws. Southern states also performed literacy tests, registration laws, and poll taxes to prevent the black population from voting. The Supreme Court gave their approval to the segregation in 1896 during Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court declared "separate but equal." If one did not follow the laws placed before them they would be punished by the law or worse, the would be lynched by white civilians. The worst year was 1892, when a total of 230 people were lynched. Reconstruction ended before reconstruction could be completed because of that black Americans would be tortured because of their race for years to
Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896), was the landmark US Supreme Court case that legalized discrimination against African-Americans and gave credence to the "separate but equal" doctrine. Plessy, and the Jim Crow laws that flourished in the South due to
After the civil war, many couldn’t grasp around African-Americans being free, so Southern states passed segregation laws in order to restrict their autonomy. In a court case in 1896
The segregation laws of the United States were aimed mainly at African Americans. There were multiple reasons for this, although none of them were any good. They were fueled entirely by fear, hate, and a societal prejudice passed down through generations. All of these things were aimed at African Americans, and if a law could be made to enforce them, it usually would be. For years, this was accepted as perfectly fair and legal. In this writing, I will find the various reasons that these Jim Crow laws were made.
Segregation is a measure of the degree to which members of a minority group are not uniformly distributed among the total population. The minority was the African Americans. Laws were put in place called the Jim Crow laws. These laws made the African Americans have separate restaurants, schools, water fountains, hospitals, and train car seating. Homer A. Plessy was especially against this. In 1896 he was seated in a whites only train car. Immediately, he was told he was not allowed to sit in that area, but he refused to move. He didn't think the clause was applicable in this instance. It was said in the trial that "the Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and other public places to serve African Americans in separate, but ostensibly equal, accommodations." Their separate train cars were considerably unequal. This enraged the African American people and this case was a massive addition to the civil rights movement. (Plessy vs.
The president at the time, John F. Kennedy, heard about the news and wanted to protect them but also didn’t want the whites to get angry also. So the president’s brother Robert Kennedy, who was also the U.S Attorney General, sent 400 U.S marshals to keep the peace in Montgomery and escort the freedom Riders to safety. This helped the Freedom Riders but this was not
Jim Crow laws were constituted to separate black and white people from even the meagerest bit if contact. Back in 1810 white people thought that black people were put on this earth to work.
Many Southern state decreed blacks and whites could not attend the schools or ride the same bus and prohibited use of the same public facilities
Throughout years in the United States, Southern states have enforced various attempts of segregation at the state and local levels. One of the first regulations Southern states legally passed was Jim Crow Laws. Legalized in the early 1880s to the mid 1960s, Jim Crow Laws approved the segregation between blacks and whites. “Racism, which grew and changed in response to both domestic and international conditions and debates, existed across the entire country, but beyond the basic harshness and limitations that white supremacy place on