Jim Crow law

In the United States, the so-called Jim Crow laws were made to enforce racial segregation, and included laws that would prevent African Americans from doing things that a white person could do. For instance, Jim Crow laws regulated separate use of water fountains, public bath houses, and separate seating sections on public transport. Jim Crow laws varied among communities and states. The term is not applied to all racist laws, but only to those passed post-Reconstruction starting in about 1890, the start of a period of worsening race relations in the United States. Similar laws passed immediately after the civil war were called the Black Codes. These were the codes that transformed into the Jim Crow laws of the twentieth century.

Early history

The conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865 led to the policy of Reconstruction, in which the federal government intervened to protect the rights conferred on black Americans by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as (upon their introductions) the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In almost-immediate response Southern legislatures passed the black codes, which attempted to return freed slaves to bondage in legal fact, rather than official terminology.

Related Topics:
American Civil War - 1865 - Reconstruction - 13th - 14th - 15th - United States Constitution - Civil Rights Act of 1866 - Civil Rights Act of 1875 - Black codes - Slaves

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This government-controlled Reconstruction ended by 1877. In its aftermath the resurgent white elites, who referred to themselves as Redeemers, reversed many of the civil rights gains that black Americans had made during Reconstruction, passing laws that mandated discrimination by both local governments and by private citizens. These became known as the Jim Crow laws, a reference to the character Jim Crow (popular in antebellum minstrel entertainment) that was a racist stage depiction of a poor and uneducated rural black. Since Jim Crow law is a blanket term for any of this type of legislation following the end of Reconstruction, the exact date of inception for the laws is difficult to isolate; common consensus points to the 1890s and the adoption of segregational railroad legislation in New Orleans as the first genuine "Jim Crow" law. By 1915 every Southern state had effectively destroyed any gains in civil liberties that blacks had enjoyed due to the Reconstructionist efforts.

Related Topics:
1877 - Redeemers - Antebellum - Minstrel - 1890s - 1915

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As an example, many state governments prevented blacks from voting by requiring poll taxes and literacy tests, both of which were not enforced on whites of British descent due to grandfather clauses. One common "literacy test" was to require the black would-be voter to recite the entire U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence from memory.

Related Topics:
Poll tax - Grandfather clause - U.S. Constitution - Declaration of Independence

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The Supreme Court of the United States held in the Civil Rights Cases 109 US 3 (1883) that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give the federal government the power to outlaw private discrimination, then held in Plessy v. Ferguson 163 US 537 (1896) that Jim Crow laws were constitutional as long as they allowed for separate but equal facilities. In the years that followed, the Court made this "separate but equal" requirement a hollow phrase by approving discrimination even in the face of evidence of profound inequalities in practice.

Related Topics:
Supreme Court of the United States - Civil Rights Cases - 1883 - Plessy v. Ferguson - 1896 - Separate but equal

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It is estimated that of 181,471 African-American males of voting age in Alabama in 1900, only 3,000 were registered.

Related Topics:
Alabama - 1900

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In 1902, Reverend Thomas Dixon published the novel The Leopard's Spots, which intentionally fanned racial animosity.

Related Topics:
1902 - Thomas Dixon - The Leopard's Spots

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