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.

Etiquette

In conjunction with the laws there was also Jim Crow etiquette: a set of unwritten rules governing how blacks and whites should interact. For example:

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• A black man could not offer his hand to a white man for handshake, because that would imply social equality.
• A black man could not look at a white woman, or offer to light her cigarette.
• Blacks were required to refer to whites as "Sir," "Mister," "Ma'am," etc., but whites referred to blacks by their first names, or as "boy."
• When blacks and whites were in the same car, truck, or bus, blacks rode in the back.

Violations of these rules could be punished by lynching. A putative reason for many of these restrictions was to protect the safety of white women. The justifications offered for many lynchings involved rape, rumors of sexual liaisons between black men and white women, or simply the perception by a white woman, or her male relative, that a black man had behaved inappropriately toward her. An example is the brutal murder of a 15-year-old named Emmett Till in 1955.

Related Topics:
Lynching - Emmett Till

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