Jim Crow laws

Introduction

Jim Crow laws' refer to that period in American history, 1876-1964, in which state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States required the separation of African-American from White-Americans in all public facilities, such as water fountains, public schools, restaurants, libraries, buses, trains, as well as the legal restrictions placed on blacks from exercising their right to vote. It was not until 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, and in 1964, with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that these discriminatory laws were finally made illegal.

Origin of the term "Jim Crow”

The term Jim Crow comes from the minstrel show song "Jump Jim Crow" written in 1828 and performed by Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice, a white English migrant to the U.S. and the first popularizer of blackface performance, which became an immediate success. A caricature of a shabbily dressed rural black, named "Jim Crow", became a standard character in minstrel shows. By 1837, Jim Crow was used to refer to racial segregation.

The End of the Civil War

At the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865, and lasting until 1876, during the period commonly referred to as the period of Reconsturction, the federal government took a very affirmative and aggressive stance in enacting many new federal laws that provided civil rights protection for African-Americans who had formerly been slaves. Among these new laws were the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution. These enacements guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the equal use of public accommodations facilities, which included inns, hotels, motels, public transportation, such as buses and railway cars, as well as theaters and other places of public amusement, without regard to race.

Unfortunately, starting in 1883, the US Supreme Court started to invalidate these congressional enactments that afforded new protections for Blacks. The first congressional enactment to be challenged was the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The high court held that Congress had no power under the U.S. Constitution to regulate the conduct of individuals, and therefore, most of the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were held to be unconstitutional.

In other actions, the Court decided that the recently enacted 14th Amendment to the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to outlaw private discrimination. In “Plessy v. Ferguson the Court held that Jim Crow laws were constitutional as long as they allowed "separate but equal" facilities. The “separate but equal" requirement eventually led to widespread racial discrimination.

Background of the Plessy Case

In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed a law requiring separate accommodations for black and white passengers on railroads. A group of black and white citizens in New Orleans formed an association for the purpose of repealing this new law. They persuaded Homer Plessy, a light-skinned and one-eighth African, to challenge the law. In 1892 Plessy purchased a first-class ticket from New Orleans on the East Louisiana Railway. When he had boarded the train, he informed the train conductor of his racial lineage, but insisted on sitting in the whites-only section. Plessy was asked to leave the railway car that had been designated for white passengers, and sit in the "blacks only" car. Plessy refused to do so, and was later arrested and convicted for not sitting in the railway car designated only for blacks. This case was then appealed to the US Supreme Court. However, in 1896 the Supreme Court affirmed his conviction.

The Soutern States Reaction

After the Civil War, when many southern states came under the control of the Republican party, whihch was largely made up of freed black slaves, white Southerners known as "Scalawags" and migrants from the North known as "Carpetbaggers". These “scalawags” were white Southerns who joined the Republican party during the Reconstruction period, who were interested in re-building the South by ending the power of the plantation aristocracy that was largely responsible for slavery. To fulfill this objective, they formed a coalition with the freed slaves, and with the so-called “carpetbaggers”, who were northerners that had moved from the North to the South during this period of Reconstruction. However, many Southerners, particulary the Klu Klux Klan, an organization founded by veterans of the Confederate army, violently resisted this new Republican coalition as well as the new federal civl rights laws that gave blacks legal rights they never had before. President Ulysses S. Grant was forced to use federal troops to curtial violence against blacks by the Klan, and use the federal court system to enforce the new federal laws against the Klan.

By 1877 Southern whites who were opposed to the policies of the Federal government formed their own political coalition to oust the Republicans who were trying to seize control over State politics. Known as the “Redeemers”, these Southerners were a political coalition of conservative and pro-business whites that came to domiante the Democractic Party in the South. They rose to power in the South by being able to reverse many of the civil rights gains that blacks had made during the Reconstruction era, and by passing laws that virtually mandated discrimination by local governments and private parties. One of the most racist of these laws came in the 1890s with the adoption of legislation that mandated the segregation of blacks and whites on railroad cars in New Orleans. Between 1890 and 1910, many state governments prevented most Blacks from voting in local and federal elections, by various techniques, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. These new requirements could be waived for whites due to grandfather clauses, but not for Blacks. It is estimated that of 181,000 Black males of voting age in Alabama in 1900, only 3,000 were registered to vote.

By 1915, every Southern state had effectively destroyed the gains that blacks had obtained through various laws passed by the Federal government during the Reconstruct period. The new restrictions against blacks were eventually extended to the federal government by President Woodrow Wilson who became President in 1912.

Examples of Jim Crow laws

The following are examples of Jim Crow laws that are excerpted from a U.S. National Park Service web site. [1]

An African American drinks out of a segregated water cooler designated for "colored" patrons in 1939 at a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City.

ALABAMA

Nurses. No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to work in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which Negro men are placed.
Buses. All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races.

Railroads. The conductor of each passenger train is authorized and required to assign each passenger to the car or the division of the car, when it is divided by a partition, designated for the race to which such passenger belongs.

Restaurants. It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.

FLORIDA

Intermarriage. All marriages between a white person and a Negro, or between a white person and a person of Negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited.

Cohabitation. Any Negro man and white woman, or any white man and Negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars.

Education. The schools for white children and the schools for Negro children shall be conducted separately.

LOUISIANA

Housing. Any person...who shall rent any part of any such building to a Negro person or a Negro family when such building is already in whole or in part in occupancy by a white person or white family, or vice versa when the building is in occupancy by a Negro person or Negro family, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five ($25.00) nor more than one hundred ($100.00) dollars or be imprisoned not less than 10, or more than 60 days, or both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court.

MISSISSIPPI

Promotion of Equality. Any person...who shall be guilty of printing, publishing or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and Negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fine or not exceeding five hundred (500.00) dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six (6) months or both.

NORTH CAROLINA

Textbooks. Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

Libraries. The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals.

VIRGINIA

Theaters. Every person...operating...any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or any place of public entertainment or public assemblage which is attended by both white and colored persons, shall separate the white race and the colored race and shall set apart and designate...certain seats therein to be occupied by white persons and a portion thereof , or certain seats therein, to be occupied by colored persons.

Railroads. The conductors or managers on all such railroads shall have power, and are hereby required, to assign to each white or colored passenger his or her respective car, coach or compartment. If the passenger fails to disclose his race, the conductor and managers, acting in good faith, shall be the sole judges of his race.

WYOMING

Intermarriage. All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void.

More examples of state-ordered discrimination against African-American people appear here [2].

Jim Crow laws were a product of the solidly Democratic South, that was not able to accept black-Americans as being equal to white-Americans. As the party which supported the Confederacy, the Democratic party quickly dominated all aspects of local, state, and federal political life in the post-Civil War South, right up through the 1970s. As late as 1956, in a resolution called the Southern Manifesto, many Southern Democrats condemned the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. It was read into the Congressional Record and supported by 96 southern congressman and senators, each one a Democrat.

Twentieth century

Starting in 1915, on the basis of constitutional law, the Supreme Court began to issue decision that overturned several Jim Crow laws. In “Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 (1915), the Court held that an Oklahoma law that had denied the right to vote to black citizens was unconstitutional. In Buchanan v. Warley 245 US 60 (1917), the Court held that a Kentucky law could not require residential segregation. In 1946, the Court outlawed the white primary election in Smith v. Allwright” 321 US 649 (1944), and also in 1946, in Irene Morgan v. Virginia 328 U.S. 373, the high Court ruled that segregation in interstate transportation was unconstitutional. Finally, in 1954, in “Brown v. Board of Education 347 US 483, the Court held that separate facilities were inherently unequal in the area of public schools. This case effective overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, and outlawing Jim Crow in other areas of society as well.

In addition to Jim Crow laws, in which the state compelled segregation of the races, businesses, political parties, unions and other private parties created their own Jim Crow arrangements, barring blacks from buying homes in certain neighborhoods, from shopping or working in certain stores, from working at certain trades, etc. The Supreme Court outlawed some forms of private discrimination in “Shelley v. Kraemer 334 US 1 (1948), in which it held that "restrictive covenants" that barred sale of homes to blacks or Jews or Asians were unconstitutional, on the grounds that they represented state-sponsored discrimination, in that they were only effective if the courts enforced them.

The Supreme Court was unwilling, however, to attack other forms of private discrimination; it reasoned that private parties did not violate the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution when they discriminated, because they were not "state actors" covered by that clause.

The Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement As African-American entertainers, musicians, and literary figures gradually were able to brake into the white dominated world of American art and culture after 1890, African-American athletes found obstacles. By 1900, white opposition to African-American boxers, baseball players, track athletes, and basketball players kept them segregated and limited in what they could do. However, their athletic abilities in all-African-American teams and sporting events could not be denied, and one by one the barriers to African-American participation in all the major sports began to crumble, especially after the conclusion of World War II, as many Black Americans, who had served in the military, refused to put up with segregation, As a result, a new movement began to seek redress through the Federal Courts. It started with the establishment of the NAACP. Its attorney, Thurgood Marshall, brought a landmark case that eventually was heard by the US Supreme Court, known as Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954, the Court overturned its 1896 decision in “Plessy v. Ferguson and declared that “separate but equal” was inherently unconstitutional. Marshall was later to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Although attitudes turned against segregation in the Federal courts after World War II, the segregationist white governments of many of the states located in the South countered with numerous and strict segregation laws, until the start of the 1960s when. the modern American Civil Rights Movement is often considered to have started with an act of civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws when Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her refusal to sit in a “black only” section on the bus, and the demonstrations that it caused, led to a series of legislation and court decisions in which Jim Crow laws were eventually repealed or annulled.

In 1964, the Congress of the United States attacked the parallel system of private Jim Crow practices. It invoked the commerce clause to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, i.e., privately owned restaurants, hotels, and stores, and in private schools and workplaces. This use of the commerce clause was upheld in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States 379 US 241 (1964).

End of de jure segregation

In January, 1964, President Johnson met with civil rights leaders and on January 8, during his first State of the Union address, Johnson asked Congress to "let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined." On June 21, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi. They were later found by the FBI to have been murdered. These three individuals were student-volunteers who traveled to Mississippi to aid in the registration of African-American voters. A deputy sheriff and 16 others individuals, all Ku Klux Klan members, were indicted for the killing of these 3 civil rights workers. Seven were convicted. On July 2, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [3]

External links

Racial Etiquette: The Racial Customs and Rules of Racial Behavior in Jim Crow America - A detailed article outlining the basics of Jim Crow etiquette.
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
An article on "New Racist Forms: Jim Crow in the 21st Century"
"You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!" PBS documentary on first Freedom Ride, in 1947
The History of Jim Crow
A 1923 article in the SF Chronicle lauding California's Jim Crow handgun law, which is still in force today

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