The Jim Crow Laws

The topic that I chose for my research paper is the Jim Crow laws. I chose this topic because during this time period the Jim Crow laws were a huge obstacle that our country had to overcome in order to grow. The Jim Crow laws were created to separate whites and blacks in their everyday lives, allowing for no interaction between races. The Jim Crow Laws were enforced in the southern, United States. The laws existed between 1877 and the 1950’s, around the time the reconstruction period was ending and the civil rights movement was beginning.

The Jim Crow laws were everything but fair, and equal. Jim Crow is the name they used in the laws on separating the African Americans from the Caucasian men and women. These laws deprived African Americans from their civil rights because of the many things they were not allowed to experience due to these laws. Jim Crow laws oppressed the educational rights, voting rights, and social freedoms of American citizens, this essay will be discussing the oppression of these rights and freedoms.

Thomas Rico was a famous actor in the 1860’s, who played the character named Jim Crow, in theaters. Around the time that Jim Crow became popular, slave were being free from plantations and new laws were being made in the south. These laws were created to limit the freedom of newly freed African-Americans. White people in the south grew fond of both Jim Crow and the new laws that they started calling these laws “Jim Crow Laws”. Though the African-Americans were freed and had rights, whites would use laws so they could have power over African-Americans,

Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that separated non-colored people from colored people. I feel that these set of laws are very cruel. In this writing prompt i will be talking about the few ways that shows Jim Crow laws separate white from black.

Before there were players such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball was strictly white players only. The color line of Major League Baseball excluded black players until the late 40’s. This didn’t stop the colored men of America from playing the beloved American sport. The creation of the Negro Leagues in 1920 by Rube Foster gave colored men a chance to play in their own professional league, similar to the Major Leagues, but for African-American men. The creation of the Negro Leagues was a result of the Jim Crow Laws, state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period in the U.S., these laws continued in force until 1965. These laws created

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

There were many forms of discrimination in America. Discrimination was everywhere in the 20th century, and the population most affected by this were African Americans. Two of the most critical injustices committed in America during the 20th century were the development of the Jim Crow laws and school segregation. However, these injustices have been rectified as a result of the Civil Rights Movement and the decision of the supreme court of Brown v. Board of Education which brought important changes to African Americans.

Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which made segregation illegal. Eventually, the Supreme Court came to the conclusion that separate public facilities were “inherently unequal” (McBride 1). Brown vs. Board challenged and signaled the end of Jim Crow and “separate but equal” clause.

The whole Jim Crow Law rules were based on the separate but equal properties. 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 laws affected public places such as schools, housing jobs, parks, cemeteries, and public gathering places. Ohio was one of the first to ban interracial marriage. There was forms of segregation before the laws came into place. For instance some people had the mentality that they could work with a slave as long as the slave knew his or her place. Brown vs. Board of Education is an example of a Jim Crow law being put into action. After the supreme court unanimously held that racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause.

For my research topic I chose “Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws.” I chose this topic because I have heard about Jim Crow Laws many times through television, books, and history classes but never in depth. I wanted to know more about the topic, along with black codes, which I have never heard about and didn’t know existed. Choosing this topic allowed me to gain more knowledge on both of these topics. Before this paper, my knowledge of Jim Crows laws was that they were laws that White Southerners were using to keep former slaves as insubordinates to them. I learned that this is the basic idea and purpose of the Jim Crow laws, but they were also used to prevent complaints and issues, with the separate but equal laws, that said that black were to receive equal, but separate public facilities and buildings. What I wanted to know is how black codes differed from Jim Crow laws. To answer this question I found out the history behind them, the differences and the similarities, and in that, was able to grow as a researcher.

Enacted by lawmakers bitter about the loss against the North, Jim Crow Laws blatantly favored whites and repressed those of color as many refused to welcome blacks into civic-life, still believing them to be inferior. These laws were essentially a legalized legislative barrier to the freedom promised by our constitution, and the newly won war against the southern states to end slavery. This institutionalized form of inequality spread like a wildfire in the subsequent decades, separating the races in every way imaginable; in all walks of life. Although these laws varied from state to state, we see a common trend of laws keeping blacks and whites separated, particularly in social settings and social institutions. Some of these laws include but are not limited to marriage, hospitalization, restrooms, public transportation, and prisons; all of which isolating blacks from whites. We even find laws regarding liquor licensing such as a law in Georgia which required all persons licensed to sell alcohol, to serve exclusively whites or exclusively colored people; prohibiting sales to the two races simultaneously (NPS, 2015). Laws such as this were not few and far between. Segregation of blacks became a defining custom in nearly every aspect of life in the mid-nineteenth century well into the mid-twentieth century.

In the late 1800s to the early 1900s segregation was one of the biggest issues in the court of law. After slavery was finally abolished African Americans were able to have more freedom, but they were still treated different than any other race. The Jim Crow laws are an example of the law that affected everyday life in the African American community in the beginning of the 1890s. This law segregated schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. The struggle to achieve equality was made even more difficult by the legislation of racism in the Plessy v Ferguson case.

“The Jim Crow era was one of struggle -- not only for the victims of violence, discrimination, and poverty, but by those who worked to challenge (or promote) segregation in the South” (“Jim Crow Stories”). It is important to know the history of this significant period where everyone was treated differently based on how they looked instead of their character. During the Jim Crow era, the lives of African Americans were severely restricted making it difficult for them to succeed in everyday life.

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 created in the 1950´s when segregation became big. It was a law stating blacks could not go in the same places that whites did. It stated they could not eat,sleep and drink at the same places as white people. They were created to separate black and white people from even the slightest bit of contact. People though god put blacks on this earth to work like animals. They created a ¨Prison¨ for the blacks because they couldńt do a lot of stuff. They had restrictions for what they could work at, it was put up as a ¨Racial Barrier¨. The blacks were restricted.The KKK was formed in the 1860´s. It was formed as a social club of retired veterans.A group of considered confederate veterans made a group called the KKK. They were a worldwide