Jim Crow Legislation
Jim Crow Legislation was largely influential in the establishment of racial segregation by essentially legalizing anti-black racism, thus contributing to the large racial disparity within American society.
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"Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-black racism."- Ferris State University
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Excerpt from The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow |
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Jim Crow Laws
"As inequality became institutionalized, the Jim Crow laws required the separation of races in every facet of life including transportation, schools, lodging, public parks, theaters, hospitals, neighborhoods, cemeteries, and restaurants. Inter-racial marriages were prohibited. Business owners and public institutions were prohibited from allowing African American and white clientele to mingle. "-U.S History in Context
Restricted Real-estate Covenants
"In this covenant from Arlington County, Virginia, in the 1940s, the purchasers agreed never to sell their house to "persons of any race other than the white Caucasian Race."'-Smithsonian National Museum of American History (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
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Restrictive Signs
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Ku Klux Klan
" Two members of Ku Klux Klan in their disguises"
-Smithsonian National Museum of American History (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
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Ku Klux Klan developed during the Jim Crow Era to ensure white supremacy. "The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to combat Reconstruction reforms and intimidate African Americans. By 1870 similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia and the White Brotherhood had sprung up across the South. Through fear, brutality, and murder, these terrorist groups helped to overthrow local reform-minded governments and restore white supremacy, and then largely faded away."
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Advertisement in The Daily Ardmoreite, November 13, 1921 (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
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Article in New-York tribune, January 02, 1921 (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
Plessy V. Ferguson (1896)
The Plessy V. Ferguson Supreme Court was a highly controversial case passed under the Jim Crow Legislation encouraging black inferiority for many years to come by legalizing segregation within facilities as long as there were equal accommodations.
National Archives (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
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"The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for 'equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.'"-Our Documents
“We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it… The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured except by an enforced commingling of the two races… If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”-Justice Henry Brown of Michigan
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