Black History Month: The "Jim Crow" Laws
"Jim Crow laws" is a term used to describe state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States. They were enacted by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the end of Reconstruction period. Many of these laws continued to be enforced until late into the 20th century. These laws allowed for legal racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States.
The phrase "Jim Crow Law" originates from the title of a New York Times article written in 1892 about Louisiana requiring segregated railroad cars. The name "Jim Crow" comes from a song called "Jump Jim Crow", a racist characterization of African Americans performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice, who did the act in blackface. It was used in 1832 and to satirize President Andrew Jackson's populist policies. Rice was a famous actor in his time, and the term "Jim Crow" came to be used as a pejorative expression for African Americans. When southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation at the end of the 19th century, these became known as Jim Crow laws.
After the Civil War, following the defeat of the Confederate States of America during the Reconstruction period, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the former Confederate states for Freedmen (African Americans who had formerly been slaves, as well as the few who had been free before the war). In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, in part thanks to insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and the Red Shirts. These groups would use violence to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate African Americans to suppress their voting. They also committed voter fraud to try and regain political power.
In 1877, after a very close election, a compromise was brokered between the two major parties. The disputed election was awarded to Republican Rutherford Hayes, who in turn agreed to withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South. As a result, violence against African Americans and their supporters in the south went unchecked, and white Democrats regained political power in every Southern state. The Democratic governments, called "Redeemers", legislated Jim Crow laws, which segregating African Americans through government sanctioned legislation.
In some parts of the south, African Americans continued to be elected to local offices throughout the 1880s, but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections. Democratic Party state legislatures passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive. Political participation by most African Americans and many impoverished white voters decreased significantly. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that disenfranchised African Americans and other economically disadvantaged southerners through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Provisions in some of these laws permitted some illiterate whites to vote.
Voter turnout dropped drastically through the South as a result of these laws. For example, by 1910, only 730 African Americans were registered to vote in Louisiana, less than 0.5% of eligible black men. In North Carolina all African-American voters were completely eliminated from voter rolls during the period from 1896–1904. In Alabama tens of thousands of poor white voters were also disenfranchised. Those who could not vote were not allowed to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They lost all influence with the state legislatures, and their interests were ignored. Public schools had been established by Reconstruction legislatures, but those for African-American children were consistently underfunded. So were public libraries and other segregated facilities.
The presidential election of 1912 was strongly slanted against the interests of African American voters, most of whom still lived in the South, where they had been effectively disfranchised. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who was born and raised in the South, became the first Southern-born president in the post-Civil War period. He appointed Southerners to his Cabinet who pushed for segregated workplaces, even though the city of Washington, D.C. and federal offices had been integrated since after the Civil War. Wilson introduced segregation in federal offices, despite protest from African-American leaders and national groups. He appointed segregationist Southern politicians, reflecting his belief that racial segregation was in the best interest all Americans. For example, speaking at Gettysburg on July 4, 1913, at the semi-centennial of Abraham Lincoln's declaration that "all men are created equal", Wilson told his audience: "How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic, as state after state has been added to this, our great family of free men!"
There were a number of unsuccessful attempts to end Jim Crow laws after the end of Reconstruction. The first of these was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, introduced by Charles Sumner and Benjamin F. Butler. It called for a guarantee that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in public accommodations, including inns, public transportation, theaters, and other places of recreation. This Act changed nothing. An 1883 Supreme Court decision found that the act was unconstitutional, holding that Congress did not have control over private persons or corporations. White southern Democrats formed a solid voting bloc in Congress and they were able to ensure that Congress did not pass another civil rights law until 1957.
In 1890, Louisiana passed a law requiring separate accommodations for passengers on railroads, depending on race. Louisiana law distinguished between "white", "black" and "colored" (people of mixed European and African ancestry). A group of concerned citizens of all races in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to rescinding the law. The group persuaded Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race who was of fair complexion and one-eighth "Negro" in ancestry, to challenge the law. In 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket from New Orleans on the East Louisiana Railway. After he had boarded the train, he informed the train conductor of his racial lineage and then took a seat in the whites-only car. He was directed to leave that car and sit in the "coloreds only" car. Plessy refused and was then arrested. The Citizens Committee of New Orleans took the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In the landmark decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the Court ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. This finding supported 58 more years of legalized discrimination.
After World War II, African Americans increasingly challenged segregation. They demanded to be treated as full citizens because of their military service and sacrifices. The Civil Rights Movement gained momentum because of a number of prominent events, including the 1946 police beating and blinding of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard while he was in U.S. Army uniform. In 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, desegregating the armed services. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum and used federal courts to attack Jim Crow statutes, governments of many of the southern states countered by passing alternative forms of restrictions.
The NAACP Legal Defense Committee, represented by lawyer Thurgood Marshall, brought the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the Supreme Court. In its pivotal 1954 decision, the Court unanimously overturned the 1896 Plessy decision. The Supreme Court found that legally mandated public school segregation was unconstitutional.
In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted more than a year and resulted in desegregation of the privately run buses in the city. Civil rights protests and actions, together with legal challenges, resulted in a series of legislative and court decisions which helped to undermine the Jim Crow system. Numerous other boycotts and demonstrations against segregation had occurred in the mid 20th century. Some of the early demonstrations achieved positive results, strengthening political activism. Others were stymied by acts of violence.
In January 1964, President Lyndon Johnson met with civil rights leaders. 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. The three had been volunteering for the registration of African-American voters as part of the Mississippi Summer Project. The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention. Johnson used the ensuing outrage to build a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans and push Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The murder of the three voting-rights activists in Mississippi in 1964 and the state's refusal to prosecute the murderers, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism against blacks, had gained national attention. On March 7, 1965, an unprovoked attack by county and state troopers on peaceful Alabama marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge traveling from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights enforcement legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings soon began on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended legally sanctioned state barriers to voting for all federal, state and local elections. It also provided for federal oversight and monitoring of counties with historically low minority voter turnout. Passing a law did not change closed minds. Years of enforcement were required to overcome resistance, and additional legal court challenges were made to overcome southern resistance to the law.
Some argue that Jim Crow style laws continue to exist. For example in 2012, civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argued in her book, The New Jim Crow that America's War on Drugs, that present drug laws disproportionately affected African-Americans, and have resulted in discrimination of a type comparable to the Jim Crow laws.
The phrase "Jim Crow Law" originates from the title of a New York Times article written in 1892 about Louisiana requiring segregated railroad cars. The name "Jim Crow" comes from a song called "Jump Jim Crow", a racist characterization of African Americans performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice, who did the act in blackface. It was used in 1832 and to satirize President Andrew Jackson's populist policies. Rice was a famous actor in his time, and the term "Jim Crow" came to be used as a pejorative expression for African Americans. When southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation at the end of the 19th century, these became known as Jim Crow laws.
After the Civil War, following the defeat of the Confederate States of America during the Reconstruction period, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the former Confederate states for Freedmen (African Americans who had formerly been slaves, as well as the few who had been free before the war). In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, in part thanks to insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and the Red Shirts. These groups would use violence to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate African Americans to suppress their voting. They also committed voter fraud to try and regain political power.
In 1877, after a very close election, a compromise was brokered between the two major parties. The disputed election was awarded to Republican Rutherford Hayes, who in turn agreed to withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South. As a result, violence against African Americans and their supporters in the south went unchecked, and white Democrats regained political power in every Southern state. The Democratic governments, called "Redeemers", legislated Jim Crow laws, which segregating African Americans through government sanctioned legislation.
In some parts of the south, African Americans continued to be elected to local offices throughout the 1880s, but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections. Democratic Party state legislatures passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive. Political participation by most African Americans and many impoverished white voters decreased significantly. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that disenfranchised African Americans and other economically disadvantaged southerners through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Provisions in some of these laws permitted some illiterate whites to vote.
Voter turnout dropped drastically through the South as a result of these laws. For example, by 1910, only 730 African Americans were registered to vote in Louisiana, less than 0.5% of eligible black men. In North Carolina all African-American voters were completely eliminated from voter rolls during the period from 1896–1904. In Alabama tens of thousands of poor white voters were also disenfranchised. Those who could not vote were not allowed to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They lost all influence with the state legislatures, and their interests were ignored. Public schools had been established by Reconstruction legislatures, but those for African-American children were consistently underfunded. So were public libraries and other segregated facilities.
The presidential election of 1912 was strongly slanted against the interests of African American voters, most of whom still lived in the South, where they had been effectively disfranchised. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who was born and raised in the South, became the first Southern-born president in the post-Civil War period. He appointed Southerners to his Cabinet who pushed for segregated workplaces, even though the city of Washington, D.C. and federal offices had been integrated since after the Civil War. Wilson introduced segregation in federal offices, despite protest from African-American leaders and national groups. He appointed segregationist Southern politicians, reflecting his belief that racial segregation was in the best interest all Americans. For example, speaking at Gettysburg on July 4, 1913, at the semi-centennial of Abraham Lincoln's declaration that "all men are created equal", Wilson told his audience: "How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic, as state after state has been added to this, our great family of free men!"
There were a number of unsuccessful attempts to end Jim Crow laws after the end of Reconstruction. The first of these was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, introduced by Charles Sumner and Benjamin F. Butler. It called for a guarantee that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in public accommodations, including inns, public transportation, theaters, and other places of recreation. This Act changed nothing. An 1883 Supreme Court decision found that the act was unconstitutional, holding that Congress did not have control over private persons or corporations. White southern Democrats formed a solid voting bloc in Congress and they were able to ensure that Congress did not pass another civil rights law until 1957.
In 1890, Louisiana passed a law requiring separate accommodations for passengers on railroads, depending on race. Louisiana law distinguished between "white", "black" and "colored" (people of mixed European and African ancestry). A group of concerned citizens of all races in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to rescinding the law. The group persuaded Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race who was of fair complexion and one-eighth "Negro" in ancestry, to challenge the law. In 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket from New Orleans on the East Louisiana Railway. After he had boarded the train, he informed the train conductor of his racial lineage and then took a seat in the whites-only car. He was directed to leave that car and sit in the "coloreds only" car. Plessy refused and was then arrested. The Citizens Committee of New Orleans took the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In the landmark decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the Court ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. This finding supported 58 more years of legalized discrimination.
After World War II, African Americans increasingly challenged segregation. They demanded to be treated as full citizens because of their military service and sacrifices. The Civil Rights Movement gained momentum because of a number of prominent events, including the 1946 police beating and blinding of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard while he was in U.S. Army uniform. In 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, desegregating the armed services. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum and used federal courts to attack Jim Crow statutes, governments of many of the southern states countered by passing alternative forms of restrictions.
The NAACP Legal Defense Committee, represented by lawyer Thurgood Marshall, brought the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the Supreme Court. In its pivotal 1954 decision, the Court unanimously overturned the 1896 Plessy decision. The Supreme Court found that legally mandated public school segregation was unconstitutional.
In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted more than a year and resulted in desegregation of the privately run buses in the city. Civil rights protests and actions, together with legal challenges, resulted in a series of legislative and court decisions which helped to undermine the Jim Crow system. Numerous other boycotts and demonstrations against segregation had occurred in the mid 20th century. Some of the early demonstrations achieved positive results, strengthening political activism. Others were stymied by acts of violence.
In January 1964, President Lyndon Johnson met with civil rights leaders. 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. The three had been volunteering for the registration of African-American voters as part of the Mississippi Summer Project. The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention. Johnson used the ensuing outrage to build a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans and push Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The murder of the three voting-rights activists in Mississippi in 1964 and the state's refusal to prosecute the murderers, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism against blacks, had gained national attention. On March 7, 1965, an unprovoked attack by county and state troopers on peaceful Alabama marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge traveling from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights enforcement legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings soon began on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended legally sanctioned state barriers to voting for all federal, state and local elections. It also provided for federal oversight and monitoring of counties with historically low minority voter turnout. Passing a law did not change closed minds. Years of enforcement were required to overcome resistance, and additional legal court challenges were made to overcome southern resistance to the law.
Some argue that Jim Crow style laws continue to exist. For example in 2012, civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argued in her book, The New Jim Crow that America's War on Drugs, that present drug laws disproportionately affected African-Americans, and have resulted in discrimination of a type comparable to the Jim Crow laws.