Jim Crow Laws: Internalized Racism In American History

INTRODUCTION Lynchings, the KKK cross burnings, and slavery, are some of the most obvious acts of racism in American history. However, racism isn’t always this obvious. It’s all around us and everywhere we go. Some racism is subtler now that we’ve moved past slavery and the Jim Crow laws. Despite these changes we all have some amount of internalized racism that started back when people began imagining themselves as better than others based on the color of their skin. Even though racism is still a problem today we wouldn’t be as far as we are now if not for the many brave people who protested against unfair and racist laws. People that were very influential in getting these laws abolished are individuals such as Martin Luther King JR, Ida B.

One of the best examples of an influential person is Thurgood Marshall who fought on the side of Linda Brown and her family in the Brown vs. Board of Education case. Marshall was “an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1969. He argued more that fifty cases before the Supreme Court, winning most of them.” (Fremon 8) The little girl Marshall was arguing for was Linda Brown, an African-American eight year old that wanted to go to an all white public school by her home. However, Linda was denied access because the Topeka Board of Education claimed that she “received an education equal to that of the white students, even if she did not attend school with them.” (Fremon 7) Her parents ended up suing the school and their case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Some important organizations in the black civil rights movement were the Freedmen’s Bureau, National Negro Business League, and the NAACP. The Freedmen’s Bureau was also called the Bureau of Refugees,

One of the earliest and most important pieces of legislation passed was the Emancipation Proclamation. President Abraham Lincoln made this proclamation in 1863; it effectively made it so the slaves in the South were legally free. However, there were still things standing in their way. There was a set of codes developed called the Black Codes that prevented African Americans from entering theaters, schools, hotels, and other public facilities. There were also the Jim Crow laws that separated blacks and whites in hospitals, orphanages, funeral homes, public transportation, and even cemeteries. These codes and laws basically forced the freed slaves to go back and work at their previous plantations. In 1866 the U.S. government passed the Civil Rights Act that gave all citizens, regardless of race, rights to make and enforce contracts, own and sell property, and file lawsuits in court. President Johnson vetoed the bill but both houses of Congress overrode it. Despite Congress overriding the Presidents veto, he still got his way when the act was later declared unconstitutional. A victory for the civil rights movement was in 1868 when the fourteenth amendment was introduced. It granted full citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the U.S. However, Congress said that this