The Modern Black Americans

Since arriving in America, African Americans have experienced racial discrimination in virtually every single area of their lives. America has come a long way since the 1800’s when slavery was common, but that road certainly hasn’t been easy or short for Black American. Not long after the Civil War ended, African Americans experienced a form of racial segregation called Jim Crow. The name "Jim Crow" originated from a character in an early nineteenth-century minstrel show song. A white minstrel blackened his face and jigged around while singing. The "Jim Crow" character regularly appeared in minstrel shows touring the South. Eventually, Jim Crow became the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively, in southern and Border States. These laws legalized segregation from the 1860’s through 1967. The most widespread laws mandated racial segregation in schools and public places such as railroads, restaurants, and streetcars. Since segregation laws typically excluded African Americans from services, Jim Crow laws began as an attempt to move forward by providing separate services for blacks. These laws were adopted earliest in most southern towns and municipalities where diverse crowds lived. These communities passed vagrancy laws that controlled the influx of black homeless migrants. Many southern states during the 1880s and 1890s passed laws which required segregation. The Supreme Court held up the southern laws in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), accepting guarantees from these states that the segregated areas would be equal. This case created the “separate but equal” doctrine and would not be challenged for some time. Some southern cities and states went on to mandated even the use of separate drinking fountains, restrooms, entrances to public buildings, and even Bibles for use in court. The south also alienated a majority of African Americans through literacy tests and poll taxes discriminating against blacks who could not pass such tests by restricting their right to vote. Almost every southern state approved laws controlling voting rights in the years from 1871 to 1889. These limiting laws were launched in Georgia in 1871 and 1877, in Virginia in 1877 and 1884, in Mississippi in 1876, in South Carolina in 1882, and in Florida in 1888. The effects were devastating. More than half the African Americans who voted in Georgia and South Carolina in 1880 disappeared from the polling places in 1888. Florida’s black voting population decreased by 27 percent.