The Strange Career of Jim Crow

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Recommended: Slavery in the south

The ante-bellum south is referred to as the Old South; south of the Cotton Kingdom and plantation slavery. The Old South did not last long but received the term, ‘Old’ in order to distinguish the Old South from the New South. Slavery in the Old South was practiced by the white man to assure subordination of the Negro’s and to determine their status, or ‘place’. The white supremacy view of life, along with the injustices of exploitation can be traced back to the old pro-slavery argument, developed by the Anglo-Saxon (Woodward, 11). Slavery in the Old South required daily interracial contact from both sides of the races such as, supervision, maintenance of order, and physical and medical care of slaves. House servants were a prime example of this type of interracial contact. Bonds of intimacy and affection were also present between races due to house servants living in the same home, attending the same church, and sharing in the family’s conversation (Woodward, 12). House servants were the only slaves to receive this type of association, which overall consisted of a very small proportion. The field hands, however, received the harsher side of slavery. Slavery in the Old South was a ‘system’ in which segregation would only pose an issue, or inconvenience. There also were a few hundred thousand Negroes within the slave states who were free, or quasi-free; not established by slavery. These Negroes received treatment relatively close to slavery, foreshadowing segregation (Woodward, 13). The urban life or a Negro included several types of discrimination and even excluded by some towns entirely. If Negroes were tolerated in Hospitals, jails, and public buildings they were still regularly separated. The city life of African Americans d... ... middle of paper ... ... was a series of Supreme Court rulings which sanctioned separation. During 1898 in Pressy v. Ferguson ‘separate but equal’ rights were considered constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. These rights gave Southern states the leniency to physical separate different races in schools and public places(Woodward,71). Proscription, segregation, and disfranchisement were completed due to William v. Mississippi in 1898. This Mississippi plan approved by the U.S. Supreme Court deprived Negro’s of the franchise(Woodward,71). The ‘Jim Crow’ system was a time in history in which laws of segregation emerged. Woodward suggests that the Jim Crow system was not a result of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, or Redemption. The chaotic and disorganization of Southern whites during the nineteenth century, however, turned Southern history by developing the Jim Crow System.

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