In 1865, four million Americans who were called slaves simply because they were born black, were now free with an expectation that they would enjoy all civil liberties. The post-Civil War period of Reconstruction provided freedmen with various rights, but in little over a decade, the promise of emancipation and equal rights was gone, replaced by rigid system of laws designed to keep blacks from experiencing any of their newly achieved rights, which is known as the era of Jim Crow, the American form of racial Apartheid that separated Americans into two groups: whites, the so-called superiors and blacks, the inferiors. The phase that began in 1877 was inaugurated by withdrawal of Union troops from the south that would leave the future of former slaves in the hands of white southerners. The rise of Jim Crow segregation in the 1890s was not a mere expression of racism but developed out of a complex and corrupt outworking of many political causes like removal Northern troops and the disintegration of Republican influence, and economic interests like Panic of 1893, which imposed separation of blacks to avoid competition, in the impoverished, post-Reconstruction south.
The unique structure of slavery in pre-Civil war period required close interaction between blacks and whites, which made segregation practically inconvenient. With black people working in the white household, there were bonds of intimacy; affection and sometime blood relations existed between them. They lived under same roof, went to same church and shared in the family life. There was a strong relation between blacks and whites, which could not be changed overnight. As quoted in Woodward’s book, Sir George Campbell, a member of parliament visited the South, in 1879, to...
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Works Cited
• Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York, Oxford University Press, 1966
• Bacote, A. Clarence. “Negro Proscriptions, Protests, and Proposed Solutions in Georgia, 1880-1908.” The Journal of Southern History. Vol. 25, No. 4, Nov. 1959, 471-498
• Harlan, John Marshal. “Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.” Voices of Freedom: a documentary history, edited by Eric Foner—3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011
• Wells, Ida B. “Crusade for Justice.” Voices of Freedom: a documentary history, edited by Eric Foner—3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011
• The Seattle Republican. “Jim Crow Cardom,” Feb 15,1907.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025811/1907-02-15/ed-1/seq-3/;words=crow+jim+law+laws?date1=1836&rows=20&searchType=basic&state=&date2=1922&proxtext=jim+crow+law&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&index=1
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Making Whiteness: the culture of segregation in the south, 1890-1940 is the work of Grace Elizabeth Hale. In her work, she explains the culture of the time between 1890 and 1940. In her book she unravels how the creation of the ‘whiteness’ of white Southerners created the ‘blackness’ identity of southern African Americans. At first read it is difficult to comprehend her use of the term ‘whiteness’, but upon completion of reading her work, notes included, makes sense. She states that racial identities today have been shaped by segregation, “...the Civil War not only freed the slaves, it freed American racism
C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America's most Southern historian and the winner of a Pulitzer Prize, for Mary Chestnut's Civil War. He’s also a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. In honor of his long and adventurous career, Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward's most influential work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. The book actually helped shape that historical curve of black liberation; it’s not slowed movement; it’s more like a rollercoaster.
A strength I found in Gellman’s book was that it can grab the attention of any reader who has an interest learning more about race, labor movements and the fight for civil rights that took place prior to the 1950’s and 60’s as we more often learn about. The author also ensures to detail the types of strategies the National Negro Congress implemented in working with other organizations and in trying to accomplish their goals. Gellman also takes the time to discuss import people involved besides John Preston Davis and A. Philip Randolph, but also Robert Weaver and Charles Hamilton Houston. The book Death Blow to Jim Crow does a good job of expanding on a otherwise unknown topic, not discussed in history classes or books.
Prior to the 1950s, very little research had been done on the history and nature of the United States’ policies toward and relationships with African Americans, particularly in the South. To most historians, white domination and unequal treatment of Negroes were assumed to be constants of the political and social landscapes since the nation’s conception. Prominent Southern historian C. Vann Woodward, however, permanently changed history’s naïve understanding of race in America through his book entitled The Strange Career of Jim Crow. His provocative thesis explored evidence that had previously been overlooked by historians and gave a fresh foundation for more research on the topic of racial policies of the United States.
We know, however, that during the 1870s and 1880s, these rights were slowly and systematically taken away from blacks through the use of Jim Crow laws. Blacks saw their rights begin stripped away through legal, illegal, and often violent means. The vast majority of blacks were losing ground, and being forced back into conditions that were just slightly better than slavery. Blacks were kept down by various methods -- economic, social, and political -- but most typically through violence.
2- Carl Schurz wrote reports called Reports on the Condition of the South, in 1865 in which he investigated the sentiments of leaders and ordinary people, whites and blacks, from the defeated South. He describes that was not safe to wear the federal uniform on the streets and soldiers of the Union were considered intruders, Republicans were considered enemies. But, even worse was the situation of freedmen in which were expected to behave as slaves for white Southerners. Schurz heard the same phrase, “You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion,” (Schurz) from so many different people that he concluded that this sentiment was rooted among the southern people. He related this case of a former slaveholder that suggested blacks were unfitted for freedom, “I heard a Georgia planter argue most seriously that one of his negroes had shown himself certainly unfit for freedom because he impudently refused to submit to a whipping.”
Irons, Peter. Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision. New York: Viking Penguin, 2002.
Weisbrot, Robert. Freedom Bound: A History Of America’s Civil Rights Movement. New York: Plume, 1991
After the emancipation of slaves in 1862, the status of African-Americans in post civil war America up until the beginning of the twentieth century did not go through a great deal of change. Much legislation was passed to help blacks in this period. The Civil Rights act of 1875 prohibited segregation in public facilities and various government amendments gave African-Americans even more guaranteed rights. Even with this government legislation, the newly dubbed 'freedmen' were still discriminated against by most people and, ironically, they were soon to be restricted and segregated once again under government rulings in important court cases of the era.
Nabrit, James M. Jr. “The Relative Progress and the Negro in the United States: Critical Summary and Evaluation.” Journal of Negro History 32.4 (1963): 507-516. JSTOR. U of Illinois Lib., Urbana. 11 Apr. 2004
The laws known as “Jim Crow” were laws presented to basically establish racial apartheid in the United States. These laws were more than in effect for “for three centuries of a century beginning in the 1800s” according to a Jim Crow Law article on PBS. Many try to say these laws didn’t have that big of an effect on African American lives but in affected almost everything in their daily life from segregation of things: such as schools, parks, restrooms, libraries, bus seatings, and also restaurants. The government got away with this because of the legal theory “separate but equal” but none of the blacks establishments were to the same standards of the whites. Signs that read “Whites Only” and “Colored” were seen at places all arounds cities.
Foner, Eric. "George Fitzhugh and the Proslavery Argument." Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History. Third ed. Vol. One. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. 207-10. Print.
John A. Kirk, History Toady volume 52 issue 2, The Long Road to Equality for African-Americans
"Fighting Back (1957-1962)" The American Experience. PBS, n.d. -.