Jim Crow Policy The Jim Crow Policy is one of America’s darkest moments. It started in 1877 and by most accounts did not end until the 1960’s. At first it was made to keep black people “in their place”. Since then it has been used on immigrants in the early 20th century. In this paper I will explain the two parts of the Jim Crow Policy, It’s effect on the freed slaves, and why the freed slaves did not try to fight it. The Jim Crow Policy is broken up into two components. The first of which is segregation. The new southern congress, consisting of all white members, did not like the reconstruction of the south and wanted things back to the way they used to be. In fact, the last major piece of reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, was all but ignored in the south. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited racial discrimination in all public accommodations, transportation, places of amusement, and juries. The South’s refusal to abide by this act caused the Supreme Court in 1983 to strike down all provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1875 except the one relating to juries. So, with the Supreme Court’s ruling the new southern congress took it’s power to another level when it instituted segregation. Segregation is the use of separate facilities, one for the whites and one for the blacks. The second part of the Jim Crow Policy was the taking away of the freed slaves’ political rights. A few examples of this are poll taxes, Literacy tests, and the grandfather clause. The southern congress knew that all most all of the freed slaves were poor. Making everyone pay a poll tax to vote would eliminated most of the blacks chances on voting. Since it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read the congress knew that many of the freed slaves did not have the time to learn since being freed. This caused a law stating that you had to pass a literacy test before voting. Even if a freed slave could pay a toll tax and pass a literacy test they still had to deal with the grandfather clause. This clause stated that your grandfather had to be a registered voter in 1960 in order for you to vote.
C. Vann Woodward’s most famous work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, was written in 1955. It chronicles the birth, formation, and end of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states. Often, the Jim Crow laws are portrayed as having been instituted directly after the Civil War’s end, and having been solely a Southern brainchild. However, as Woodward, a native of Arkansas points out, the segregationist Jim Crow laws and policies were not fully a part of the culture until almost 1900. Because of the years of lag between the Civil War/Reconstruction eras and the integration and popularity of the Jim Crow laws, Woodward advances that these policies were not a normal reaction to the loss of the war by Southern whites, but a result of other impetuses central to the time of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Jim Crow Laws, enforced in 1877 in the south, were still being imposed during the 1930s and throughout. These laws created segregation between the two races and created a barrier for the Blacks. For example, even though African Americans were allowed to vote, southern states created a literary test exclusively for them that was quite difficult to pass, since most Blacks were uneducated. However, if they passed the reading test, they were threatened with death. Also, they had to pay a special tax to vote, which many African Americans could not afford.
The book, the Strange Career of Jim Crow is a wonderful piece of history. C. Vann Woodard crafts a book that explains the history of Jim Crow and segregation in simple terms. It is a book that presents more than just the facts and figures, it presents a clear and a very accurate portrayal of the rise and fall of Jim Crow and segregation. The book has become one of the most influential of its time earning the praise of great figures in Twentieth Century American History. It is a book that holds up to its weighty praise of being “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The book is present in a light that is free from petty bias and that is shaped by a clear point of view that considers all facts equally. It is a book that will remain one of the best explanations of this time period.
...ty and their survival as a group in society because of restraint from the federal government in the ability to litigate their plight in Court. The Author transitions the past and present signatures of Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow with the suggestion that the New Jim Crow, by mass incarceration and racism as a whole, is marginalizes and relegates Blacks to residential, educational and constitutionally endowed service to Country.
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
This story was set in the deep south were ownership of African Americans was no different than owning a mule. Demonstrates of how the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to free slaves and describes the abolitionist’s efforts. The freedom of African Americans was less a humanitarian act than an economic one. There was a battle between the North and South freed slaves from bondage but at a certain cost. While a few good men prophesied the African Americans were created equal by God’s hands, the movement to free African Americans gained momentum spirited by economic and technological innovations such as the export, import, railroad, finance, and the North’s desire for more caucasian immigrants to join America’s workforce to improve our evolving nation. The inspiration for world power that freed slaves and gave them initial victory of a vote with passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. A huge part of this story follows the evolution of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment more acts for civil rights.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Van Woodward, traces the history of race relations in the United States from the mid and late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. In doing so Woodward brings to light significant aspects of Reconstruction that remain unknown to many today. He argues that the races were not as separate many people believe until the Jim Crow laws. To set up such an argument, Woodward first outlines the relationship between Southern and Northern whites, and African Americans during the nineteenth century. He then breaks down the details of the injustice brought about by the Jim Crow laws, and outlines the transformation in American society from discrimination to Civil Rights. Woodward’s argument is very persuasive because he uses specific evidence to support his opinions and to connect his ideas. Considering the time period in which the book and its editions were written, it should be praised for its insight into and analysis of the most important social issue in American history.
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
The Jim Crow laws were used in southern states to enforce segregation. They were used in many states to punish people for associating with other races, specifically whites with blacks. The first law stated that black and white people could not sit together on the railway. The laws started after slavery because white people felt threatened. Jim Crow was a character in the play.
Jim crow laws were used by majority of American states to enforce segregation. There were separate facilities for people of color and whites (Pascoe, 48). The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were subhuman and inferior they could not even use the public facilities that white people used. Segregation of schools was a norm until it was abolished by the federal court case of Brown V Board of Education in 1954(Pascoe, 46). The Brown v Board of Education court case ruled that segregation in schools was in fact unconstitutional and that separate institutions did no...
Jim Crow Laws are laws that promote separation between black and white races. This separation caused the Jim Crow laws and it’s practices to deprive American citizens of their civil rights based on the significant difference in treatment between the two races and the laws built on separating said two races. Examples of the Jim Crow laws include separate waiting rooms, separate water fountains, separate bathrooms, etc. The Jim Crow laws also deal with educational rights, social freedoms, and voting rights, mainly (when it comes to treatment with the two races) treating black people like dirt, depriving them of their civil rights while white people get treated like how any normal human being should be treated.
The Jim Crow laws were laws used to separate the blacks and whites. “Jim Crow is discrimination against a racial group other than white, and especially against the Negro in the southland by either legal enforcement or traditional sanctions” (Worsmer, Richard). Most White people believed that they were superior over all of the other races, and they thought this because they were raised to learn that. But that still gives them no excuse
Jim Crow laws determined how an individual was treated in the areas of social interactions, education, and heath care. The treatment of blacks and the US Constitution’s misrepresentation of “equal but separate” under the Jim Crow laws was horrible and unfair.
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
The Jim Crow Laws were very racist and brutal towards the public, segregating every public place