Between the s and the s, Jim Crow laws upheld a vicious racial hierarchy in southern states, circumventing protections that had been put in place after the end of the Civil War—such as the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote years ago this week. The discriminatory laws denied black people their rights, subjected them to public humiliation, and perpetuated their economic and educational marginalization. Anyone who challenged the social order faced mockery, harassment, and murder.
But white citizens in the former Confederacy resisted emancipation and quickly acted to deny black people their new freedoms. Historian Daniel A. In response to northern outrage about these codes, Congress passed constitutional amendments, now known as the Reconstruction Amendments , designed to guarantee the freedom and civil rights of formerly enslaved people.
Southern states had to ratify the amendments to be readmitted to the Union. But though states grudgingly complied with federal law, they undid as few black codes as possible.
Meanwhile, groups like the Ku Klux Klan intimidated and killed black people who challenged the now-unwritten laws of conduct. In , new president Rutherford B. Hayes followed through on a promise to stop federal intervention in the South.
Swiftly, southern states reversed Reconstruction-era laws and established new segregation laws in their place. Ferguson in , the floodgates opened. Southern states implemented hundreds of laws mandating different treatment for black and white citizens.
Failure to enforce these laws resulted in fines or imprisonment. Into the 20th century, Jim Crow laws continued to govern everyday life in America, prohibiting black and white interaction. For instance, in the state of Georgia, blacks and whites had to use separate parks.
Blacks and whites could not play checkers together in Birmingham, Alabama, under a law. And in , blacks and whites were forbidden from boating together in Oklahoma. Blacks who violated these laws could be physically beaten by whites without reprisal; lynchings occurred with startling frequency when blacks violated Jim Crow laws. Racial segregation was an integral part of society in some parts of the country, and so black men who served in the military were assigned to segregated divisions.
Black servicemen were given lesser support positions such as grave-digging or cooking, and they were served food in separate lines from white servicemen. Jim Crow laws were based on the theory of white supremacy and were a reaction to Reconstruction. In the depression-racked s, racism appealed to whites who feared losing their jobs to blacks. In , in spite of its 16 black members, the Louisiana General Assembly passed a law to prevent black and white people from riding together on railroads.
Plessy v. Ferguson , a case challenging the law, reached the U. Supreme Court in Two years later, the court seemed to seal the fate of black Americans when it upheld a Mississippi law designed to deny black men the vote. In , Louisiana had , registered black voters. Jim Crow laws touched every part of life. In South Carolina, black and white textile workers could not work in the same room, enter through the same door, or gaze out of the same window.
In Richmond, one could not live on a street unless most of the residents were people one could marry. One could not marry someone of a different race. By , Texas had six entire towns in which blacks could not live. Mobile passed a Jim Crow curfew: Blacks could not leave their homes after 10 p.
Georgia had black and white parks. Oklahoma had black and white phone booths. Prisons, hospitals, and orphanages were segregated as were schools and colleges. In North Carolina, black and white students had to use separate sets of textbooks. Atlanta courts kept two Bibles: one for black witnesses and one for whites. Though seemingly rigid and complete, Jim Crow laws did not account for all of the discrimination blacks suffered. Unwritten rules barred blacks from white jobs in New York and kept them out of white stores in Los Angeles.
Humiliation was about the best treatment blacks who broke such rules could hope for. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped. Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race.
In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states. It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there. As oppressive as the Jim Crow era was, it was also a time when many African Americans around the country stepped forward into leadership roles to vigorously oppose the laws.
Memphis teacher Ida B. Wells became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a first-class train car designated for white people only.
A conductor forcibly removed her and she successfully sued the railroad, though that decision was later reversed by a higher court. Angry at the injustice, Wells devoted herself to fighting Jim Crow laws. Her vehicle for dissent was newspaper writing: In she became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and used her position to take on school segregation and sexual harassment. Wells traveled throughout the South to publicize her work and advocated for the arming of Black citizens.
Wells also investigated lynchings and wrote about her findings. A mob destroyed her newspaper and threatened her with death, forcing her to move to the North, where she continued her efforts against Jim Crow laws and lynching.
Wells Took on Lynching. Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a North Carolina-born, Massachusetts-raised Black woman who returned to her birthplace at the age of 17, in , to work as a teacher for the American Missionary Association. After funding was withdrawn for that school, Brown began fundraising to start her own school, named the Palmer Memorial Institute.
Brown became the first Black woman to create a Black school in North Carolina and through her education work became a fierce and vocal opponent of Jim Crow laws. Not everyone battled for equal rights within white society—some chose a separatist approach. Convinced by Jim Crow laws that Black and white people could not live peaceably together, formerly enslaved Isaiah Montgomery created the African American-only town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi , in Montgomery recruited other former enslaved people to settle in the wilderness with him, clearing the land and forging a settlement that included several schools, an Andrew Carnegie -funded library, a hospital, three cotton gins, a bank and a sawmill.
Mound Bayou still exists today, and is still almost percent Black.
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