The Jim Crow laws legalized racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern United States between 1877 and 1965. They mandated the separation of public facilities for blacks and whites, including separate schools, public places, and public transportation. The laws were established in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Southern state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by blacks during Reconstruction. Court rulings like Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 aided the establishment and preservation of racial segregation by determining that "separate but equal" public facilities were constitutional.
3. The greaT depression
ā¢ āThe Great Depression (also known as the
Great Slump) was a dramatic, worldwide
economic downturn beginning in some
countries as early as 1928.ā
ā¢ āThe beginning of the Great Depression in the
United States is associated with the stock
market crash on October 29, 1929, known as
Black Tuesdayā¦ā
ā¢ āā¦the end is associated with the onset of the
war economy of World War II, beginning
around 1939.ā
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_great_depre
ssion
4. The dusT bowl
ā¢ āThe Dust Bowl, or the "dirty thirties", was a
period of horrible dust storms causing major
ecological and agricultural damage to
American and Canadian prairie lands from
1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940)ā¦ā
ā¢ āā¦caused by severe drought coupled with
decades of extensive farming without crop
rotation or other techniques to prevent
erosion.ā
ā¢ āIt was a mostly man-made disaster caused
when virgin top soil of the Great Plains was
exposed to deep plowing, killing the natural
grasses - the grasses normally kept the soil in
place and moisture trapped, even during
periods of drought and high winds.ā
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
5. The dusT bowl
ā¢ āHowever, during the drought of the 1930s,
with the grasses destroyed, the soil dried,
turned to dust, and blew away eastwards and
southwards in large dark clouds.ā
ā¢ āAt times the clouds blackened the sky,
reaching all the way to East Coast cities like
New York and Washington D.C., with much of
the soil deposited in the Atlantic Ocean.ā
ā¢ āThe Dust Bowl consisted of 100 million acres,
centered on the panhandles of Texas,
Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and
Kansas.ā
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
6. hoovervilles
ā¢ āA Hooverville was the popular name for a
shantytownā¦ā
ā¢ āThese settlements were often formed in unpleasant
neighborhoods or desolate areas and consisted of
dozens or hundreds of shacks and tents that were
temporary residences of those left unemployed and
homeless by the Depression.ā
ā¢ āPeople slept in anything from open piano crates to the
ground. ā¦Most people, however, resorted to building
their residences out of boxwood, cardboard, and any
scraps of metal they could find. Some individuals even
lived in water mains.ā
ā¢ āMost of these unemployed residents of the
Hoovervilles begged for food from those who had
housing during this era.ā
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_
States
22. minsTrel shows
ā¢ āā¦ in the US they began in the 1830s, with working class
white men dressing up as plantation slaves. These men
imitated black musical and dance forms, combining
savage parody of black Americans with genuine fondness
for African American cultural forms.ā
ā¢ āWhite performers would blacken their faces with burnt
cork or greasepaint, dress in outlandish costumes, and
then perform songs and skits that mocked African
Americans.ā
ā¢ āBefore the Civil War, black men could not appear in
minstrel shows--custom prohibited it. But there are
several instances of black men putting on minstrel
makeup and appearing as white men imitating black men.
Later, in the twentieth century, several of the most
famous minstrels were actually black men who wore
makeup--the most famous being Bert Williams, who
performed in blackface into the 1920s.ā
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/mins
trel/minstrel.html
23. āThese three stock characters were among several that reappeared
in minstrel shows throughout the nineteenth century. "Jim Crow"
was the stereotypical carefree slave, "Mr. Tambo" a joyous
musician, and "Zip Coon" a free black attempting to "put on airs"
or rise above his station. The parody in minstrel shows was often
savage. ā http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/minstr
el/minstrel.html
25. Before The Jim Crow
laws
ā¢ āā¦by 1900, the term was generally identified with
those racist laws and actions that deprived African
Americans of their civil rights by defining blacks as
inferior to whites, as members of a caste of
subordinate people.ā
ā¢ āThe emergence of segregation in the South actually
began immediately after the Civil War when the
formerly enslaved people acted quickly to establish
their own churches and schools separate from whites.ā
ā¢ āAt the same time, most southern states tried to limit
the economic and physical freedom of the formerly
enslaved by adopting laws known as Black Codes.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
26. Before The Jim Crow
laws
ā¢ āThese early legal attempts at white-imposed
segregation and discrimination were short-lived.
ā¢ āDuring the period of Congressional Reconstruction,
which lasted from 1866 to 1876, the federal
government declared illegal all such acts of legal
discrimination against African Americans.
ā¢ āā¦the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments, along with the two Civil Rights Acts of
1866 and 1875 and the various Enforcement Acts of
the early 1870s, curtailed the ability of southern
whites to formally deprive blacks of their civil rights.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
27. Before The Jim Crow
laws
ā¢ āā¦ African Americans were able to make great
progress in building their own institutions,
passing civil rights laws, and electing officials
to public office.
ā¢ āIn response to these achievements, southern
whites launched a vicious, illegal war against
southern blacks and their white Republican
allies.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
28. Before The Jim Crow
laws
ā¢ āIn most places, whites carried out this war in
the late 1860s and early 1870s under the cover
of secret organizations such as the Ku Klux
Klan.
ā¢ āThousands of African Americans were killed,
brutalized, and terrorized in these bloody
years.
ā¢ āThe federal government attempted to stop the
bloodshed by sending in troops and holding
investigations, but its efforts were far too
limited.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
30. Beginning of The Jim
Crow laws
ā¢ In 1877 āā¦the federal government essentially
abandoned all efforts at protecting the civil
rights of southern blacks. It was not long
before a stepped-up reign of white terror
erupted in the South.
ā¢ āThe decade of the 1880s was characterized by
mob lynchings, a vicious system of convict
prison farms and chain gangs, the horribly
debilitating debt peonage of sharecropping,
the imposition of a legal color line in race
relations, and a variety of laws that blatantly
discriminated against blacks.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
31. Beginning of The Jim
Crow laws
ā¢ āSome southern statesā¦moved to legally
impose segregation on public
transportationā¦Blacks were required to
sit in a special car reserved for blacks
known as "The Jim Crow Car," even if
they had bought first-class tickets.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
33. The Jim Crow laws
ā¢ āSome states also passed so-called miscegenation laws
banning interracial marriages. These bans were, in the
opinion of some historians, the āultimate segregation
laws.ā
ā āThey clearly announced that blacks were so inferior to whites
that any mixing of the two threatened the very survival of the
superior white race.
ā¢ āAlmost all southern states passed statutes restricting
suffrage in the years from 1871 to 1889, including poll
taxes in some cases. And the effects were devastating:
over half the blacks voting in Georgia and South
Carolina in 1880, for example, had vanished from the
polls in 1888. Of those who did vote, many of their
ballots were stolen, misdirected to opposing
candidates, or simply not counted.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
34. The Jim Crow laws
ā¢ āIn the 1890s, starting with Mississippi, most southern
states began more systematically to disfranchise black
males by imposing voter registration restrictions, such
as literacy tests, poll taxes, and the white primary.
ā¢ āThese new rules of the political game were used by
white registrars to deny voting privileges to blacks at
the registration place rather than at the ballot box,
which had previously been done by means of fraud
and force.
ā¢ āBy 1910, every state of the former Confederacy had
adopted laws that segregated all aspects of life
(especially schools and public places) wherein blacks
and whites might socially mingle or come into
contact.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
35. reasons for segregaTion
ā¢ āMany lower-class whites, for example, hoped
to wrest political power from merchants and
large landowners who controlled the vote of
their indebted black tenants by taking away
black suffrage.
ā¢ āSome whites also feared a new generation of
so-called "uppity" blacks, men and women
born after slavery who wanted their full rights
as American citizens.
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
36. reasons for segregaTion
ā¢ āAt the same time there appeared throughout
America the new pseudo-science of eugenics
that reinforced the racist views of black
inferiority.
ā¢ āFinally, many southern whites feared that the
federal government might intervene in
southern politics if the violence and fraud
continued. They believed that by legally
ending suffrage for blacks, the violence would
also end. Even some blacks supported this idea
and were willing to sacrifice their right to vote
in return for an end to the terror.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
37. why resisTanCe To
segregaTion was diffiCulT
ā¢ āā¦the system of land tenancy, known as
sharecropping, left most blacks economically
dependent upon planter-landlords and
merchant suppliers.
ā¢ āā¦the white terror at the hands of lynch mobs
threatened all members of the black family--
adults and children alike.
ā This reality made it nearly impossible for blacks to
stand up to Jim Crow because such actions might
bring down the wrath of the white mob on one's
parents, brothers, spouse, and children.
ā¢ āFew black families, moreover, were
economically well off enough to buck the local
white power structure of banks, merchants,
and landlords.
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
38. afTer
disenfranChisemenT
ā¢ āWhite terror did not end--as some blacks had hoped--
with the disfranchisement of southern black men.
ā¢ āTo enforce the new legal order of segregation,
southern whites often resorted to even more
brutalizing acts of mob terror, including race riots and
ritualized lynching, than had been practiced even by
the old Klan of the 1870s.
ā¢ āā¦ the 1890s ushered in a more formally racist South--
one in which white supremacists used law and mob
terror to deprive blacks of the vote and to define them
in life and popular culture as an inferior people.ā
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
39. Court ACtions
ā¢ 1883- the US Supreme Court declared the Civil
Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional
ā¢ it āā¦also ruled that the Fourteenth
Amendment prohibited state governments
from discriminating against people because of
race but did not restrict private organizations
or individuals from doing so.ā
ā¢ This meant that places like railroads, theaters,
hotels, restaurants, etc. could legally institute
segregation.
http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/jcrow.htm
40. Court ACtions
ā¢ 1896- Plessy v. Ferguson
ā āSeparate but Equalā
ā Ruled that separate accommodations did not
deprive blacks of equal rights if the
accommodations were equal
ā¢ 1899- Cumming v. Board of Education
ā Laws establishing separate schools for
whites were valid, even if they provided
no comparable schools for blacks
http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/jcrow.htm
41. Jim Crow LAws
ā¢ āBy 1914 every Southern state had passed laws
that created two separate societies; one black,
the other white.
ā¢ āBlacks and whites could not:
ā Ride together in the same railroad cars
ā Sit in the same waiting rooms
ā Use the same bathrooms
ā Eat in the same restaurants
ā Sit in the same theaters
ā¢ āBlacks were denied access to:
ā Parks
ā Beaches
ā Picnic areas
ā Many hospitalsā
http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/jcrow.htm
42. ExAmpLEs of Jim Crow
LAws
ā¢ Alabama:
ā Health Care- no person or corporation shall require any white
female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either
public or private, in which negro men are placed
ā Transportation- All passenger stations in this state operated
by any motor transportation company shall have separate
waiting rooms or space and separate tickets windows for the
white and colored races
ā Public Facilities-
ā¢ It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the
serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are
served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons
are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the
floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a
separate entrance from the street is provided for each
compartment.
ā¢ It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together
or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards.
43. ExAmpLEs of Jim Crow
LAws
ā¢ Maryland
ā Marriage- all marriages between a white person and a
negro, or between a white person and a person of negro
descent, to the third generation, inclusive, or between a
white person and a member of the Malay race; or between
a negro and a member of the Malay race; or between a
person of Negro descent, to the third generation,
inclusive, and a member of the Malay race, are forever
prohibited, and shall be void.
ā Transportation- All railroad companies and corporations,
and all persons running or operating cars or coaches by
steam on any railroad line or track in the State of
Maryland, for the transportation of passengers, are
hereby required to provide separate cars or coaches for
the travel and transportation of the white and colored
passengers.
44. End of Jim Crow
ā¢ 1954- Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas
ā Declared segregation of public schools
unconstitutional
ā¢ The beginning of the Civil Rights
Movement
ā¢ The beginning of the end of the Jim Crow
laws
45. Created by Chadrenne Blouin
sEgrEgAtion & thE
fight for CiviL
rights
"We are confronted primarily with a moral
issueā¦ whether all Americans are to be
afforded equal rights and equal
opportunities, whether we are going to
treat our fellow Americans as we want to be
treated."
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy--
Referring to race riots in Alabama in a radio broadcast 11th June
1963.
52. 1963: Medgar
Evans
Mississipi field
secretary for the
NAACP, is shot
and killed in an
ambush in front
of his home,
following a
historic
broadcast on the
subject of civil
rights by
President John
F. Kennedy
http://www.mcfamily.i
nfo/id34.html
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