Impact of the Jim Crow Laws on Democracy

1328 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Slave codes, black codes & jim crow: codifying the color line notes

During the early 1900s post reconstruction era, African Americans faced extreme injustice and prejudice in society. By being denied rights guaranteed in the Constitution, and being subject to outright racism, African Americans saw their democratic rights slowly being taken away from them. The Jim Crow laws were the facilitator of this democratic infringement through intimidation, as well as by the failings of our prized judicial system. By denying African Americans certain unalienable rights guaranteed to all American citizens, the Jim Crow laws were one of the greatest contractions of democracy in American history. The Black codes were the predecessor too, and served as a blueprint for, the Jim Crow Laws. With the emancipation recently freeing thousands of slaves from bondage, whites Americans were now worried about what they would do about the enormous loss of manpower. Having no previous work experience, men and women didn’t know how to function without the slaves and servants they had become so accustomed to. (Wormser) Men were particularly worried about the loss of manpower in their fields. (Wormser) With cotton still the driving crop of the South, farmers needed hundreds of able-bodied men to be able to harvest enough cotton to meet the rising demands. In the home, women were terrified of losing their house slaves. Having no previous experience living home without servants or maids, wives and mothers did not know how to cook, clean, or even take care of their children. (Wormser) To combat this, the Black Codes were enacted to make sure that, regardless of their recent emancipation, African Americans were never really free (fofweb.com). The "… codes were based on an assumption that freedmen were immature and unable to make d... ... middle of paper ... ...s- The Story Behind the Bus," The Henry Ford, last modified 2002, http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/rosaparks/story.asp. "Rosa Parks- The Story," The Henry Ford. Sandra L. West, ed., "Northern Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)," Facts on File History, last modified 2013, accessed November 16, 2013, http://www.fofweb.com/NuHistory/default.asp?ItemID=WE01. Richard Wormser, "The Emancipation Proclimation," The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, last modified 2002, accessed November 17, 2013, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_emancipate.html. Keesha Gaskins, "Jim Crow Legacy Continues Today," Brennan Center for Justice, last modified April 12, 2012, accessed November 17, 2013, http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/jim-crow-legacy-continues-today. The NAACP moved to gain as much support as they could to prove the inequality behind the Jim

Show More
Related

  • Death Blow To Jim Crow Summary

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    Over the course of five chapters, the author uses a number of sources, both primary and secondary, to show how the National Negro Congress employed numerous political strategies, and allying itself with multiple organizations and groups across the country to implement a nationwide grassroots effort for taking down Jim Crow laws. Even though the National Negro Congress was unsuccessful in ending Jim Crow, it was this movement that would aide in eventually leading to its end years later.

    Read More

  • Book Review of The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    2071 Words  | 5 Pages

    Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow immediately became an influential work both in the academic and real worlds because of the dramatic events that coincided with the book’s publication and subsequent revisions. It was inspired from a series of lectures that Woodward delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954 on the Jim Crow policies that the South had reverted to in order to deal with the dynamics of its Negro population. The original publication debuted in 1955, just prior to the explosive events that would occur as part of the civil rights movement climax. Because of these developments in less than a decade, the book’s topic and audience had drastically changed in regard to the times surrounding it. Woodward, realizing the fluidity of history in context with the age, printed a second edition of the book in 1966 to “take advantage of the new perspective the additional years provide” and “to add a brief account of the main developments in ...

    Read More

  • Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    2031 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis of the New Jim Crow by Professor Michelle Alexander

    761 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

  • The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    1332 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...howing the true race relations throughout the south during that period. Jim Crow laws might not have been in effect and might have been though unnecessary by a portion of southerners, but it would be interesting to find out how many African Americans were lynched during the period before Jim Crow laws became prominent for ‘offenses’ which would later be illegal under Jim Crow. Just as Woodward quoted President Eisenhower as saying “you cannot change people’s hearts merely by law”(163), so the lack of Jim Crow legislation does not necessarily mean that some southerners wanted it and lived as though it existed.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Reconstruction

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although many laws were passed that recognized African Americans as equals, the liberties they had been promised were not being upheld. Hoffman, Blum, and Gjerde state that “Union League members in a North Carolina county, upon learning of three or four black men who ‘didn’t mean to vote,’ threatened to ‘whip them’ and ‘made them go.’ In another country, ‘some few colored men who declined voting’ were, in the words of a white conservative, ‘bitterly persecute[ed]” (22). Black codes were also made to control African Americans. Norton et al. states that “the new black codes compelled former slaves to carry passes, observe a curfew, live in housing provided by a landowner, and give up hope of entering many desirable occupations” (476). The discrimination and violence towards African Americans during this era and the laws passed that were not being enforced were very disgraceful. However, Reconstruction was a huge stepping stone for the way our nation is shaped today. It wasn’t pretty but it was the step our nation needed to take. We now live in a country where no matter the race, everyone is considered equal. Reconstruction was a success. Without it, who knows where our nation would be today. African American may have never gained the freedoms they have today without the

    Read More

  • Demise of the Second Reconstruction

    2219 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

    Read More

  • Historical Methodology

    2024 Words  | 5 Pages

    [1] C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. (Oxford University Press: New York, 1955), 14.

    Read More

  • History Of Black Wall Street ' Little Africa '

    1122 Words  | 3 Pages

    The main idea of the Jim Crow laws was to keep black people away from whites, to live separately but equally. Most often this did not happen, which the whites were expecting the “Negros” to be lower than themselves and unable to function without them, until a community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, was started by blacks in 1908. They lived in a community called Greenwood. With only fifteen thousand residents, the blacks built their own little country despite the adversity they had received. Their community was one of the richest in the USA. So, it seems the Jim Crow laws that was meant to leave them destitute, was the option for the blacks to thrive. Blacks had their own businesses, schools, movie theaters, churches, transportation system, and they even had their own airlines. They were their own doctors, teachers, architects, pastors, artists, and musicians. As a bonus they were also very oil rich as well.

    Read More

  • Black Codes

    523 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine yourself wrongly convicted of a crime. You spent years in jail awaiting your release date. It finally comes, and when they let you out, they slap handcuffs around your wrists and tell you every single action you do. In a nutshell, that’s how the Black Codes worked. The southerners wanted control over the blacks after the Civil War, and states created their own Black Codes.

    Read More

  • Black Codes Effect

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    After the civil war, newly freed slaves faced many challenges. Whites, especially in the south, regarded blacks as inferior more than ever before. The black codes were just one obstacle the freed slaves had to overcome. They were laws that were passed in the southern states that had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans freedom. These laws made it possible for the south to regain control over the black population in much of the same ways they had before. The black codes effected reconstruction, and even today’s society in many ways.

    Read More

  • The Role of the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Movement

    1964 Words  | 4 Pages

    John A. Kirk, History Toady volume 52 issue 2, The Long Road to Equality for African-Americans

    Read More

  • Inequality for African Americans

    1853 Words  | 4 Pages

    Toward the end of the Progressive Era American social inequality had stripped African Americans of their rights on a local and national level. In the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessey vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court sided with a Louisiana state law declaring segregation constitutional as long as facilities remain separate but equal. Segregation increased as legal discriminatory laws became enacted by each state but segregated facilities for whites were far superior to those provided for blacks; especially prevalent in the South were discriminatory laws known as Jim Crow laws which surged after the ruling. Such laws allowed for segregation in places such as restaurants, hospitals, parks, recreational areas, bathrooms, schools, transportation, housing, hotels, etc. Measures were taken to disenfranchise African Americans by using intimidation, violence, putting poll taxes, and literacy tests. This nearly eliminated the black vote and its political interests as 90% of the nine million blacks in America lived in the South and 1/3 were illiterate as shown in Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color Line (Bailey 667). For example, in Louisiana 130,334 black voters registered in 1896 but that number drastically decreased to a mere 1,342 in 1904—a 99 percent decline (Newman ). Other laws prevented black...

    Read More

  • The March on Washington - August 28, 1963

    1353 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Long Struggle for Civil Rights

    2179 Words  | 5 Pages

    Chafe, William, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad. Remembering Jim Crow. New York: The New Press, 2001.

    Read More

More about Impact of the Jim Crow Laws on Democracy

Open Document