Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Jim Crow laws and their effects
Jim crow laws informational essay
Thoughtful overview of the jim crow laws
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Jim Crow laws and their effects
Jim crow laws were laws that enforced racial segregation mainly in the south, but also in the north. They started at the end of the reconstruction era, around the 1950’s. Jim Crow laws were abolished when The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by president Lyndon B. Johnson. The laws affected both white and black people as it didn’t let them sit together. The laws required the whites and blacks to be separated everywhere- in schools, libraries, restrooms, parks, buses, trains, and restaurants. Jim Crow laws sometimes also denied African Americans the right to vote. The laws basically affected every aspect of African American lives. The laws were put in place to make sure the whites would be separated from the blacks.
In the late 19th century African Americans were no longer slaves, but they were definitely not free. When we think of freedom today, we think of something totally different than what they endured in the late 19th century and early 20th century. For about 80 years, black southerners had to deal with these changes and hard times. Most would say that for those 80 years, it was worse than blacks being actual slaves. There are so many things that held down African Americans during this time. Some examples of this would be the involvement of the Jim Crow laws, not having the right to vote, and the lynching and peonage among African Americans.
Jim Crow laws were a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. (Jim Crow Laws, PBS). Jim Crow laws had the same ideals that slave codes had. At this time slavery had been abolished, but because of Jim Crow, the newly freed black people were still looked at as inferior. One of the similarities between slave codes and Jim Crow laws was that both sets of laws did not allow equal education opportunities. The schools were separated, of course, which cause the white schools to be richer and more advanced in education than black schools. This relates to slave codes because slaves were not allowed to read which hindered their learning of when they were able to read and write. Another similarity is alcohol. In the Jim Crow era persons who sold beer or wine were not allowed to serve both white and colored people, so they had to sell to either one or the other. This is similar to slave codes because in most states slaves were not allowed to purchase whiskey at all, unless they had permission from their owners. Slaves did not eat with their white owners. In the Jim Crow era whites and blacks could not eat together at all, and if there was some odd circumstance that whites and blacks did eat together then the white person was served first and there was usually something in between them. This relates to slave codes because
The Jim Crow era was a racial status system used primarily in the south between the years of 1877 and the mid 1960’s. Jim Crow was a series of anti-black rules and conditions that were never right. The social conditions and legal discrimination of the Jim Crow era denied African Americans democratic rights and freedoms frequently. There were numerous ways in which African Americans were denied social and political equality under Jim Crow. Along with that, lynching occurred quite frequently, thousands being done over the era.
The term Jim Crow was a “colloquialism whites and blacks routinely used for the complex system of laws and customs separating races in the south” (Edmonds, Jim Crow: Shorthand for Separation). In other words, it was a set of laws and customs that people used that separated white people from the colored. The Jim Crow laws and practices deprived American citizens of the rights to vote, buses, and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” First, though, a little background on Jim Crow is in order.
In 1863 to 1877 Reconstruction brought an end to slavery, it paved the way for the former slaves to become citizens. The African Americans wanted complete freedom. However, that right became a setback and were seen as second class citizens. Before the end of the Reconstruction, a legislation was passed called the Jim Crow law. The law enforced the segregation of people of African descent. The legislation was a system to ensure the exclusion of racial groups in the Southern States. For example, separate transportation law, school division, different waiting rooms both at the bus terminals and hospitals, separate accommodations, marriage law and voting rights. The Jim Crow law was supposed to help in racial segregation in the South. Instead,
Between 1890 and 1910 they limited the rights of black people by passing their own laws which meant that blacks were forced to live separately from whites. These laws were known as The Jim Crow Laws after a line in a plantation song sung by the slaves. Blacks were forced to use separate hotels, transport and schools. were treated as second class citizens. In states where the laws had not changed, violence and intimidation were used to.
“The ‘Jim Crow’ laws got their name from one of the stock characters in the minstrel shows that were a mainstay of popular entertainment throughout the nineteenth century. Such shows popularized and reinforced the pervasive stereotypes of blacks as lazy, stupid, somehow less human, and inferior to whites” (Annenberg, 2014). These laws exalted the superiority of the whites over the blacks. Although equally created, and affirmed by the Supreme Court, and because of the Civil War officially free, African Americans were still treated with less respect than many household pets. The notorious Jim Crow laws mandated segregation and provided for severe legal retribution for consortium between races (National, 2014). Richard Wright writes about this, his life.
The Great Migration period during the age of Jim Crow was a time of major movement of African Americans within the United States. Between the years 1910 to 1930 a huge population increase occurred within African American society that ultimately caused the beginning stages of the Great Migration. As a result, this population increase of blacks influenced them to seek for better opportunity in work, land, and safety for their families. Outside of those reasons one major factor that forced African Americans to migrate was the influence of Jim Crow laws and practices. Jim Crow was still present during this period and caused colored individuals to seek for more habitable areas outside the South being that lynching was at its worst, white mobs attacked blacks, and living conditions were mediocre for African Americans compared to that of a middle class white family. In this paper I will argue that the Jim Crow era was driving force behind the main factors that shaped the Great Migration; and those factors are the ideas of wanting to seek better work opportunity, living conditions, and over all safety for ones self and family.
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.
Blacks were discriminated almost every aspect of life. The Jim Crow laws helped in this discrimination. The Jim Crow laws were laws using racial segregation from 1876 – 1965 at both a social and at a state level.
were created. A Jim Crow law was any law that enforced racial segregation in the
Although the 13th Amendment ended slavery, it did not solve the problem of unjust treatment towards African Americans. “Jim Crow Laws were laws in the South based on race. They enforced segregation between white people and black people in public places such as schools, transportation, restrooms, and restaurants. They also made it difficult for black people to vote” (“Civil Rights for Kids”). These laws promoted the idea of “separate but equal”. “The name "Jim Crow" comes from an African-American character in a song from 1832. After the song came out, the term "Jim Crow" was often used to refer to African-Americans and soon the segregation laws became known as "Jim Crow" Laws” (“Civil Rights for Kids”). These laws created segregation and made white Americans superior to all other races. The laws were in place for 77 years, but the harsh effects lasted for many years to come.
Jim Crow, a series of laws put into place after slavery by rich white Americans used in order to continue to subordinate African-Americans has existed for many years and continues to exist today in a different form, mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws when initially implemented were a series of anti-black laws that help segregate blacks from whites and kept blacks in a lower social, political, and economic status. In modern day, the term Jim Crow is used as a way to explain the mass incarcerations of blacks since Jim Crow laws were retracted. Through mass incarceration, blacks are continuously disenfranchised and subordinated by factors such as not being able to obtain housing, stoppage of income, and many other factors. Both generations of Jim Crow have been implemented through legal laws or ways that the government which helps to justify the implementation of this unjust treatment of blacks.
Jim Crow was the name of the system of laws that stripped African Americans of their personal rights. These laws started in the 1870s with the general aim to deprive any African American of his or her personal rights. The southern and border states were the primary followers of Jim Crow (What Was Jim Crow?). According to USA History, “The name Jim Crow derived from a comic and sketch show character played by Thomas Dartmouth Rice in 1904.” Before the character, there was a song often referred to as “Jumpin’ Jim Crow.” The actors would paint their faces black to make fun of African Americans. Jim Crow was portrayed to be lazy, naïve, and confused. Even though there are clues that the term Jim Crow was used before T.D. Rice, this was the first documented use (USA History). Jim Crow laws were not only a set of rules, but also a set way of life.
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.