Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation in the US, particularly in the South, after the Civil War. They were unconstitutional and violated civil rights. The laws allowed for segregation in daily life, including schools, and led to civil rights struggles. The laws were eventually abolished through key events and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Discriminatory practices persisted into the 1970s and some segregationist sentiment still exists today.
As civil rights struggles became increasingly prevalent in the United States during the latter part of the 19th century and most of the 20th century, state and local laws known as Jim Crow laws defined what many US citizens felt as “separate but equal”. treatment for African Americans. The laws were prevalent in the South but were not unique to that area. These laws formed the backbone of racial segregation and were considered, later in the twentieth century, a violation of civil rights and therefore unconstitutional.
The term Jim Crow originated, presumably, from a white actor playing a black man of that name, but it may also have originated from a song-and-dance caricature that made fun of African Americans in the early to mid of the nineteenth century. Jim Crow laws first appeared shortly after the Civil War, when the federal government began handing power back to the Southern states. Under federal law, freed slaves were guaranteed civil rights, but as southern white Democrats began to retake control of state governments—often through aggressive means, including voter intimidation and outright violence—the laws of Jim Crow began to segregate African Americans from the rest of the white population.
These laws allowed for segregation in businesses, neighborhoods, schools, and other aspects of daily life. African Americans were forced to use separate sections of buses and trains, sit in separate sections of restaurants, and attend separate schools from white Americans. This type of segregation led to fierce civil rights struggles, especially regarding laws that segregated schools. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled on a landmark case, Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregation in schools was inherently unequal, thus abolishing segregation in public schools. The practice, however, continued for several years, resulting in more racial tensions and often violence.
The end of these laws did not come all at once. Several key events – including Rosa Parks’ refusal to move from her seat on a segregated bus, as well as several bus boycotts – created and created enough tension in society that eventually the issue of segregation needed to be addressed. Martin Luther King, Jr. was also a leading advocate for ending the Jim Crow laws. After years of campaigning, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, effectively ending the Jim Crow laws. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 continued on that sentiment, banning segregation in all elections. Unfortunately, many discriminatory practices persisted into the first half of the 1970s in the form of violence or outright defiance, and some segregationist sentiment still exists today in parts of the United States.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
