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The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the South had adopted laws, beginning in the late 19th century, banning discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white
Southern Democrat Southern Democrats, historically sometimes known colloquially as Dixiecrats, are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States. Southern Democrats were generally much more conservative than Northern Democrats with ...
-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Jim Crow laws were enforced until 1965. In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America and in some others, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of ''
Plessy vs. Ferguson ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...
'', in which the Supreme Court laid out its " separate but equal" legal doctrine concerning facilities for African Americans. Moreover,
public education State schools (in England, Wales, Australia and New Zealand) or public schools (Scottish English and North American English) are generally primary or secondary educational institution, schools that educate all students without charge. They are ...
had essentially been segregated since its establishment in most of the South after the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policie ...
in 1861–1865. Although in theory, the "equal" segregation doctrine was extended to public facilities and transportation too, facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to facilities for white Americans; sometimes, there were no facilities for the black community at all. Far from equality, as a body of law, Jim Crow institutionalized economic, educational, political and social disadvantages and second class citizenship for most African Americans living in the United States. After the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...
(NAACP) was founded in 1909, it became involved in a sustained public protest and campaigns against the Jim Crow laws, and the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine. In 1954, segregation of public schools (state-sponsored) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the landmark case ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
''. In some states, it took many years to implement this decision, while the
Warren Court The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...
continued to rule against Jim Crow legislation in other cases such as ''
Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States ''Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States'', 379 U.S. 241 (1964), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Commerce Clause gave the U.S. Congress power to force private businesses to abide by Title ...
'' (1964). In general, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights moveme ...
.


Etymology

The earliest known use of the phrase "Jim Crow law" can be dated to 1884 in a newspaper article summarizing congressional debate. The term appears in 1892 in the title of a '' New York Times'' article about Louisiana requiring segregated railroad cars. The origin of the phrase "Jim Crow" has often been attributed to "
Jump Jim Crow "Jump Jim Crow" or "Jim Crow" is a song and dance from 1828 that was done in blackface by white minstrel performer Thomas Dartmouth (T. D.) "Daddy" Rice. The song is speculated to have been taken from Jim Crow (sometimes called Jim Cuff or Uncl ...
", a song-and-dance caricature of black people performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice in
blackface Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...
, first performed in 1828. As a result of Rice's fame, Jim Crow had become by 1838 a pejorative expression meaning "Negro". When southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation directed against African Americans at the end of the 19th century, these statutes became known as Jim Crow laws.Woodward, C. Vann and McFeely, William S. (2001), ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow''. p. 7


Origins

In January 1865, an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States was proposed by Congress and ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865. During the Reconstruction era of 1865–1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the
U.S. South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
for freedmen, African Americans who were former slaves, and the minority of black people who had been free before the war. In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures as violent
insurgent An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irreg ...
paramilitary groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, White League, and Red Shirts disrupted Republican organizing, ran Republican officeholders out of town, and lynched Black voters to as an intimidation tactic to suppress the Black vote. Extensive voter fraud was also used. In one instance, an outright coup or insurrection in coastal North Carolina led to the violent removal of democratically elected Republican party executive and representative officials, who were either hunted down or hounded out.
Gubernatorial A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of politica ...
elections were close and had been disputed in Louisiana for years, with increasing violence against black Americans during campaigns from 1868 onward. The
Compromise of 1877 The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Wormley Agreement or the Bargain of 1877, was an unwritten deal, informally arranged among members of the United States Congress, to settle the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election between Ruth ...
to gain Southern support in the presidential election (a corrupt bargain) resulted in the government withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South. White Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state.Woodward, C. Vann, and McFeely, William S. ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow''. 2001, p. 6. These Southern, white, " Redeemer" governments legislated Jim Crow laws, officially segregating the country's population. Jim Crow laws were a manifestation of
authoritarian Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voti ...
rule specifically directed at one racial group. Blacks were still elected to local offices throughout the 1880s in local areas with large black populations, but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections. States passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most black people and many poor white people began to decrease.
Michael Perman Michael Perman (died July 24, 2020) was a history professor and author in the United States. He was a professor emeritus and served as chairman of the history department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. According to his Bio, Perman receive ...
.''Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001, Introduction.
J. Morgan Kousser.''The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former
Confederate states The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...
, beginning with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most black people and tens of thousands of poor white people through a combination of
poll taxes A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...
, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate white people to vote but gave no relief to most black people. Voter turnout dropped dramatically through the South as a result of these measures. In Louisiana, by 1900, black voters were reduced to 5,320 on the rolls, although they comprised the majority of the state's population. By 1910, only 730 black people were registered, less than 0.5% of eligible black men. "In 27 of the state's 60 parishes, not a single black voter was registered any longer; in 9 more parishes, only one black voter was." The cumulative effect in North Carolina meant that black voters were completely eliminated from voter rolls during the period from 1896 to 1904. The growth of their thriving middle class was slowed. In North Carolina and other Southern states, black people suffered from being made invisible in the political system: " thin a decade of disfranchisement, the white supremacy campaign had erased the image of the
black middle class The African-American middle class consists of African-Americans who have middle-class status within the American class structure. It is a societal level within the African-American community that primarily began to develop in the early 1960s, ...
from the minds of white North Carolinians."Richard H. Pildes
"Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", 2000, pp. 12, 27
Retrieved March 10, 2008.
In
Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...
, tens of thousands of poor whites were also disenfranchised, although initially legislators had promised them they would not be affected adversely by the new restrictions.Glenn Feldman, ''The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama'', Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004, pp. 135–36. Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked. While public schools had been established by Reconstruction legislatures for the first time in most Southern states, those for black children were consistently underfunded compared to schools for white children, even when considered within the strained finances of the postwar South where the decreasing price of cotton kept the agricultural economy at a low. Like schools, public libraries for black people were underfunded, if they existed at all, and they were often stocked with secondhand books and other resources. These facilities were not introduced for African Americans in the South until the first decade of the 20th century.Battles, D. M. (2009). ''The History of Public Library Access for African Americans in the South, or, Leaving Behind the Plow.'' Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. Throughout the Jim Crow era, libraries were only available sporadically.Fultz, M. (2006). "Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation." ''Libraries & The Cultural Record'', 41(3), 338. Prior to the 20th century, most libraries established for African Americans were school-library combinations. Many public libraries for both European-American and African-American patrons in this period were founded as the result of middle-class activism aided by matching grants from the Carnegie Foundation. In some cases, progressive measures intended to reduce election fraud, such as the Eight Box Law in South Carolina, acted against black and white voters who were illiterate, as they could not follow the directions. While the separation of African Americans from the white general population was becoming legalized and formalized during the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), it was also becoming customary. Even in cases in which Jim Crow laws did not expressly forbid black people from participating in sports or recreation, a segregated culture had become common. In the Jim Crow context, the presidential election of 1912 was steeply slanted against the interests of African Americans. Most black Americans still lived in the South, where they had been effectively disfranchised, so they could not vote at all. While
poll taxes A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...
and literacy requirements banned many poor or illiterate people from voting, these stipulations frequently had loopholes that exempted European Americans from meeting the requirements. In Oklahoma, for instance, anyone qualified to vote before 1866, or related to someone qualified to vote before 1866 (a kind of " grandfather clause"), was exempted from the literacy requirement; but the only men who had the franchise before that year were white or European-American. European Americans were effectively exempted from the literacy testing, whereas black Americans were effectively singled out by the law.
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
was a Democrat elected from New Jersey, but he was born and raised in the South, and was the first Southern-born president of the post-
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policie ...
period. He appointed Southerners to his
Cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filin ...
. Some quickly began to press for segregated workplaces, although the city of Washington, D.C., and federal offices had been integrated since after the Civil War. In 1913,
Secretary of the Treasury The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...
William Gibbs McAdoo – an appointee of the President – was heard to express his opinion of black and white women working together in one government office: "I feel sure that this must go against the grain of the white women. Is there any reason why the white women should not have only white women working across from them on the machines?" The Wilson administration introduced segregation in federal offices, despite much protest from African-American leaders and white progressive groups in the north and midwest. He appointed segregationist Southern politicians because of his own firm belief that racial segregation was in the best interest of black and European Americans alike.Schulte Nordholt, J. W. and Rowen, Herbert H. ''Woodrow Wilson: A Life for World Peace''. 1991, pp. 99–100. At the Great Reunion of 1913 at Gettysburg, Wilson addressed the crowd on July 4, the semi-centennial of
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...
's declaration that "
all men are created equal The quotation "all men are created equal" is part of the sentence in the U.S. Declaration of Independence – penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 during the beginning of the American Revolution – that reads "We hold these truths to be self-evid ...
": In sharp contrast to Wilson, a ''
Washington Bee ''The Washington Bee'' was a Washington, D.C.-based American weekly newspaper founded in 1882 and primarily read by African Americans. Throughout almost all of its forty-year history, it was edited by African American lawyer-journalist William C ...
'' editorial wondered if the "reunion" of 1913 was a reunion of those who fought for "the extinction of slavery" or a reunion of those who fought to "perpetuate slavery and who are now employing every artifice and argument known to deceit" to present emancipation as a failed venture. Historian
David W. Blight David William Blight (born 1949) is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previous ...
observed that the "Peace Jubilee" at which Wilson presided at Gettysburg in 1913 "was a Jim Crow reunion, and white supremacy might be said to have been the silent, invisible master of ceremonies". In Texas, several towns adopted residential segregation laws between 1910 and the 1920s. Legal strictures called for segregated water fountains and restrooms. The exclusion of African Americans also found support in the Republican lily-white movement.


Historical development


Early attempts to break Jim Crow

The
Civil Rights Act of 1875 The Civil Rights Act of 1875, sometimes called the Enforcement Act or the Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to civil rights violations against African Americans. The bill was passed by the ...
, introduced by
Charles Sumner Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American statesman and United States Senator from Massachusetts. As an academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the anti-slavery forces in the state and a leader of th ...
and
Benjamin F. Butler Benjamin Franklin Butler (November 5, 1818 – January 11, 1893) was an American major general of the Union Army, politician, lawyer, and businessman from Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Butler is best ...
, stipulated a guarantee that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in public accommodations, such as inns, public transportation, theaters, and other places of recreation. This Act had little effect in practice. An 1883 Supreme Court decision ruled that the act was unconstitutional in some respects, saying Congress was not afforded control over private persons or corporations. With white southern Democrats forming a solid voting bloc in Congress, due to having outsize power from keeping seats apportioned for the total population in the South (although hundreds of thousands had been disenfranchised), Congress did not pass another civil rights law until 1957. In 1887, Rev. W. H. Heard lodged a complaint with the Interstate Commerce Commission against the Georgia Railroad company for discrimination, citing its provision of different cars for white and black/colored passengers. The company successfully appealed for relief on the grounds it offered "separate but equal" accommodation. In 1890, Louisiana passed a law requiring separate accommodations for colored and white passengers on railroads. Louisiana law distinguished between "white", "black" and "colored" (that is, people of mixed European and African ancestry). The law had already specified that black people could not ride with white people, but colored people could ride with white people before 1890. A group of concerned black, colored and white citizens in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to rescinding the law. The group persuaded Homer Plessy to test it; he was a man of color who was of fair complexion and one-eighth "Negro" in ancestry. In 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket from New Orleans on the East Louisiana Railway. Once he had boarded the train, he informed the train conductor of his racial lineage and took a seat in the whites-only car. He was directed to leave that car and sit instead in the "coloreds only" car. Plessy refused and was immediately arrested. The Citizens Committee of New Orleans fought the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. They lost in ''
Plessy v. Ferguson ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in qualit ...
'' (1896), in which the Court ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. The finding contributed to 58 more years of legalized discrimination against black and colored people in the United States. In 1908, Congress defeated an attempt to introduce segregated streetcars into the capital.


Racism in the United States and defenses of Jim Crow

White Southerners encountered problems in learning free labor management after the end of slavery, and they resented African Americans, who represented the Confederacy's
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policie ...
defeat: "With white supremacy being challenged throughout the South, many whites sought to protect their former status by threatening African Americans who exercised their new rights." White Southerners used their power to segregate public spaces and facilities in law and reestablish social dominance over black people in the South. One rationale for the systematic exclusion of African Americans from southern public society was that it was for their own protection. An early 20th-century scholar suggested that allowing black people to attend white schools would mean "constantly subjecting them to adverse feeling and opinion", which might lead to "a morbid race consciousness". This perspective took anti-black sentiment for granted, because
bigotry Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
was widespread in the South after slavery became a racial caste system. Justifications for white supremacy were provided by
scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
and negative stereotypes of African Americans. Social segregation, from housing to laws against interracial chess games, was justified as a way to prevent black men from having sex with white women and in particular the rapacious
Black Buck The blackbuck (''Antilope cervicapra''), also known as the Indian antelope, is an antelope native to India and Nepal. It inhabits grassy plains and lightly forested areas with perennial water sources. It stands up to high at the shoulder. Male ...
stereotype.


World War II and post-war era

In 1944,
Associate Justice Associate justice or associate judge (or simply associate) is a judicial panel member who is not the chief justice in some jurisdictions. The title "Associate Justice" is used for members of the Supreme Court of the United States and some state ...
Frank Murphy introduced the word " racism" into the lexicon of U.S. Supreme Court opinions in '' Korematsu v. United States'', 323 U.S. 214 (1944). In his dissenting opinion, Murphy stated that by upholding the forced relocation of
Japanese American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...
s during World War II, the Court was sinking into "the ugly abyss of racism". This was the first time that "racism" was used in Supreme Court opinion (Murphy used it twice in a concurring opinion in '' Steele v Louisville & Nashville Railway Co'' 323 192 (1944) issued that day). Murphy used the word in five separate opinions, but after he left the court, "racism" was not used again in an opinion for two decades. It next appeared in the landmark decision of ''
Loving v. Virginia ''Loving v. Virginia'', 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth A ...
'', . Numerous boycotts and demonstrations against segregation had occurred throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...
(NAACP) had been engaged in a series of litigation cases since the early 20th century in efforts to combat laws that disenfranchised black voters across the South. Some of the early demonstrations achieved positive results, strengthening political activism, especially in the post-World War II years. Black veterans were impatient with social oppression after having fought for the United States and freedom across the world. In 1947 K. Leroy Irvis of Pittsburgh's Urban League, for instance, led a demonstration against employment discrimination by the city's department stores. It was the beginning of his own influential political career. After World War II, people of color increasingly challenged segregation, as they believed they had more than earned the right to be treated as full citizens because of their military service and sacrifices. The
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...
was energized by a number of flashpoints, including the 1946 police beating and blinding of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard while he was in U.S. Army uniform. In 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued
Executive Order 9981 Executive Order 9981 was issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. This executive order abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces, and led to the re-inte ...
, ending racial discrimination in the armed services. That same year,
Silas Herbert Hunt Silas Herbert Hunt (March 1, 1922 – April 22, 1949) was a U.S. veteran of World War II who became the first African American student to enroll in a white Southern university since the Reconstruction era. He enrolled in the University of Arkansas ...
enrolled in the
University of Arkansas The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas In ...
, effectively starting the desegregation of education in the South. As the civil rights movement gained momentum and used federal courts to attack Jim Crow statutes, the white-dominated governments of many of the southern states countered by passing alternative forms of resistance.


Decline and removal

Historian William Chafe has explored the defensive techniques developed inside the African-American community to avoid the worst features of Jim Crow as expressed in the legal system, unbalanced economic power, and intimidation and psychological pressure. Chafe says "protective socialization by black people themselves" was created inside the community in order to accommodate white-imposed sanctions while subtly encouraging challenges to those sanctions. Known as "walking the tightrope," such efforts at bringing about change were only slightly effective before the 1920s. However, this did build the foundation for later generations to advance racial equality and de-segregation. Chafe argued that the places essential for change to begin were institutions, particularly black churches, which functioned as centers for community-building and discussion of politics. Additionally, some all-black communities, such as Mound Bayou, Mississippi and Ruthville, Virginia served as sources of pride and inspiration for black society as a whole. Over time, pushback and open defiance of the oppressive existing laws grew, until it reached a boiling point in the aggressive, large-scale activism of the 1950s civil rights movement.


''Brown v. Board of Education''

The NAACP Legal Defense Committee (a group that became independent of the NAACP) – and its lawyer, Thurgood Marshall – brought the landmark case '' Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', before the
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
under Chief Justice Earl Warren. In its pivotal 1954 decision, the
Warren Court The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...
unanimously (9–0) overturned the 1896 ''Plessy'' decision. The Supreme Court found that legally mandated ('' de jure'') public school segregation was unconstitutional. The decision had far-reaching social ramifications.


Integrating collegiate sports

Racial integration of all-white collegiate sports teams was high on the Southern agenda in the 1950s and 1960s. Involved were issues of equality, racism, and the alumni demand for the top players needed to win high-profile games. The
Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Associ ...
(ACC) of flagship state universities in the Southeast took the lead. First they started to schedule integrated teams from the North. Finally, ACC schoolstypically under pressure from boosters and civil rights groupsintegrated their teams. With an alumni base that dominated local and state politics, society and business, the ACC schools were successful in their endeavoras Pamela Grundy argues, they had learned how to win: : The widespread admiration that athletic ability inspired would help transform athletic fields from grounds of symbolic play to forces for social change, places where a wide range of citizens could publicly and at times effectively challenge the assumptions that cast them as unworthy of full participation in U.S. society. While athletic successes would not rid society of prejudice or stereotype – black athletes would continue to confront racial slurs... inority star players demonstratedthe discipline, intelligence, and poise to contend for position or influence in every arena of national life.


Public arena

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. This was not the first time this happened – for example, Parks was inspired by 15-year-old
Claudette Colvin Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up ...
doing the same thing nine months earlier – but the Parks act of
civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". Henc ...
was chosen, symbolically, as an important catalyst in the growth of the post-1954 civil rights movement; activists built the
Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. ...
around it, which lasted more than a year and resulted in desegregation of the privately run buses in the city. Civil rights protests and actions, together with legal challenges, resulted in a series of legislative and court decisions which contributed to undermining the Jim Crow system.


End of legal segregation

The decisive action ending segregation came when Congress in bipartisan fashion overcame Southern filibusters to pass the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights moveme ...
. A complex interaction of factors came together unexpectedly in the period 1954–1965 to make the momentous changes possible. The Supreme Court had taken the first initiative in ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' (1954), declaring segregation of public schools unconstitutional. Enforcement was rapid in the North and border states, but was deliberately stopped in the South by the movement called
Massive Resistance Massive resistance was a strategy declared by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. of Virginia and his brother-in-law James M. Thomson, who represented Alexandria in the Virginia General Assembly, to get the state's white politicians to pass laws and ...
, sponsored by rural segregationists who largely controlled the state legislatures. Southern liberals, who counseled moderation, were shouted down by both sides and had limited impact. Much more significant was the civil rights movement, especially the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) headed by
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
It largely displaced the old, much more moderate NAACP in taking leadership roles. King organized massive demonstrations, that seized massive media attention in an era when network television news was an innovative and universally watched phenomenon. SCLC, student activists and smaller local organizations staged demonstrations across the South. National attention focused on Birmingham, Alabama, where protesters deliberately provoked
Bull Connor Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor (July 11, 1897 – March 10, 1973) was an American politician who served as Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, for more than two decades. A member of the Democratic Party, ...
and his police forces by using young teenagers as demonstrators – and Connor arrested 900 on one day alone. The next day Connor unleashed billy clubs, police dogs, and high-pressure water hoses to disperse and punish the young demonstrators with a brutality that horrified the nation. It was very bad for business, and for the image of a modernizing progressive urban South. President
John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
, who had been calling for moderation, threatened to use federal troops to restore order in Birmingham. The result in Birmingham was compromise by which the new mayor opened the library, golf courses, and other city facilities to both races, against the backdrop of church bombings and assassinations. In summer 1963, there were 800 demonstrations in 200 southern cities and towns, with over 100,000 participants, and 15,000 arrests. In Alabama in June 1963, Governor
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist and ...
escalated the crisis by defying court orders to admit the first two black students to the
University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the public ...
. Kennedy responded by sending Congress a comprehensive civil rights bill, and ordered Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to file federal lawsuits against segregated schools, and to deny funds for discriminatory programs. Martin Luther King launched a huge march on Washington in August 1963, bringing out 200,000 demonstrators in front of the Lincoln Memorial, at the time the largest political assembly in the nation's history. The Kennedy administration now gave full-fledged support to the civil rights movement, but powerful southern congressmen blocked any legislation. After Kennedy was assassinated, President
Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
called for immediate passage of Kennedy civil rights legislation as a memorial to the martyred president. Johnson formed a coalition with Northern Republicans that led to passage in the House, and with the help of Republican Senate leader
Everett Dirksen Everett McKinley Dirksen (January 4, 1896 – September 7, 1969) was an American politician. A Republican, he represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. As Senate Minority Leader from 1959 un ...
with passage in the Senate early in 1964. For the first time in history, the southern filibuster was broken and the Senate finally passed its version on June 19 by vote of 73 to 27. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most powerful affirmation of equal rights ever made by Congress. It guaranteed access to public accommodations such as restaurants and places of amusement, authorized the Justice Department to bring suits to desegregate facilities in schools, gave new powers to the Civil Rights Commission; and allowed federal funds to be cut off in cases of discrimination. Furthermore, racial, religious and gender discrimination was outlawed for businesses with 25 or more employees, as well as apartment houses. The South resisted until the last moment, but as soon as the new law was signed by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, it was widely accepted across the nation. There was only a scattering of diehard opposition, typified by restaurant owner
Lester Maddox Lester Garfield Maddox Sr. (September 30, 1915 – June 25, 2003) was an American politician who served as the 75th governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971. A populist Democrat, Maddox came to prominence as a staunch segregatio ...
in Georgia. In January 1964, President Lyndon Johnson met with civil rights leaders. On January 8, during his first
State of the Union address The State of the Union Address (sometimes abbreviated to SOTU) is an annual message delivered by the president of the United States to a joint session of the United States Congress near the beginning of each calendar year on the current conditio ...
, Johnson asked Congress to "let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined." On June 21, civil rights workers
Michael Schwerner Michael Henry Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June 21, 1964), was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers killed in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Schwerner and two co-workers, James Chan ...
, Andrew Goodman, and
James Chaney James Earl Chaney (May 30, 1943 – June 21, 1964) was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) civil rights workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan on June 21, 1964. The others were Andrew Goodman an ...
disappeared An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organiza ...
in
Neshoba County, Mississippi Neshoba County is located in the central part of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 29,087. Its county seat is Philadelphia. It was named after ''Nashoba'', a Choctaw chief. His name means "wolf" in the C ...
, where they were volunteering in the registration of African American voters as part of the
Freedom Summer Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. ...
project. The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention and the ensuing outrage was used by Johnson and civil rights activists to build a coalition of northern and western Democrats and Republicans and push Congress to pass the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
. On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. It invoked the
Commerce Clause The Commerce Clause describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution ( Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among ...
to outlaw discrimination in public accommodations (privately owned restaurants, hotels, and stores, and in private schools and workplaces). This use of the Commerce Clause was upheld by the
Warren Court The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...
in the landmark case '' Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States'' 379 US 241 (1964). By 1965, efforts to break the grip of state disenfranchisement by education for voter registration in southern counties had been underway for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall. In some areas of the Deep South, white resistance made these efforts almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of the three voting-rights activists in Mississippi in 1964 and the state's refusal to prosecute the murderers, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism against black people, had gained national attention. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by county and state troopers on peaceful Alabama marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge en route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights enforcement legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings soon began on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act. The
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights moveme ...
ended legally sanctioned state barriers to voting for all federal, state and local elections. It also provided for federal oversight and monitoring of counties with historically low minority voter turnout. Years of enforcement have been needed to overcome resistance, and additional legal challenges have been made in the courts to ensure the ability of voters to elect candidates of their choice. For instance, many cities and counties introduced
at-large At large (''before a noun'': at-large) is a description for members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent a whole membership or population (notably a city, county, state, province, nation, club or association), rather than ...
election of council members, which resulted in many cases of diluting minority votes and preventing election of minority-supported candidates. In 2013, the
Roberts Court The Roberts Court is the time since 2005 during which the Supreme Court of the United States has been led by John Roberts as Chief Justice. It is generally considered to be more conservative than the preceding Rehnquist Court and the most con ...
, in '' Shelby County v. Holder'', removed the requirement established by the Voting Rights Act that Southern states needed Federal approval for changes in voting policies. Several states immediately made changes in their laws restricting voting access.


Influence and aftermath


African American life

The Jim Crow laws and the high rate of
lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
s in the South were major factors that led to the Great Migration during the first half of the 20th century. Because opportunities were very limited in the South, African Americans moved in great numbers to cities in Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western states to seek better lives. African American athletes faced much discrimination during the Jim Crow era with White opposition leading to their exclusion from most organized sporting competitions. The boxers Jack Johnson and
Joe Louis Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1934 to 1951. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential boxers of all time. He rei ...
(both of whom became
world heavyweight boxing champions In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
) and track and field athlete Jesse Owens (who won four gold medals at the
1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (German language, German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German language, German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympi ...
in Berlin) gained prominence during the era. In baseball, a color line instituted in the 1880s had informally barred black people from playing in the major leagues, leading to the development of the
Negro leagues The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...
, which featured many fine players. A major breakthrough occurred in 1947, when
Jackie Robinson Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line ...
was hired as the first African American to play in Major League Baseball; he permanently broke the color bar. Baseball teams continued to integrate in the following years, leading to the full participation of black baseball players in the Major Leagues in the 1960s.


Interracial marriage

Although sometimes counted among Jim Crow laws of the South, statutes such as
anti-miscegenation laws Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races. Anti-misc ...
were also passed by other states. Anti-miscegenation laws were not repealed by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
, but were declared
unconstitutional Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...
by the
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
(the
Warren Court The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...
) in a unanimous ruling ''
Loving v. Virginia ''Loving v. Virginia'', 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth A ...
'' (1967). Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the court opinion that "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State."


Jury trials

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution grants criminal defendants the right to a trial by a jury of their peers. While federal law required that convictions could only be granted by a unanimous jury for federal crimes, states were free to set their own jury requirements. All but two states, Oregon and Louisiana, opted for unanimous juries for conviction. Oregon and Louisiana, however, allowed juries of at least 10–2 to decide a criminal conviction. Louisiana's law was amended in 2018 to require a unanimous jury for criminal convictions, effective in 2019. Prior to that amendment, the law had been seen as a remnant of Jim Crow laws, because it allowed minority voices on a jury to be marginalized. In 2020, the Supreme Court found, in '' Ramos v. Louisiana'', that unanimous jury votes are required for criminal convictions at state levels, thereby nullifying Oregon's remaining law, and overturning previous cases in Louisiana.


Later court cases

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court (the
Burger Court The Burger Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1969 to 1986, when Warren Burger served as Chief Justice of the United States. Burger succeeded Earl Warren as Chief Justice after the latter's retirem ...
), in ''
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ''Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education'', 402 U.S. 1 (1971), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. The Court held that busing was an appropriate ...
'', upheld
desegregation busing Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing, Integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in ...
of students to achieve integration. Interpretation of the Constitution and its application to minority rights continues to be controversial as Court membership changes. Observers such as Ian F. Lopez believe that in the 2000s, the Supreme Court has become more protective of the status quo.


International

There is evidence that the government of Nazi Germany took inspiration from the Jim Crow laws when writing the Nuremberg Laws.


Remembrance

Ferris State University Ferris State University (FSU or Ferris) is a public university with its main campus in Big Rapids, Michigan. It was founded in 1884 and became a public institution in 1950. Ferris is the ninth-largest institutions of higher education by enrol ...
in
Big Rapids, Michigan Big Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 10,601 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Mecosta County. The city is located within Big Rapids Township, but it is politically independent. Big Rapids is home o ...
, houses the
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, Big Rapids, Michigan, displays a wide variety of everyday artifacts depicting the history of racist portrayals of African Americans in American popular culture. The mission o ...
, an extensive collection of everyday items that promoted racial segregation or presented racial stereotypes of African Americans, for the purpose of academic research and education about their cultural influence.


See also

*
Anti-miscegenation laws Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races. Anti-misc ...
*
Apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid wa ...
* Black Codes in the United States *
Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction era Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from ...
*
Group Areas Act Group Areas Act was the title of three acts of the Parliament of South Africa enacted under the apartheid government of South Africa. The acts assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas in a system of ...
*
Jim Crow economy The term Jim Crow economy applies to a specific set of economic conditions in the United States during the period when the Jim Crow laws were in effect to force racial segregation; however, it should also be taken as an attempt to disentangle the e ...
*
List of Jim Crow law examples by state This is a list of examples of Jim Crow laws, which were state, territorial and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. Jim Crow laws existed throughout the United States and originated from the White Codes that were pass ...
*
Lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
* Mass racial violence in the United States * Penal labor * Racial segregation in the United States * Racism in the United States *
Second-class citizen A second-class citizen is a person who is systematically and actively discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or a legal resident there. While not necessarily slaves, ...
* Sundown town * Timeline of the civil rights movement * '' The New Jim Crow''


Footnotes


Further reading

* Ayers, Edward L. ''The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction.'' New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. * Barnes, Catherine A. ''Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. * Bartley, Numan V. ''The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950s.'' Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press The Louisiana State University Press (LSU Press) is a university press at Louisiana State University. Founded in 1935, it publishes works of scholarship as well as general interest books. LSU Press is a member of the Association of American Univer ...
, 1969. * Bond, Horace Mann. "The Extent and Character of Separate Schools in the United States." ''
Journal of Negro Education ''The Journal of Negro Education'' was a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Howard University, established in 1932 by Charles Henry Thompson, who was its editor-in-chief for more than 30 years.9 Asian L.J. 1 (2002)
* Campbell, Nedra. ''More Justice, More Peace: The Black Person's Guide to the American Legal System''. Lawrence Hill Books, 2002. * Cole, Stephanie and Natalie J. Ring (eds.), ''The Folly of Jim Crow: Rethinking the Segregated South''. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2012. * Dailey, Jane; Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth and Simon, Bryant (eds.), ''Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. * Fairclough, Adam. "'Being in the Field of Education and Also Being a Negro ... Seems ... Tragic': Black Teachers in the Jim Crow South." ''
The Journal of American History ''The Journal of American History'' is the official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. It covers the field of American history and was established in 1914 as the ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'', the official jo ...
'' vol. 87 (June 2000), pp. 65–91. * Feldman, Glenn. ''Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915–1949''. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1999. * Fireside, Harvey. ''Separate and Unequal: Homer Plessy and the Supreme Court Decision That Legalized Racism''. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003. * Foner, Eric. '' Reconstruction, America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877''. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. * Gaines, Kevin. ''Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century''. University of North Carolina Press, 1996. * Gaston, Paul M. ''The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. * Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. '' Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow''. New York: Penguin Press, 2019. * Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. ''Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920''. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a university press that is part of the University of North Carolina. It was the first university press founded in the Southern United States. It is a member of the Ass ...
, 1996. * Griffin, John Howard. '' Black Like Me''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. * Haws, Robert, ed. ''The Age of Segregation: Race Relations in the South, 1890–1945'' University Press of Mississippi, 1978. * Hackney, Sheldon. ''Populism to Progressivism in Alabama''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969. * Johnson, Charles S. ''Patterns of Negro Segregation''. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943. * Klarman, Michael J. ''From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. * Litwack, Leon F. ''Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. * Lopez, Ian F. Haney
"A nation of minorities": race, ethnicity, and reactionary colorblindness
''Stanford Law Review'', February 1, 2007. * Kantrowitz, Stephen. ''Ben Tillman & the Reconstruction of White Supremacy'' (2000) * McMillen, Neil R. ''Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow''. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989. * Medley, Keith Weldon. ''We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson''. Pelican. March, 2003. * Murray, Pauli. ''States' Law on Race and Color''. University of Georgia Press. 2d ed. 1997 (Davison Douglas ed.). * Myrdal, Gunnar. ''An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.'' New York: Harper and Row, 1944. * Newby, I.A. ''Jim Crow's Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900–1930.'' Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. * Percy, William Alexander. ''Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son.'' 1941. Reprint, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1993. * Pye, David Kenneth
"Complex Relations: An African-American Attorney Navigates Jim Crow Atlanta".
''Georgia Historical Quarterly'', Winter 2007, vol. 91, issue 4, 453–477. * Rabinowitz, Howard N. ''Race Relations in the Urban South, 1856–1890'' (1978) * Smith, J. Douglas. ''Managing: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia'' University of North Carolina Press, 2002. * Smith, J. Douglas. "The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922–1930: "Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro." ''
Journal of Southern History The Southern Historical Association is a professional academic organization of historians focusing on the history of the Southern United States. It was organized on November 2, 1934. Its objectives are the promotion of interest and research in Sout ...
'' vol. 68 (February 2002), pp. 65–106. * Smith, J. Douglas. "Patrolling the Boundaries of Race: Motion Picture Censorship and Jim Crow in Virginia, 1922–1932." ''Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television'' 21 (August 2001): 273–91. * Sterner, Richard. ''The Negro's Share'' (1943) detailed statistics * * Wood, Amy Louise and Natalie J. Ring (eds.), ''Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South.'' Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2019. * Woodward, C. Vann. ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow: A Brief Account of Segregation''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1955. * Woodward, C. Vann. ''The Origins of the New South: 1877–1913''. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1951
online


Sports

* * Demas, Lane. “Beyond Jackie Robinson: Racial Integration in American College Football and New Directions in Sport History.” ''History Compass'' 5.2 (2007): 675–90. * Essington, Amy. ''The Integration of the Pacific Coast League: Race and Baseball on the West Coast'' (U of Nebraska Press, 2018). * Hawkins, Billy. ''The new plantation: Black athletes, college sports, and predominantly white NCAA institutions'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). * Clement, Rufus E. "Racial integration in the field of sports." ''Journal of Negro Education'' 23.3 (1954): 222�
online
* Fitzpatrick, Frank. ''And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Basketball Game That Changed American Sports'' (2000) * Hutchison, Phillip. "The legend of Texas Western: journalism and the epic sports spectacle that wasn’t." ''Critical Studies in Media Communication'' 33.2 (2016): 154–67. * Lopez, Katherine. ''Cougars of Any Color: The Integration of
University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...
Athletics, 1964–1968'' (McFarland, 2008). * Martin, Charles H. "Jim Crow in the gymnasium: the integration of college basketball in the American South." ''International Journal of the History of Sport'' 10.1 (1993): 68–86. * Miller, Patrick B. "Slouching toward a new expediency: College football and the color line during the depression decade." ''American Studies'' 40.3 (1999): 5–30
online
* Pennington, Richard. ''Breaking the Ice: The Racial Integration of Southwest Conference Football'' (McFarland, 1987). * Romero, Francine Sanders. "'There are only white champions': The rise and demise of segregated boxing in Texas." ''Southwestern Historical Quarterly'' 108.1 (2004): 26–41
online
* Sacks, Marcy S. ''Joe Louis: Sports and Race in Twentieth-Century America'' (Routledge, 2018). * Spivey, Donald. "The black athlete in big-time intercollegiate sports, 1941–1968." ''Phylon'' 44.2 (1983): 116–25
online
* White, Derrick E.
From desegregation to integration: Race, football, and 'Dixie' at the University of Florida
''Florida Historical Quarterly'' 88.4 (2010): 469–96.


External links



Ronald L. F. Davis – A series of essays on the history of Jim Crow. *

– Origins of the term and system of laws. *

– The basics of Jim Crow etiquette.

PBS documentary on first Freedom Ride, in 1947.



about Jim Crow
on Antisemitism'' Interview with David Pilgrim, founder of Jim Crow Museum
from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Gerald Early,
Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University i ...
, Missouri (esp. see section "Jim Crow is Born") * Examples of Jim Crow laws
Reports of the Death of Jim Crow Prove Greatly Exaggerated.
Bill Morris, The Daily Beast.
Jim Crow Signs
a
A History of Central Florida Podcast

Black Justice
-
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
, 1931 {{DEFAULTSORT:Jim Crow 1870s establishments in the United States 1960s disestablishments in the United States Debt bondage Discrimination in the United States History of African-American civil rights Jim Crow Legal history of the United States Native American history Political terminology of the United States Reconstruction Era Repealed United States legislation White supremacy in the United States