Jim Crow Laws
Essay by Zomby • January 1, 2012 • Essay • 804 Words (4 Pages) • 2,350 Views
Jim Crow laws were racially designed to keep blacks separated and unequal from whites. during the post-Civil War in America many racist white people were likely upset about the south's lost and reacted by forming jim crow laws. despite the addition of three constitutional amendments designed to protect African-Americans These Jim crow laws were made out of pure hate and was not stopped by the government for a while. the origin of the term "Jim Crow" cannot be defined as a person or a law but as a era oh racist hate.
One of the most degrading pieces of African American and American history is the racism that has divided their country and created many hard battles, controversy and hardship. In the 1900s, many segregation laws were created to separate black people from white people in every way possible and to ban rights for anyone to defend them; which went against their rights as Americans. For example they made colored only sections for almost everything like restaurants, movies, schools, and even simple things such as water fountains or bathroom. During the Reconstruction after the Civil war, the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were created to protect the rights of blacks and the civil rights act of 1875 freed many black people from slavery. However these laws eventually were ignored and racial tensions arose with in America.
Somehow the government overturned the civil rights act by allowing laws of racial segregation and degrading acts. The laws of segregation which were created after the Reconstruction were known as 'Jim Crow Laws'. Black people fought back in large protests, such as walking instead of taking the bus and sitting in at lunch counters, and challenged officials to remove these laws. Ultimately these movements were courageous but not very effective. When the whites felt that the blacks were going against the rules or even acting as a normal citizen they could, by Jim crow law, lynch beat and humiliate the black people.
The name Jim Crow comes from a minstrel character which was played by the white actor who went by the stage name Daddy Rice. Daddy Rice wore blackface make-up and put on a show filled with music, singing and jokes which all degraded black people and represented them as lazy fools, stupid and less human. Some how from these minstrel show the Jim crow laws emerged since the theme of the plays were to degrade black people that could be the one of the many possibilities. The white audiences loved these performances and they were very popular. The name Jim Crow became a demeaning name to call black people on top of the n word, it became to them something like a trend, and though it is uncertain how, eventually switched to be used to describe laws of segregation.
There were Jim Crow laws for health care, transportation, public facilities, marriage, housing, education, entertainment, free speech, prison, books,
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