Jim Crow laws
[3][4] Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures (Redeemers) to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era.Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court laid out its "separate but equal" legal doctrine concerning facilities for African Americans.[7][8] 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.[7][8][9] After the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (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.[17] During the Reconstruction era of 1865–1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the U.S. South for freedmen, African Americans who were former slaves, and the minority of black people who had been free before the war.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.[30] 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.[30] 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.[37] Historian David W. Blight 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".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".[48] In his dissenting opinion, Murphy stated that by upholding the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Court was sinking into "the ugly abyss of racism".The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (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.[50] 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 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.[52] 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.[53] 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.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.[56] With an alumni base that dominated local and state politics, society and business, the ACC schools were successful in their endeavor – as Pamela Grundy argues, they had learned how to win: In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.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.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.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.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.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.On June 21, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where they were volunteering in the registration of African American voters as part of the Freedom Summer project.[71] 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.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.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 (both of whom became world heavyweight boxing champions) and track and field athlete Jesse Owens (who won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin) gained prominence during the era.The article states the constitutional felony disenfranchisement clause "takes away – for life – the right to vote upon conviction for several low-level crimes, like theft and bribery, that the 1890 drafters felt would be mostly committed by Black people.
Jim Crow (disambiguation)Racial segregationAnti-miscegenation lawsCrime of apartheidAllegationsXenophobiaEnvironmentalInstitutional racismEthnic nationalismForced displacementHousing discriminationExclusionary zoningRedliningAustraliaPass systemSeparate schoolsIndian hospitalsFascist ItalyCode NoirIndigénatGreek–Turkish population exchangeJewish ghettos in EuropePale of SettlementPartition of IndiaPortugal & SpainNazi GermanyNuremberg LawsSouth AfricaBantustansPass lawsUnited KingdomBlack CodesSeparate but equalAnti-RomanyismSloveniaRoma wallsSchoolsCyprusGulf statesSouth Asian labourersUthapuramMuslimsIsraelPalestinian enclavesHafradaWest Bank settlement lawbarriersMalaysiaMauritaniaMoroccoNorthern IrelandUnited StatesAcademiesHousingResidentialXinjiangCitizenshipStatelessnessForced assimilationGender apartheidIncome inequalityOne-drop ruleEthnicityRacial discriminationDiscriminationInstitutionalStructuralStatisticalTaste-basedDialectDisabilityGeneticHair textureHeightLanguageMental disorderRace / EthnicitySkin colorScientific racismSexual orientationSpeciesViewpointArophobiaAcephobiaAdultismAnti-albinismAnti-autismAnti-homelessnessAnti-drug addictsAnti-intellectualismAnti-intersexAnti-left handednessAnti-MasonryAporophobiaAudismBiphobiaClannismElitismEphebiphobiaHealthmentalin povertyFatphobiaGayphobiaGerontophobiaHeterosexismHIV/AIDS stigmaHomophobiaIn-groupLeprosy stigmaLesbophobiaDiscrimination against menMisandryMisogynyNepotismOutgroupPedophobiaPerpetual foreignerPregnancySectarianismSupremacismAryanismAutisticChauvinismFemaleNordicism