Jim Crow

Jim Crow

Introduction

“Jim Crow” was the name given to laws and practices originating in the late 19th century that in effect extended the enslavement of Africans and maintained a legal second-class citizenship status for free and newly freed Africans. The goal of Jim Crow was to physically segregate and discriminate against African Americans. By this means, the actions and future possibilities of African Americans were limited from the 19th through the middle of the 20th century. Although Jim Crow laws have now been dismantled in the United States, the residue of these segregationist laws continues to limit African Americans in various areas, including education.

Discussion

Overview

Beginning during the colonial period and intensifying throughout the antebellum era, the precursors of Jim Crow were the Black Codes, which were often used in the North and East to limit African Americans' participation in voting, jury duty, militia service, employment, and education. The term Jim Crow has its roots in a minstrel show created by Thomas “Daddy” Rice in the early 19th century, which presented a distorted caricature of African American life. The Jim Crow system of oppression was the southern version of Black Codes; it began in earnest as customary practices during Reconstruction, with legal enforcement beginning late in the 19th century. The major difference, however, is that Jim Crow laws enforced mandatory segregation of the races, whereas Black Codes curtailed African American access but were not always applied or enforced in all situations. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jim Crow created a system of legally imposed U.S. apartheid. Historian C. Vann Woodward has argued that Jim Crow was a result of the reconciliation of divided Whites during Reconstruction.

Whites resolved their economic and political conflicts at the expense of African Americans, resulting in the institutionalization of a perceived inferiority of African Americans in every facet of southern life. Consequently, Jim Crow provided the sanction of law to racial ostracism that was extended to churches, schools, housing, jobs, and eating and drinking establishments. Either law or custom further extended racial discrimination through public transportation, sports, recreation, hospitals, orphanages, prison, asylums, funeral homes, morgues, and even cemeteries. Even the use of water fountains was restricted. At the end of the 19th century, Jim Crow was bolstered by legal decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson, which mandated segregated equal facilities by race for both African Americans and Whites. The so-called separate-but-equal doctrine was applied throughout the South and the District of Columbia. In practice, however, Jim Crow was always practiced as separate and unequal.

Impact on Education

Before the Civil War, most southern states criminalized the education of free and enslaved Africans, although between 1800 and 1835, South Carolina provided segregated education for African Americans. Research by historian Heather A. Williams explains how African Americans attained an education in spite of these legal measures. With the passage of the Constitutional Conventions in the South after the Civil War, all education became segregated by law. The impact of Jim Crow on African American education has been chronicled by many ...