What are they?
- Laws of the United States that divided races: African-Americans from white people.
- African-Americans separated from white people in public places: restaurants, schools, parks, store entrances, water fountains, bus stops, etc.
- Politicians denied Afro-American people voting in presidential elections.
- The laws established a "separate but equal" community, but that wasn´t the case. White people had better resources than black people.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/index.html (Smith,Ellis, Aslanian).
https://206soph.wikispaces.com/file/view/restrooms.jpg/39343192/restrooms.jpg - Main purpose of the laws was to take all African-American rights but not make them slaves.
- Laws preversly provided safety only for white people in the United States.
- If an African-American wanted to step up for his people he would sometimes be killed.
http://www.judiciaryreport.com/images/jim-crow-8-5-09.jpg
http://www.accd.edu/pac/faculty/pmyers/hist1302/picJimCrow.jpg
- “The Jim Crow system started in the end of the historical period called Reconstruction… Reconstruction in an era in the history of the United States just after the civil war, where economy and social structures were rebuilt”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction - They went on from 1890-1960’s.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/index.html (Smith, Ellis, Aslanian). - The laws were put in the south states of The United States below the Mason Dixon line: Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws - The laws began to fall apart when Brown vs. the board of education happened.
- Brown vs. the board of education was a court case that ended with colored people attending white schools.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8HvO2O4vF0XXfb1FmpwXWat_KXwxZG7qV9jP6cRMPwxl2PgErWLM8UXOuLJZSrDfEnXwKvDjI1yVqw-sCVQea3JYDvefctFuOoPMZRiOdMf4MA1ZquFtNn0VDJNWks3aTaVuQSzYbzrb/s400/JIM+CROW.jpg
VIDEO: "How to Kill a Mockingbird & The Jim Crow Laws"http://www.youtube.com/watchv=Uc_16sGDkto
Short video that explains easily about the segregation laws and how these, connect with the book: "How to Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.
How did it affect African-American people?
- Separated in public places, gave more benefits to white people than to colored ones.
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1996/1/96.01.01.x.html (Blue). - Difficult for African-Americans to get job because whites wouldn’t hire them.
- When colored people where hired by whites, they were treated disrespectfully and unfairly.
- White People took advantage of them.
- In any raped incidence or fight were a white person and a black person where involved, the black person always ended up in jail.
- If African-Americans refused to respect the separation of races in public places, they were arrested.
- Because options for colored people where pitiable, they were bond to poorness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_Laws - Gangs were created who wanted African-Americans dead (The Ku Klux Klan).
- These groups formed a lot of dread in the black community, their life was in danger.
- “Living behind the veil”, sentence created by W.F.B Du Bois. Means African-Americans were never listened and their opinion never mattered. They were “invisible” practically. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/index.html (Smith, Ellis, Aslanian).
http://southcarolina1670.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/thejimcrowlaws-front.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Segregation_1938b.jpg
VIDEO: "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChWXyeUTKg8
This informative video is and introduction to the Jim Crow laws. It invites you to go see the actual webpage called "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow" where you can experience testimonies of differente afro-americans who where witnesses of the crimes commited by white people in that era.
What was said about black people in that time and how did people react to the prejudices?
- When science evolved, scientists claimed: “…blacks were inherently inferior to whites…”.
- Historians spread the word that slavery was: “…a benevolent, peaceful, honorable time”.
- Black people always fought for their rights to be treated equal.
- Formed “advocacy organizations”: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
- Because of unequal treatment, colored people struggled with shame.
- To keep their proud, they wouldn’t follow some laws against them.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/index.html (Smith, Ellis, Aslanian). - "...laws based on discrimination, can destroy the basic human spirit of all parties involved”. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1996/1/96.01.01.x.html (Blue).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/kkk/sf_klan.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Birmingham_campaign_dogs.jpg
What did white people think about these laws and their effect then and now?
- Some white people now believe that it was better during Jim Crow Laws because “…race relations were more peaceful… because blacks and whites understood their place within the social order”.
- They think that way because they weren’t the ones treated unfairly.
- Hardly any white people suffer culpability for the unfair behavior to colored people.
- “Present day race relations in the United States continue to be affected by this history”. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/index.html (Smith, Ellis, Aslanian).
- White people thought that black people wanted to be slaves, so they didn't feel any remorse about the dreadful actions against them.
- It was their way of denying what was really happening in reality.
- Drew Gilpin Faust: "Southerners say they assume that slaves want to be slaves...'If these people don't really want freedom, then we don't have to feel so bad that we have denied it to them'".
- Mary Lee's opinion of effect of Jim Crow Laws on people: "Political reconstruction is inevitable now, but social reconstruction, we have in our hands and we can prevent".
- White people wanted Jim Crow to continue because they had a fear that if black people got equal rights, they would want to get revenge for all the horrific treatment they did to them.
- Drew Gilpin Faust: How people from the South thought: "What are they going to do to me, given what we have done to them".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/kkk/sf_klan.html
http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/african/2000/lynch_3.jpg
VIDEO: "Jim Crow and Apartheid" http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NTTcKZ5jUTA
It´s a short film that shows pictures of what Segregation and the Jim Crow laws really meant for afro-americans.
Works Cited:
- Jennifer Blue. "Jim Crow Laws and their Effects on Race Relations." Race, Racism and the Law: Jim Crow and Segregation. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, 2010. Web. 4 Mar. 2010. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1996/ 1/96.01.01.x.html.
- "Jim Crow laws." Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., , 3 Feb. 2010. Web. 4 Mar. 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Jim_Crow_laws.
- "Q&A: White Southern Responses to Black Emancipation." Reconstruction- The Second Civil War. American Experience- PBS Online, 2004. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/kkk/sf_klan.html.
- "The Rise and the Fall of Jim Crow." PBS Online. Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2002. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ jimcrow/.
- Stephen Smith, Kate Ellis, and Sasha Aslanian. "DOCUMENTARY SECTIONS: Bitter Times- Danger,Violence, Explotation-Communities Behind the Veil-Keeping the Past-Resistance-Whites Remember Jim Crow." Remembering Jim Crow. American Radio Works, 2010. Web. 4 Mar. 2010. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/ index.html.
