Jim Crow Era

The Jim Crow era was an era of disenfranchisement, brutal violence, and legalised racism against African Americans. How did such a horrifically racist system come about, especially after the North's victory in the Civil War? And what did it take to end Jim Crow? Keep reading to find out.

Jim Crow Era Definition

The term Jim Crow comes from actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who became famous for performing in blackface makeup as a stereotypical black character called Jim Crow.

After the end of Reconstruction, Jim Crow was used to referring to laws and social norms in the Southern states for their discrimination against African Americans.

Jim Crow Era and the End of Reconstruction

There is a common misconception that Jim Crow came directly after slavery. Actually, between the abolition of slavery and Jim Crow, there was a period where African Americans advanced and flourished in politics and government. This was called Reconstruction.

Reconstruction (1865 - 1877) embodied the North's commitment to racial equality after the end of the Civil War in 1865. It saw huge gains for African American rights in the southern states. South Carolina, the birthplace of the Confederacy, saw 50 black members elected to its legislature, out of a total of 63 spaces. It was and remains to this day the only time a state has had a black majority in its legislature.

FIg. 1 - Photo montage created in 1876 and distributed by opponents of Reconstruction. It shows the radical Republicans in the South Carolina legislature.

Despite these achievements, Reconstruction gave way to Jim Crow in 1877 when federal troops were pulled out of the South. Pulling out the government's troops from the South was important because these soldiers helped to keep the peace in the South. They were stationed at voting booths to make sure African Americans could vote without intimidation or violence.

Rather than a direct line from slavery to Jim Crow then, Jim Crow was really a reversal of rights gained during Reconstruction. Without federal troops to enforce Reconstruction laws, Jim Crow grew in the South. By 1914 every southern state had Jim Crow laws.

Jim Crow Era Laws

Jim Crow laws essentially enforced segregation throughout the South and made interracial mixing illegal. These laws also denied voting, labour, and education rights to African Americans. Attempts to defy these laws were often met with arrest, fines, violence, or even death. The legal system was weighted against African-Americans, and law enforcement officials and judges were sympathetic to, and often even actively supportive of, segregation.

Segregation was upheld by Supreme Court rulings. During Reconstruction, the 1875 Civil Rights Act had prohibited discrimination in transport, hotels, theatres, and other entertainment venues. But by 1883 the Supreme Court declared the 1875 Act unconstitutional. They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, which had guaranteed equality before the law, only applied to government facilities. Transport, hotels, theatres and the like, the Supreme Court argued, were privately owned and the government had no right to interfere in private affairs.

Fig. 2 - Photograph of the Plessy v. Ferguson marker.

The most important ruling which upheld segregation laws was Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Homer Plessy was part of the Committee of Citizens, a group that hoped to protest against Louisiana's segregationist 1890 Separate Car Act. Plessy's act of civil disobedience went all the way up to the Supreme Court which ruled that racial segregation laws were not unconstitutional. The Supreme Court argued that as long separate facilities were equal in quality, the Fourteenth Amendment of equality under the law was adhered to. This led to the creation of the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Between 1890 and 1908, southern states adopted new constitutions and implemented new voting laws to disenfranchise black voters. These designated ‘white only’ areas and put more and more restrictions on black people’s lives, including measures prohibiting interracial couples.

Jim Crow Era Facts

Here are some facts about Jim Crow and how it changed as the 20th century went on.

Jim Crow Era Facts: The KKK

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was and is a US terrorist organisation that advocates white supremacy. The Klan emerged as a response to the rights African-Americans gained during the Reconstruction. They operated a campaign of violence and intimidation against black people and anyone who supported them at the voting booths. This effectively barred African-Americans from voting.

When southern governments returned to Democrat control at the end of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow laws were introduced, there was less need for the KKK. However, the Klan re-emerged twice during the Jim Crow Era: first in 1915, reaching its highest membership numbers in the 1920s, and then in the 1950s in response to the growing Civil Rights Movement.

The Klan used lynchings, shootings, whippings, and cross-burnings to spread terror. Their popularity was best displayed in a 1925 parade in Washington DC, which comprised around 30,000 members.

Jim Crow Era Facts: the First and Second World Wars

In 1917, the United States entered the First World War. Around 400,000 African-Americans served during the war, and three Black regiments received the Croix de Guerre award for valour when it ended. Despite their service, Black soldiers returned to continued disenfranchisement and violence. Black veterans were lynched in their uniforms.

During the Second World War, around 1.2 million African-Americans served in the military, though they worked in segregated units or in menial jobs. In 1941, during the Second World War, defence workers scheduled a march to protest racial discrimination. President Franklin Roosevelt responded by quickly issuing an executive order that made racial hiring discrimination in the defence industry illegal.

Jim Crow Era and the African American response

The rights of African-Americans were increasingly limited as Jim Crow raged on. How did African Americans in the South respond to this restriction of their hard-won freedoms?

Jim Crow Era Migration

The heightening of Jim Crow laws and the resurgence of the KKK led to mass migration out of the South. Between 1915 and 1930, 1 million African Americans moved to the North, mainly to cities such as New York or Detroit. This wave of mass migration was called The Great Migration. Black migration to cities caused increasing white discontent, leading to urban white riots and demands for segregation.

Jim Crow Era Resistance

African-Americans were active in resisting the Jim Crow laws, and the intensity of the protests only grew throughout the Era.

In 1892, Ida B. Wells became one of the first prominent activists against Jim Crow laws, after her investigative journalism pieces revealed the horrors of lynching. Her newspaper was destroyed by a white mob who threatened her with death. She then moved to the North, to Chicago, where she continued investigating lynching in the South. Another notable figure at the time was WEB Du Bois.

The 1920s to the 1930s saw the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem, New York became the centre for the flourishing of black arts, literature, and theatre. The Great Migration resulted in large numbers of African Americans moving to northern cities. Themes of urban life, religion and spirituality, and sexuality were common during the Harlem Renaissance.

Jim Crow Era Summary: End of an Era

It was the Civil Rights Movement that put an end to the segregation of Jim Crow. The Civil Rights Movement was a diverse series of movements concentrated in the South. Figures such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ella Baker protested, organised boycotts, and publicised the state of the South to the North. In doing so, they put racial equality on the agenda and shamed the North for allowing segregation in the South.

In 1954, lobbying from African American rights groups led to Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling that educational segregation was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ordered the rapid desegregation of schools. The Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, led by Rosa Parks, saw African Americans boycott buses in Montgomery, Alabama, until seating and hiring discrimination ended. The boycott led to a 1956 Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public transport was unconstitutional. These events once again revived the KKK.

In 1957, African-American teenagers were prevented from entering a high school at Little Rock, Arkansas. President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to protect the children. A similar situation occurred in 1962 when a black student, James Meredith, was admitted to the University of Mississippi and faced white violence. President John F. Kennedy sent federal troops to disperse the protesters.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 introduced measures to protect black voting rights, but it was the 1964 Civil Rights Act that legally ended the Jim Crow Era. It ended segregation in public accommodations, further desegregated schools, and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.