Jim Crow

The mechanics of repression, both the ritualized and institutionalized subordination demanded of blacks, exacted a psychological and physical toll, shaping to an extraordinary degree day-to-day black life and demeanor. Perhaps the most difficult revelation to absorb was that color marked them as inferior in the eyes of whites, no matter how they behaved and whatever their social class. [1]

In the years after the Civil War the Southern states struggled to regain their footing both politically and economically. Politically, the old regimes of planter-dominated legislatures were eliminated. Economically, the former Confederate states were reduced to almost pauperism, their infrastructure destroyed, the plantation labor system they had depended on rendered obsolete.

While the Northern states pursued their version of Reconstruction, the South was focused on reinvigorating the plantation system and limiting the freedmen’s rights. To obtain these goals, the South began implementing what became known as the “Black Codes,” a series of laws that used political power to deny freedmen their rights.

Northern outrage and Congressional intervention soon ended the Black Codes, but the attempts to suppress the civil rights of blacks continued. Rare before the 1896 Plessey v Ferguson ruling, Jim Crow laws found their beginnings in the overthrow of Reconstruction in the 1870s. Enacted mostly between 1890 and the Great Migration of 1910, Jim Crow laws were formal and informal statutes that sought to regulate and segregate every aspect of black life in the South. Jim Crow had a more lasting impact on Southern life than its Black Codes predecessor, and an argument can be made that some parts of the South still suffer from these now mostly informal restrictions.

Jim Crow

Southern whites linked political and social equality. They believed that if newly freed blacks were allowed to vote then they would insist on living as equals. To prevent this, Southern white governments enacted laws that denied blacks the right to vote and to prevent them from succeeding economically. These laws, which eventually became known as Jim Crow, were put in place to remind blacks that no matter how wealthy or educated they became, they would never be treated as equals in the South.

The traveling performer Thomas Dartmouth's ‘Daddy’ Rice popularized the term Jim Crow. Smearing burnt cork on his face and dressing in oversized rages, Rice traveled the minstrel circuit grinning broadly and performing his ‘Jump Jim Crow’ routine, a skit he made up in 1828 by watching a crippled stable hand owned by a Mr. Crow.

Plessy v Ferguson

The Louisiana legislature in 1867 outlawed racial discrimination on their railways. By 1875, these laws were repealed, freeing businesses the freedom from ‘any obligation to entertain, carry or admit, any person, who he shall for any reason whatever, choose not to entertain, carry or admit.’ The legislature also allowed railroads to charge Negroes first-class fares for second-rate or smoking cars. Citing that railroads traveled across state lines and were therefore a Federal concern, a Federal circuit court in 1890 ruled the 1875 law constitutional in that it violated interstate commerce regulations, ruling that ‘if you pay for first-class accommodations you deserve first class.’ While not appealed to the Supreme Court, in reality, nothing changed and the unequal segregation continued.

The Louisiana Railway Accommodations Act of 1890 mandated that the railroad must ‘provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored races and specifically prohibited anyone entering ‘a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong.’ Homer Plessy, a light-skinned 1/8th black man, purchased a first-class ticket, sat in a white railcar, and refused to leave. Eventually, railroad employees forced him out of the railcar.

Plessy sued, contending that the railroad company violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights, in that the Louisiana Act gave the railroad employees too much authority to decide the race of individuals. In the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against Plessey, affirming the idea of ‘collective group equality,’ meaning that everybody was equal because everyone was discriminated against equally. Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote for the majority:

Any expectation of “equal rights” or “equal protection of the law” had to be obliterated, and the massive potential of the black male vote in key Southern states thwarted, if the old order of a slave-based Confederate society was to be reestablished as seamlessly as possible.

Brown went on to say that “laws permitting, and even requiring, [the races] separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children.”

With this ruling, the precedent of ‘Separate but Equal’ was born.

The Supreme Court believed that it was the state’s responsibility to uphold the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In reality, Southern states began passing Jim Crow laws to regulate and separate every aspect of Southern society.

Whites wanted to control the conduct of the racial interaction and have the ability to punish those who resisted. In the decade after Plessey v Ferguson, state and municipal governments passed laws to regulate every aspect of daily life. By 1909, fourteen state legislatures had laws that restricted access to public spaces based on race.

By World War II, Jim Crow laws dictated every aspect of interactions between whites and blacks. Jim Crow laws prevented blacks and whites from renting apartments in the same buildings. Jim Crow laws mandated that baseball teams of different races had to play on diamonds that were at least two blocks apart. Jim Crow laws restricted black cars to certain streets and prescribed where they could and could not park.

The most disturbing aspect of Jim Crow was the lynchings of those blacks who were seen as defying white supremacy. Between 1880 and 1968 almost 5,000 African Americans were killed by whites in lynch mobs. Some lynchings took the form of public meetings, with excursion trains bringing in spectators. Some lynchings lasted for hours, with bodies often cut up and doled out as souvenirs. It is estimated that just as many were quietly murdered, their bodies never found.

The End of Jim Crow

Between 1890 and World War I African Americans did fight back by organizing boycotts of street cars in almost every major former Confederate city. Some boycotts lasted for weeks, others years. Local businesses were crippled, and some municipalities were forced to suspend the Jim Crow laws.

These boycotts had limited success only at the local level. Boycotts by African Americans at this time didn’t have the financial resources to make a lasting nationwide difference. It was not until the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King that African Americans openly challenged Jim Crow.

The age of Jim Crow would last for more than fifty years until the Supreme Court reversed the Plessy decision with Brown v Board of Education. Separate but Equal was declared unconstitutional, but change would be slow to come to the South.

In many parts of the South unofficial Jim Crow laws persisted. Some places had unofficial ‘Black Peoples Day,’ usually on a Saturday when African Americans could shop without harassment. County fairs still reserved certain days of the week when whites would attend, others only for blacks. Black curfews were often in effect, designating a 9:30 deadline for ‘uneducated’ blacks and 10:30 for the ‘educated.’ By 10:30, it was expected that all blacks would be off the streets.

Conclusion

The Black Codes attempted to reinstate the slave laws that had been banned by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. They were created to hamper the freedmen’s rights to vote, move freely, own property, or find employment outside of the plantation system. The Freedmen’s Bureau initially had the responsibility to oversee labor contracts and apprenticeship arrangements. Once they were out of the picture, the freedmen were left to the tender mercies of their former masters.

A vengeful Republican Congress put an end to Presidential Reconstruction and Black Codes. But what took their place was more insidious. For more than a half century Jim Crow governed every aspect of life in the South. It was not until the 1960s that Jim Crow was officially gone for good.

Why did the Republicans allow Jim Crow to flourish? The party that ended the Black Codes was not the party of the 1890s. The party was splintering into various factions, their hold on Congress was gone, and by the Compromise of 1877 they, and the rest of the country, wanted to move on. In the end, the North didn’t have a cohesive plan for Reconstruction, and the South waited until the Northerners left to enact laws that deprived the former slaves of their rights.

[1] Litwack, Leon F. “Jim Crow Blues.” OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 2 (January 2004): 7-11.