Jim Crow Colored People Laws - Research Paper Example

?Jim Crow Laws Jim Crow laws refer to laws that discriminate colored people, particularly Black Americans. Jim Crow laws have been passed beginning in the late 1800s by the legislatures of the Southern states1. The name “Jim Crow” was taken from a famous show character that became popular in the early 1800s.2 The performers of the show were four white men from Virginia who smeared their faces black and who called themselves as the “Virginia Minstrels.”3 Several documentations assert that blacks were ridiculed in the performances of the group. Nevertheless, the show became a hit and soon other performers were imitating the style of the original performers’ group.4 In the early 1800s, blacks and whites rode together in railway cars, ate in the same restaurants, used the same public facilities but did not mingle nor interact with each other socially.5 However, a belief developed that blacks were threats to whites as White Americans saw the Black Americans enlarged their communities and competed with them for jobs.6 The White Americans thought they had to control the African or Black Americans and passed laws restricting the latter’s movements and the laws were referred to as Jim Crow laws.7 A Supreme Court ruling in 1883 ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional and that although the Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from discriminating against races, private individuals and organizations were not prevented from doing so.8 The Supreme Court ruling provided a booster for discrimination against blacks to develop, worsen, and persist. Thus, by 1914, every southern state passed laws segregating blacks and whites: blacks and whites could not ride in the same transport, be together, and blacks were denied access to washrooms, parks, beaches, picnic areas, certain hospitals, and the like. Blacks and whites were segregated based on which drinking fountains they can use.9 In the words of Sandoval–Strauz, for more than a century, public accommodations were at the epicenter of legal and political struggles for racial equality.10 Primarily, the years 1890 to the 1960s are widely considered as the Jim Crow era.11 However, several authors argue that Jim Crow legislations have remained and not repealed in the 21st century even as there is no longer a Jim Crow system in the United States. For example, the Jim Crow Study Group of the University of Arizona revealed in 2004 that there are several Jim Crow laws remaining in the Codes of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.12 Researchers agree that the Jim Crow system promoted the notion of white supremacy, economic exploitation, electoral disfranchisement, and violence.13 In 1959, Stetson Kennedy published a book with the title, Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A.: The Laws, Customs, and Etiquette Governing the Conduct of Nonwhites and Other Minorities as Second-class citizens.14 J. Hernandez documented some of the Jim Crow etiquette15: 1. Black males cannot offer their hand to a white female because that would imply social equality. 2. Blacks and whites cannot eat together but if they have to eat together, the whites are to be served first and there must be a wide space between blacks and whites. 3. Under no event must a black male offer to light the cigarette of a white female. 4. Blacks were not allowed to publicly express affection with one another because that is offensive to whites. 5. Blacks were introduced to whites but never whites to blacks. 6. Whites need not use courtesy titles of respect such as Mr., Mrs., Sir, and Ma’am when referring to blacks but blacks are required to do so. Blacks can be called by their first names but blacks are not allowed to refer to whites by their first names. 7. If a black person has to ride a car driven by a white person, the black person must be at the back seat or at the back of a truck 8. White motorists have the right-of-way in all intersections. Further, according to J. Hernandez, Stetson Kennedy prescribed the following etiquette for blacks16: 1. Never suggest, assert, or intimate that a white person is lying. 2. Never impute dishonorable intentions on a white person. 3. Never suggest that a white person belong to an inferior class. 4. Never claim nor demonstrate superior knowledge or intelligence before a white person. 5. Never badmouth a white person. 6. Never laugh at a white person. 7. Never comment on the looks of a white female. Meanwhile, Amendments 13, 14, and 15 to the United States Constitution provide protection from racial discrimination and promote Negro or Black American rights. Amendment 13 ratified on December 1865 resolved that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States and in areas subject to its jurisdiction. Amendment 14 ratified on July 1868 declared that all those born in the United States are citizens of the United States regardless of race or color. Finally, Amendment 15 ratified February 1870 guarantees that the right of citizens of the United States to vote will not be abridged based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. All three amendments were products of the American civil war.17 However, despite the amendments and the American Civil War, restrictions on Negro or African-American rights persisted through the Black Codes. Some of them enacted in the early 1800s but had persisted even after the American Civil War, a set of laws that essentially constitute as a type of Jim Crow Laws were the Black Codes. The Black Codes provided restrictions to the rights of black American. Black Codes were legal statutes and constitutional amendments enacted by ex-Confederate states after the American Civil War to restrict the liberties of the newly-“liberated” slaves. For example, Ohio enacted laws in 1804 prohibiting free blacks from immigrating into Ohio.18 Illinois enacted a similar law in 1813. In 1896, black American (described as somebody of mixed lineage of whites and blacks in several materials) Homer Plessy deliberately tried to ride in a train car for white people only to test US laws and policemen arrested him.19 Louisiana had a law on seating assignments between blacks and whites as well as segregation of races even on railroads. 20 Plessy appealed his case before the American Supreme Court and argued that segregation did not allow blacks to participate in the US in the same way as whites and exposed the inequality between blacks and whites in American society.21 He criticized segregation laws to have limited the freedom of blacks in American society. 22 Plessy lost the case and the Supreme Court ruled that the states could have segregation laws if facilities for blacks and whites are equally good and the doctrine became known as the “separate but equal” rule or doctrine.23 Thus, from the Supreme Court decision on the Plessy case decision promoted segregation among blacks and whites for at least 60 years.24 In a 1955 book by Vann Woodward of Yale University, Woodward attributed the violence of the 1890s to the conflict spawned by the Jim Crow legislations and system.25 Van Woodward also forwarded the view that it was only after the 1890s that the segregation acquired legal support through several Jim Crows laws. 26 Legalized segregation after 1890s reflected federal complicity and both Democrats and Republicans preferred segregation rather than the exclusion of blacks from American society.27 As defined by the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of 2000, lynching takes place when a crowd of people captures or illegally kills individuals whom they consider guilty of a crime. During lynching, “opportunity is not given the Negro to defend himself against the unsupported accusations of white men and women.”28 Further, the word of the accuser is held true and the burden of proof falls on the accused rather than on the accuser.29 Unfortunately, however, the crowd is unable to believe the accused and he or she is automatically condemned guilty. 30 At the same time, it is also possible the victims of racial lunching were not accused of any crime other than being what they are as blacks or colored people. Lynching had been a basic fact of life for Black Americans in Jim Crow South.31 From 1890 to 1917, white gangs murdered two to three black southerners every week or from 105 to 157 a year.32 The violence or lynching against blacks by whites, however, decreased to only one murder a week from the end of World War I to 1930.33 From the early 1880s to 1968, the Tuskegee Institute based in Alabama College counted about five thousand Americans murdered through lynching by whites. 34 Similar to this, in 1922, the Committee on Public Affairs of the Inter-Fraternal Council of the District of Columbia documented 3,424 lynching for the past 33 years from 1922.35 The numerous incidents of lynching under the Jim Crow period clearly indicate that even when blacks did not violate the Jim Crow Laws, blacks suffered injury and death from whites. At the same time, violations of the Jim Crow Laws by blacks also imply “lawful” punishment. For instance, in Florida, all marriages between whites and blacks were “forever” prohibited and violators were used to be fine $500, which used to be a very hefty fine then.36 Schools for whites and blacks were required to be conducted separately. 37 For restaurant owners to maintain their license to operate, they were required to serve food to whites and blacks separately.38 It used to be illegal for a black amateur baseball team to play baseball within two blocks of recreational areas for whites.39 Signs were everywhere segregating whites from blacks. Pericles confirmed but failed to substantiate that blacks were beaten to death for violating the Jim Crow Laws. In conclusion, we can describe the Jim Crow Laws as discrimination against blacks that were enacted into laws, legislations, and statutes. Today, essentially we have no Jim Crow Laws even as many Jim Crow Laws have not yet been repealed. Though some of the Jim Crow Laws have been unrepealed, they have not been implemented and, for practical purposes, we can consider them de facto repealed. Nevertheless, discrimination against blacks continues even with a national resolve to end all such discrimination, especially under a black US President. References Bogen, David. “Why the Supreme Court Lied in Plessy.” Villanova Law Review 52 (2007): 101-157. Byrd, Alexander. “Studying Lynching in the Jim Crow South.” OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 2 (2004): 31-36. Constitutional Rights Foundation. “A History of Discrimination By Race.” An Education Sheet. Chicago: Constitutional Rights Foundation, 1993. Gavins, Raymond. “Literature on Jim Crow.” OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 2 (2004): 13-16. George Washington University. “Black Codes 1865-66,” http://home.gwu.edu/~jjhawkin/BlackCodes/rptBlackCodes.pdf (March 19, 2011). Hernandez, J. “Jim Crow Laws,” http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/JHernandez/rock.cfm?subpage=139199 (accessed March 19, 2011). Jim Crow Study Group. Still on the books: Jim Crow and Segregation Laws Fifty Years After. Arizona: University of Arizona Law, Criminal Justice and Security Program, 2004. Pericles, Hamlet. “An overview of the Jim Crow Laws,” http://www.helium.com/items/815657-an-overview-of-the-jim-crow-laws (accessed March 19, 2011). Prince William County Public Schools. “The Origin of ‘Jim Crow’,” http://vastudies.pwnet.org/pdf/jim_crow.pdf. Virginia, Prince William County Public Schools, 2008 (accessed March 19, 2011). Sandoval-Strausz, A.K. “Travelers, Strangers, and Jim Crow Law, Public Accommodations, and Civil Rights in America.” Law and History Review 23, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 53-94. World Book. About America: The Constitution of the United States of America with Explanatory Notes (World Book, 2004). Read More