-
Period: to
Jim Crow Era
After the American Civil War most states in the South passed anti-African American legislation. These became known as Jim Crow laws. This included laws that discriminated against African Americans regarding where they could and couldn't go and what they could and couldn't do. These laws were later ended by the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
How did the Jim Crow Law's come about?
Jim Crow refers to practices, institutions, or laws that discriminated against African Americans. The term came into common use in the 1880's. At that time, racial segregation was legal in many parts of the southern United States. The term originally referred to a black character in a popular song composed in the 1830's. Jim Crow laws required the separation of races in many public places. -
Supreme Court Involvement
In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The 1875 law stated: "That all persons ... shall be entitled to full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement."
The Civil Rights Act was ruled unconstitutional because it interfered with the private rights of citizens to manage their business as they please. -
Voting Restrictions
In the 1890s, starting with Mississippi, most southern states began more systematically segregate black males by imposing voter registration restrictions, such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and the white primary. These new rules of the political game were used by white registrars to deny voting privileges to blacks at the registration place rather than at the ballot box, which had previously been done by means of fraud and force. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
In the 1890's, Louisiana required by law that blacks ride in separate railroad cars. In protest of the law, a light-skinned African American, Homére Plessy, boarded a train, whereupon he was quickly arrested for sitting in a car reserved for whites. A local judge ruled against Plessy and in 1896 the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. It also ruled that "separate but equal" accommodations did not stamp the "colored race with a badge of inferiority." -
Two Successfully Created Societies
One black and one white society were created. Blacks and whites could not ride together in the same rail car, sit in the same waiting room, sit in the same theatre, attend the same school or eat in the same restaurant. Black Americans were also denied access to beaches, swimming pools, parks, picnic areas and many hospitals. -
The Red Summer of 1919
The riots during this summer usually erupted in urban areas to which southern, rural blacks had recently migrated. In the single year of 1919, at least twenty-five major incidents were recorded, with numerous deaths and hundreds of people injured. So bloody was this summer of that year that it is known as the Red Summer of 1919. -
Period: to
Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement began when the blacks joined together and retaliated against the laws being set against them, It was at its peak from 1955-65. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing basic civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race, after nearly a decade of nonviolent protests and marches, ranging from the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott to the student-led sit-ins of the 1960s to the huge March on Washington in 1963. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott started in 1995 with Rosa Parks. Blacks refused to ride the buses and walked to work. This caused many empty buses to be driving around the city with nobody on them. Martin Luther King, Jr., said "if we could get 60 percent cooperation the protest would be a success." The federal court decided 2-1 in favor o the blacks. The city appealed the ruling, but on November13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation on buses unconstitutional. The boycott was over. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
"We believe that all men are created equal --yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain inalienable rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty --yet millions are being deprived of those blessings, not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skins. The reasons are deeply embedded in history and tradition and the nature of man...However the law I sign tonight forbids it...." President Lyndon B. Johnson
