Jim
Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not
exclusively in Southern and Border States, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim
Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-Black laws, it was a way of life.
Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class
citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-Black racism. Pro-segregation
politicians gave eloquent speeches on the great danger of integration: the "mongrelization"
of the White race. Newspaper and magazine writers routinely referred to Blacks
as niggers, coons, and darkies; and worse, their articles reinforced anti-Black
stereotypes. Additionally, children's games during the time portrayed Blacks as inferior beings. The Jim
Crow system was underminded by the following beliefs or rationalizations:
Whites were superior to Blacks in all important ways, including but not limited
to intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior; sexual relations between
Blacks and Whites would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America. If
necessary, violence must be used to keep Blacks at the bottom of the racial
hierarchy.
A
Black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a White male because
it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a Black male could not offer his
hand or any other part of his body to a White woman, because he risked being
accused of rape.
Blacks
and Whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, Whites
were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between
them.
Under
no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the cigarette of a White
female, that gesture implied intimacy.
Blacks
were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially
kissing, because it offended Whites.
Blacks
were introduced to Whites, never Whites to Blacks.
Whites
did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to Blacks, for example, Mr.,
Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, Blacks were called by their first names.
Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to Whites, and were not
allowed to call them by their first names.
If
a Black person rode in a car driven by a White person, the Black person sat in
the back seat, or the back of a truck.
White
motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.
Stetson Kennedy, the author of
Jim Crow Guide, offered
these simple rules that Blacks were supposed to observe in conversing with
Whites:
- Never assert or
even intimate that a White person is lying.
- Never impute
dishonorable intentions to a White person.
- Never suggest
that a http://www.weebly.com/weebly/main.phpWhite person is from an inferior class.
- Never lay claim
to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence.
- Never curse a
White person.
- Never laugh
derisively at a White person.
- Never comment
upon the appearance of a White female.
Jim Crow laws touched every aspect of everyday life. For
example, in 1935, Oklahoma prohibited Blacks and Whites from boating together. Boating
implied social equality. In 1905, Georgia established separate parks for Blacks
and Whites. In 1930, Birmingham, Alabama, made it illegal for Blacks and Whites
to play checkers or dominoes together. Here are some of the typical Jim Crow
laws, as compiled by the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site
Interpretive Staff:
- Barbers. No colored barber
shall serve as a barber to white girls or women (Georgia).
- Blind Wards. The board of
trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on separate ground for the
admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the
colored or black race (Louisiana).
- Burial. The officer in
charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon
ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons (Georgia).
- Buses. All passenger
stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall
have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the
white and colored races (Alabama).
- Child Custody. It shall be
unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in this State,
having the control or custody of any white child, by right of
guardianship, natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or
surrender such white child permanently into the custody, control,
maintenance, or support, of a Negro (South Carolina).
- Education. The schools for
white children and the schools for Negro children shall be conducted
separately (Florida).
- Libraries. The state
librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use
of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of
reading books or periodicals (North Carolina).
- Mental
Hospitals.
The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are
arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white
persons be together (Georgia).
- Militia. The white and
colored militia shall be separately enrolled, and shall never be compelled
to serve in the same organization. No organization of colored troops shall
be permitted where white troops are available and where whites are
permitted to be organized, colored troops shall be under the command of
white officers (North Carolina).
- Nurses. No person or
corporation shall require any White female nurse to nurse in wards or
rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which Negro men are
placed (Alabama).
- Prisons. The warden
shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both
eating and sleeping from the Negro convicts (Mississippi).
- Reform Schools. The children of
white and colored races committed to the houses of reform shall be kept
entirely separate from each other (Kentucky).
- Teaching. Any instructor
who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the
white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction
shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof,
shall be fined... (Oklahoma).
- Wine and Beer. All persons
licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve
either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall
not sell to the two races within the same room at any time (Georgia).
Lynchings were public, often sadistic, murders carried out by
mobs. Between 1882, when the first reliable data were collected, and 1968, when
lynchings had become rare, there were 4,730 known lynchings, including 3,440
Black men and women. Most of the victims of Lynch-Law were hanged or shot, but
some were burned at the stake, castrated, beaten with clubs, or dismembered.
Lynchings were most common in
small and middle-sized towns where Blacks often were economic
competitors to the local Whites. These Whites resented any economic and
political gains made by Blacks. Lynchers were seldomly arrested, and
if arrested, rarely convicted.