Segregation and Jim Crow Laws

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. Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that whites were the Chosen people, blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial segregation. Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists, and Social Darwinists, at every educational level, buttressed the belief that blacks were innately intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. Jim Crow Laws

Children – "It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards." (Alabama law) Marriage - "All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited." (Florida law) Hospitalization - "The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients [in a mental hospital], so that in no cases shall Negroes and white persons be together." (Georgia law) Nursing - "No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms or hospitals, either public or private, where negro men are placed." (Alabama law) Barbering - "No colored person shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls." (Georgia law) Toilets - "Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities." (Alabama law) 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 law) Restaurants - "It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment." (Alabama law)

Beer and Wine - "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 two races within the same room at any time." (Georgia law) Amateur Baseball - "It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race." (Georgia law) 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 law) 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 law) Teaching - "Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored races are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined..." (Oklahoma law) Schools - "[The County Board of Education] shall provide schools of two kinds; those for white children and those for colored children." (Texas law) Prison - "The warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the negro convicts." (Mississippi law)

Segregated tract home community in Los Angeles. 1950

Freedom Riders

Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus, sparking a movement to integrate public transportation.

Racial Violence Warning: The following events were horrific and the images are difficult to look at.

Silhouetted corpse of African American Allen Brooks hanging from Elk's Arch, surrounded by spectators. March 3, Dallas, Texas. It was not uncommon for pictures of lynchings to be used on postcards.

Postcard depicting the lynching of Lige Daniels, Center, Texas, USA, August 3, The back reads, "This was made in the court yard in Center, Texas. He is a 16 year old Black boy. He killed Earl's grandma. She was Florence's mother. Give this to Bud. From Aunt Myrtle." Lynchings were often motivated by economics, or were retaliations for violations of Jim Crow etiquette, with false accusations of murder made in order to justify them.

The corpse of Clyde Johnson. August 3, Yreka, California.

A postcard showing the burned body of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas, Washington was a 17-year-old retarded farmhand who had confessed to raping and killing a white woman. He was castrated, mutilated, and burned alive by a cheering mob that included the mayor and the chief of police. An observer wrote that "Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks...[he] was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire... Wailing, the boy attempted to climb up the skillet hot chain. For this, the men cut off his fingers." This image is from a postcard, which said on the back, "This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe."

Bennie Simmons, alive, soaked in coal oil before being set on fire. June 13, Anadarko, Oklahoma.

1935 lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Integration

WOOLWORTHS LUNCH COUNTER SIT IN: On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. 1960

On February 21, 1965, one week after his home was firebombed, Malcolm X was shot to death by Nation of Islam members while speaking at a rally of his organization in New York City.

8 year old Linda Brown lived only 4 blocks from her nearest elementary school. However, since that was an all white school, Linda and her sister had to walk over a mile to an all black school.

The NAACP encouraged the Browns and twelve other parents to file a lawsuit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Their goal was to force the courts to address the “separate but equal” laws created by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which made segregation legal in the United States. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the plaintiffs were represented by Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African-American justice to serve on the Supreme Court. Thurgood MarshallNellie Brown and her daughter, Linda

First Day of Desegregation at Fort Meyer Elementary School, September 8, 1954

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was planning to make a speech to sanitation workers. He was staying at the Lorraine Motel in Room 306.