Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow laws

Throughout the history of the United States and the world, there has been racism and prejudice. During 1877 and the mid-1960's there was a particular set of laws that were set that were anti-black. The saying has a few rumored whereabouts, the Jim Crow laws made anti-Black racism legal. During the peak of the segregation the churches taught that Whites were the Chosen people and that Blacks were cursed to be servants.

The "Jim Crow" laws have originated from the name of a minstrel show character. The Jim Crow legislation existed to isolate and discriminate blacks. Some of the effects of these laws were a Black man could not shake hands with a white man, eat together and light the cigarette of a White female. The Jim Crow etiquette is what comes to mind when most people think about Jim Crow, it limited the places and things that black people could do, such as drinking at the same fountains and eating in the same places, No public accommodations including railway travel had "special" facilities for blacks and better facilities for whites. Both the legislation and the etiquette made the life of black people a lot harder but made life on whites easier because they always had priority.

Every set of laws has an action that is taken once some one violates the law, in the case of the Jim Crow laws. The form of punishment for the violation of the Jim Crow laws was to be hung in front of a crowd often in the city capital. The lynchings where common, in 1882, when the data was first recorded, to 1968 when lynching became very rare, there were 4,730 public lynchings, that's a rate of 55 a year. The lynchings weren't the worst punishment that was dealt to the violators of the Jim Crow laws, some were burned at the steak or some were even castrated. Lynchings were most common in the smaller cities where the blacks were economic competitors to white males. Lynchings were often looked at a meeting place for cheap entertainment. During the summer of 1919, there were race riots in Chicago, Illinois; Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; Omaha, Nebraska; and two dozen other cities, the result were mass lynchings.

We as a more modern world