Jim Crow Laws
By: Ayan Ali, Dalton Clay, and Arhan Ahmed
Segregation in the South
In 1875 congress passed a civil rights act giving African Americans access to public facilities. Southern state legislatures reacted by creating a legal system to separate different races in every way possible. These new laws were called the Jim Crow laws. They denied African Americans the right of public education, transportation, lodging parks, theaters, hospitals, cemeteries, and restaurants, reducing them to second class citizens.
Jim Crow Jubilee People are celebrating the Jim Crow Laws. | Segregated water cooler An African American man drinking at a water cooler for colored people at a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City in 1939. | States with Jim Crow Laws More than 10 states in the U.S. followed the Jim Crow Laws. More than 1/5 of the states in the U.S. |
Segregated water cooler
An African American man drinking at a water cooler for colored people at a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City in 1939.
Facts
Also, beginning in 1890 all southern states made discriminatory voting requirements, like literacy tests, to limit African American influence in politics. In 1954 the turning point finally came for the Jim Crow laws, when the Supreme Court destroyed segregated schools with the Brown v. Topeka board of education court case.
Citations
Jim Crow Jubilee . Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica. Web. 9 Oct. 2015. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/43641/media?assemblyId=197662>.
Jim Crow segregation . Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica. Web. 9 Oct. 2015. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/43641/media?assemblyId=197660>.
segregated water cooler . Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica. Web. 9 Oct. 2015. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/43641/media?assemblyId=191510>.
"States with Jim Crow Laws." Amendment XV: Race and the Right to Vote. Ed. Jeff Hay. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Constitutional Amendments: Beyond the Bill of Rights. U.S. History in Context. Web. 9 Oct. 2015.