Jim Crow

1. Jim Crow • Minstrel show character • Thomas “Daddy” Rice, 1830s and 1840s • Rice performed in black face • Ridiculed black people • Unclear how it came to mean segregation • Segregation • Evolved slowly to enforce white control • Black people acquiesced • Churches and social organizations • Accepted separate seating in places previously closed • Segregation better than exclusion

2. Segregation of Railroads • Conflict • White southerners proximity to black people in public places and on passenger trains created tensions • Blacks with first-class tickets sent to second-class • Mary Church Terrell • Threatened litigation • The first segregation laws involved passenger trains • Tennessee, 1881 • Florida, 1887 • Railroads opposed • Maintaining separate cars was too expensive

3. Plessy v. Ferguson • Louisiana required segregated trains, 1891 • Railroads and black people object • Challenged in court • Homer A. Plessy • U.S. Supreme Court, • 8-1 decision • Upheld state law--segregation--as constitutional, 1896 • Justice John Marshal Harlan • Fourteenth Amendment • Jim Crow laws become embedded in southern states

4. Segregation Proliferates • Proliferation • “White” and “colored” signs • Restrooms, drinking fountains • Separate Bibles for black and white witnesses • Oklahoma required separate phone booths, 1915 • School textbooks stored in separate facilities • “Separate but equal” • Inferior facilities or no facilities

5. IV. Racial Etiquette • Black and white people did not shake hands • Black people did not look directly into white peoples’ eyes • Black people stared at the ground to address white people • Black men removed their hats; white men did not • Black people went to the back door • Black men or boys must never look at white women • Black women could not try on clothing in white stores • White people did not use titles of respect • White customers always served first

6. Lynching • 3,745 lynchings between 1889 and 1932 • Most in the South • Black men were the usual victims • Presumed threat posed to white women • Community participation • Few denunciations from white leaders • Savage and brutal • See PROFILE

7. Rape • Abuse and harassment against black women • No statistics • But considered more common than lynching • Black men tried to protect black women • Refused to let them work as domestics for white men • White men considered black women inferior • Black women were not virtuous • Coleman Blease

8. VI. Migration • Late 19th century African Americans • Ninety percent of black Americans lived in the South, 1910 • Emigrants 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s • Africa • Kansas • Oklahoma • Arkansas

9. The Exodusters • Western migration • Encouraged by the Homestead Act and railroads • Between 1865-1880 • All black towns in Kansas, Nebraska, Indian territory • Southern migration • Many black people moved to southern villages • Urban areas offered more economic opportunities

10. Sharecroppers • Laborers agree to work the land part of the crop • Landlord often received • One-half to three-fourths the crop, depending on contract • Landlord often provided housing • Horses or mules • Tools, seed, fertilizer, food, and clothing • Landlord often cheated and exploited sharecroppers • Landowner told farmers what they made and what they owed • Even when they knew the figures were wrong, little redress

11. VIII. African American and Southern Courts • “Three days for stealing, eighty-seven days for being colored” • Judges were white men • Few black men served on juries • Few convictions for crimes on black people • Black people received larger fines than white people, and longer sentences

12. IX. Conclusion • White supremacy crushed black hopes • U.S. government abandoned black people • Ignored legal, political, and economic conditions • Debt peonage • Sharecropping • “Separate but equal” • Disfranchisement