Jim Crow Laws Research Paper

The name for Jim Crow Laws is believed to be derived from an old minstrel routine. Actor Thomas Dartmouth would perform routines as a clumsy, dimwitted African American slave. “Jim Crow” then became a widely used derogatory term used for blacks. Jim Crow laws were appointed for the reason of power, the power of one race over another. The laws were initiated to create a racial caste system in the south. This era of Jim Crow, which lasted nearly a century, led to a struggle for all African Americans. The Jim Crow Laws affected African Americans by keeping with the “separate but equal” doctrine and by playing a key role in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird.
Many African Americans had to live through the time period of jim crow laws, from them we learn about their hardships and sufferings.
According to A. Thomas and N. Bell “Under the race-restrictive laws of the Jim Crow South, few Negroes could find jobs in the industries that began opening in the late 1940s. In the early 1950s in Mississippi, two-thirds were still working in some form of agriculture (by then in economic decline), and the vast majority, 80 percent, were sharecroppers and day laborers”. The Jim Crow laws made it to where very few blacks could find employment and if they could it was low pay labor jobs. In the 1900s African Americans were discriminated against in many different ways.
One of the main ways was that becoming employed became a challenge. If they could find a job it was usually an agricultural job, that put them in a economic decline. At this time whites viewed African Americans with “disgust”, to most people they were no higher than animals. This lead to many whites not wanting to higher African Americans. The Jim Crow laws made it to where many blacks became unemployed. The separate-but-equal doctrine let whites keep this in place for so long. The Jim Crow Laws were in place for nearly a century, during that time many factors let whites in the south defend the segregation laws. According to William “The Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 established the principle of separate-but-equal in a ruling upholding a Louisiana law that required segregation on railroad cars. The separate-but-equal doctrine would serve as the constitutional underpinning of legal segregation until the mid-1950s.”. The separate-but-equal doctrine was one big factor that let whites and states defend the Jim Crow Laws. Even though some whites and most all African Americans wanted to rid the Jim Crow laws,
there was one main factor that kept these laws in place. It was called the Plessy v. Ferguson case, it upheld the “separate-but-equal” doctrine. Which let whites and blacks be separate as long as there were equal opportunities and facilities. This sounded like it would be beneficial however, these equal “facilities” were not really equal at all. If there was a drinking fountain the one for whites would be nice and clean, while the one for African Americans would be dirty and obviously not “equal”. This was not the only thing that the Jim Crow era did but was one of the main aspects. This doctrine defended these laws but many ideas were tried to attack them.
During the late 1800s and the early 1900s blacks mainly in the south had to live with unfair rules about being separate from whites. Eventually the Jim Crow laws were ended but the aftermath lived, even today. According to the author of Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, “A march on Washington by over 200,000 in 1963 dramatized the movement to end Jim Crow. Southern whites often responded with violence, and federal troops were needed to preserve order and protect blacks, notably at Little Rock, Ark. (1957), Oxford, Miss. (1962), and Selma, Ala. (1965)”. Many different ideas were tried to end the Jim Crow Laws, one of these war a march on Washington. Southern whites responded to this and the other ideas with violence. The Jim Crow era signaled the start of some of the highest forms of discrimination for African Americans, many ways were attempted to end this era however most of them failed. Even though the Jim Crow Laws came to an end, it was not an easy process, many people were harmed during that time and there will always be some segregation between races, gender, and sexuality.
The novel To Kill A Mockingbird shows a what life was really like in the Jim Crow era. One example of how the Jim Crow laws were presented is how in the book when the court case of Tom Robinson was happening, African Americans were allowed to watch the case however they were forced to sit and stand in the balcony. This proved the “separate-but-equal” doctrine.
The Jim Crow laws signaled a grueling time period that lasted for around 90 years. During that time many African Americans were harmed physically and economically. The “separate-but-equal” doctrine kept the Jim Crow laws alive which affected African Americans in a plethora of ways, the Jim Crow laws also played a big part in To Kill a Mockingbird.