Jim Crow laws were enacted after the Reconstruction period and were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States and continued until 1965. They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities. Facilities for African Americans were inferior and underfunded compared to those available to white Americans, and sometimes they did not exist at all. Jim Crow laws mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, public transportation, restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated.
The Jim Crow laws and the high rate of lynchings in the South were major factors which lead to the Great Migration during the 20th century. Because opportunities were so limited in the South, African Americans moved in great numbers to northern cities to seek better lives, becoming an …show more content…
Adams, a white physician and state senator-elect, in his office. She had driven there with her two young children in the car. She said that over a period of years, he had repeatedly forced her to submit to sex and to bear his child. She said that her daughter, Loretta, was his. McCollum said that Adams had abused her, and that she was pregnant with another child by him when she killed him by shooting him four times. McCollum was arrested and taken to a state prison. The case gives an opportunity to hear the words of the black victim. She was allowed to testify to being forced to have his baby. This was the first time that a black woman had testified to a white man's paternity of her child and other circumstances of her defense. The trial was a landmark case which was an major event for the civil rights movement, because no other black woman who killed a white man had ever been allowed to testify in her defense. In the end, her case was appealed and overturned by the State Supreme Court and she was able to live the rest of her life as a free