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The Jim Crow Laws

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The Jim Crow Laws
 Jim Crow Laws

The name for the Jim Crow Laws comes from a character in a Minstrel Show. The
Minstrel Show was one of the first forms of American entertainment, which started in 1843.
They were performed by successors of black song and dance routine actors. The first Minstrel
Show was started by a group of four men from Virginia, who all painted their faces black and performed a small song and dance skit in a small theater in New York City. Thomas Dartmouth
Rice, a white actor, performed the Jim Crow Minstrel Show. Rice was inspired by an old black man who sang and danced in Louisville, Kentucky (Clay, 1). The skit ended in the same chorus as the old black mans song which was "Wheel about and turn about and
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Finally, Rice performed throughout Europe, going to London and Dublin, where the Irish especially liked Rice's performance (http://www.sims.berkely.edu/courses/is182/paint167.html). In the north, slavery was just about non existent, so blacks could be seen free in a lot of cities in the north. In some cities even, blacks and whites lived together without a problem so segregation was not seen completely throughout America. Before 1890, segregation was not seen in most of the south, which was where 80 percent of the black population lived (Massey, 17-
20).
Segregation actually started in the north, but when it moved into the south, it became much worse (Woodward, 17). It was thought that segregation came along with slavery, but there were more reasons, like pure racism. Cities had ghettos where all of the blacks lived in a community, away from the whites. After slavery ended, the north did treat the blacks with more respect, but not much more. In the north, slaves could not be separated from their families
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They did not, however, take advantage of these rights so they would be assured to keep them. The south still treated blacks with disrespect. Even though blacks could be found in most northern cities, they rarely made up much more than 30 percent of the population of that area, so blacks were still mostly living in the south, where they were still being treated poorly (Massey, 20). Even after slavery ended, whites, with the Jim Crow Laws, were still separating themselves from blacks with segregation. Jim Crow Laws were passed by many southern states in the late nineteenth century. The laws stayed in effect from 1865-1950. The Jim Crow Laws originated from a Minstrel Show character called Jim Crow, performed by Thomas D. Rice. The
Jim Crow movement turned out to be the biggest influence that led to the immobilization of the
American black population. The laws were basically just a technique to get around the basic rights of blacks. It created, once again, a divisional racial system in the south. Cities now needed new and different systems to control the blacks and whites. One part of the Jim


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