The Role Of African Americans In The Jim Crow Era

There were many social and political changes experienced by African-Americans in Louisiana from Reconstruction through the Jim Crow Era that violated African-Americans’ rights as citizens of the United states.

A major social change was segregation between the African-Americans and the white Louisianians. This violated African-Americans’ rights by unfair and unjust treatment. While Louisiana being a portion of the “Solid South”, the white southerners were attached to their former ways. This meant that they felt that they were superior to the colored population; they also thought that within that superior mindset that colored people should be treated as an inferior. For example; in that era there was a controversial argument of the time
Ferguson (1896)” states “We consider the underlying (error) of [Plessy’s] argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is . . . because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. . .”. Which explains that the judge said in inferiority that the colored people only were imagining the real racism between them. A article on “Jim Crow & Segregation” states “In the late nineteenth century, many white Louisianans attempted to reverse the gains African Americans had made during Reconstruction. The implementation of Jim Crow—or racial segregation laws—institutionalized white supremacy and black inferiority throughout the South. The term Jim Crow originated in minstrel shows, the popular vaudeville-type traveling stage plays that circulated the South in the mid-nineteenth century. Jim Crow was a stock character, a stereotypically lazy and shiftless black buffoon, designed to elicit laughs with his avoidance of work and dancing ability. By 1880, however, “Jim Crow” came to signify a model of race relations in which African Americans and whites operated in separate social planes”. This statement enforced the proposition that
This violated African-Americans’ rights in a strong and influential way.The article states “Every male citizen of this State and of the United States, native born or naturalized, not less than twenty-one years of age, and possessing the following qualifications, shall be an elector, and shall be entitled to vote at any election in the State by the people, except as may be herein otherwise provided.” The White Louisianians took away this right by making it more rigorous for African-Americans to vote. The first thing African-Americans had to do to vote according to the passage was “He shall be able to read and write, and shall demonstrate his ability to do so when he applies for registration, by making, under oath administered by the registration officer or his deputy, written application therefore, in the English language,...,which application shall contain the essential facts necessary to show that he is entitled to register and vote, and shall be entirely written, dated and signed by him, in the presence of the registration officer or his deputy, without assistance or suggestion from any person or any memorandum whatever, except the form of application hereinafter set forth; …” Which means they were to take a