Life+in+Jim+Crow+America

** Life in Jim Crow America **
Right after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was ratified. What did the 14th Amendment provide for African Americans? What does “due process” and “equal protection of the laws” mean? [|14th LINK]

The 14th Amendment gave citizenship to recently enslaved African Americans, and protected the civil liberties of us. Equal protection from the law means that a court can’t rule a black man guilty just because he is black. Due Process of law means that we could not be deprived of our life, liberty or property without due process of law.

2) Unfortunately, the Supreme Court in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson challenged your equal rights. What do you remember about the facts, decision, and impact of this case? [|Plessy LINK]

I remember that Mr. Plessy was arrested just because he sat in the white car on a train, and his lawyers accused the Separate Car Act of violating the 13th and 14th amendments. The argument defending the Separate Car Act and other “separate” facilities for blacks and whites was that they were constitutional al long as they were equal enough. The U.S. Supreme Court made the final decision that the Louisiana acts were constitutional. The impact of this decision is that it was just another step towards all equal facilities, and there was just one more issue to finally get the separate facilities doctrine shut down.

3) The laws developed in the South became known as Jim Crow laws. Who was this Jim Crow fellow? Did he write the laws? [| Jim Crow LINK]

Jim Crow was a character in a song written by Thomas Dartmouth Rice. He is a character who is either a young black stable boy, or an old black slave who had difficulty walking, but we don’t know. Basically, Jim Crow is a stereotypical African American. He often represents segregation in America. Rice would act like the Jim Crow character all over the nation, so the character was pretty famous. After hearing of Jim Crow, white people automatically thought of all African Americans as exactly like Jim Crow. Jim Crow did not actually make laws; he was just a stereotype that popularized the unrealistic belief that blacks were bad and lazy, when they were definitely not.

4) What are some specific examples of the Jim Crow laws from southern states? How did the laws affect you? [|Jim Crow Laws LINK 1] / [|Jim Crow Laws LINK 2] / __ Jim Crow Laws LINK 3   __

Some examples of Jim Crow Laws were ridiculous things like a white man and a black man could not play board games, card games, or dice games together. Another law was that black and white children could not go to the same school, and whites cannot marry anyone who is one-eighth or more Chinese, black, or Japanese. These laws affected me because it restricted my freedom almost to where it wasn’t even freedom.

5) What did Jim Crow America look like in the 1900s? What are some images that can help explain the realities of the time? [|Jim Crow Images LINK 1] / [|Jim Crow Images LINK 2]

Everything had either white or colored written on it, for example, “white waiting room” and “black drinking fountain”, etc. A link to an image of a sign for a “colored” waiting room is [].

6) What happened in the Scottsboro Case? How did it make you feel as an African American in the South? [|Scottsboro LINK]

The Scottsboro case had to do with nine African American boys who were riding on a freight train when a fight broke out between white and black hobos. The fight resulted in some white people being thrown off the train, and the captain of the train called in officials who caught the nine black boys just because they were in the area. At that time, two white women came out from hiding in the train, saying that the nine boys raped them when they really didn’t. The only reason the white women accused the boys of raping them was because they didn’t want to be prosecuted for their own activities on the train. The women were lying, but all but the youngest boy were sentenced to death. This offended me because the nine boys were obviously innocent, but the white women got their way, and they basically killed eight boys because they didn’t want to get caught doing something that they weren’t supposed to be doing. The two white women were selfish, and they didn’t care. The nine boys were accused guilty not because they were actually guilty, but because of their race.

7) Why should anyone care about your life during Jim Crow America? [|Why should I care? Link]

People should care because they have to realize how bad us African Americans had it during that time, and they should appreciate how good they have it now. Also, they should care because that “Jim Crow Era” was one of the reasons why racism is such a big deal today.