JIM CROW LAWS

Throughout the 1830s and '40s, the white entertainer Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-1860) performed a popular song-and-dance act supposedly modeled after a slave. He named the character Jim Crow. Rice darkened his face, acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English. In his Jim Crow persona, he also sang "Negro ditties" such as "Jump Jim Crow." Rice was not the first white comic to perform in blackface, but he was the most popular of his time, touring both the United States and England. As a result of Rice's success, "Jim Crow" became a common stage persona for white comedians' blackface portrayals of African Americans.

   Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life.  

  Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-black racism. The Jim Crow system was formed by the following beliefs: whites were superior to blacks in all important ways, including their intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior. Under Jim Crow any and all sexual interactions between black and white people was illegal.

These are some of rules that Jim Crow laws stated.

“It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers.”

—Birmingham, Alabama, 1930

“It shall be unlawful for any white prisoner to be handcuffed or otherwise chained or tied to a negro prisoner.”

—Arkansas, 1903

“No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.”

—Atlanta, Georgia, 1926

“Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school.”

—Missouri, 1929

“Any white woman who shall suffer or permit herself to be got with child by a negro or mulatto...shall be sentenced to the penitentiary for not less than eighteen months.”

—Maryland, 1924

What is your opinion?

How would you have felt if you had suffered the same humilliations?

Do you think this could have been stopped earlier?