JIM CROW LAWS

JIM CROW LAWS

The Jim Crow Laws emerged in southern states
after the U.S. CIVIL WAR. First enacted in the
1880s by lawmakers who were bitter about their
loss to the North and the end of SLAVERY, the
statutes separated the races in all walks of life.
The resulting legislative barrier to equal rights
created a system that favored whites and
repressed blacks, an institutionalized form of
inequality that grew in subsequent decades with
help from the U.S. Supreme Court. Although
the laws came under attack over the next half
century, real progress against them did not
begin until the Court began to dismantle SEGREGATION
in the 1950s. The remnants of the
Jim Crow system were finally abolished in the
1960s through the efforts of the CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT.
The term “Jim Crow” laws evidently originated
from a minstrel show character developed
during the mid-nineteenth century. A number
of groups of white entertainers applied black
cork to their faces and imitated Negro dancing
and singing routines. Such acts became popular
in several northern cities. One of the performers
reportedly sang a song with the lyrics, “Weel
about and turn about and do jis so, Eb’ry time I
weel about I jump Jim Crow.” The moniker Jim
Crow later became synonymous with the segregation
laws.
The origins of Jim Crow lie in the battered
South of the mid-nineteenth century. The Civil
War had ended, but its antagonisms had not; the
war of values and political identity continued.
Many whites refused to welcome blacks into
civic life, believing them to be inferior and
resenting northern demands in the era of
Reconstruction, especially the requirement that
southern states ratify the THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT,
which would abolish slavery. Southern
states initially resisted by passing so-called
BLACK CODES, which prohibited former slaves
from carrying firearms or joining militias.More
hostility followed when Congress enacted the
CIVIL RIGHTS ACT of 1875 (18 Stat. 335), which
guaranteed blacks access to public facilities. As
the federal government pressed the South to
enfranchise blacks, a backlash developed in the
form of state regulations that separated whites
from blacks in public facilities.
In the late nineteenth century, southern
states took comfort from two U.S. Supreme
Court decisions. First, in 1883, the Court struck
down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional,
in the so-called CIVIL RIGHTS CASES,
109 U.S. 3, 3 S. Ct. 18, 27 L. Ed. 835. It ruled that
Congress had exceeded its powers under the
Reconstruction amendments. This decision encouraged southern states to extend Jim Crow
restrictions, as in an 1890 Louisiana statute that
required white and “colored” persons to be furnished
“separate but equal” accommodations on
railway passenger cars. In fact, that law came
under attack in the Court’s next significant decision,
the 1896 case of PLESSY V. FERGUSON, 163
U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256. In
Plessy, the Court upheld the Louisiana law, ruling
that establishing SEPARATE-BUT-EQUAL public
accommodations and facilities was a reasonable
exercise of the POLICE POWER of a state to promote
the public good. Plessy kept the principle
of separate but equal alive for the next 60 years.
By the start of WORLD WAR I, every southern
state had passed Jim Crow laws. Becoming
entrenched over the next few decades, the laws
permeated nearly every part of public life,
including railroads, hotels, hospitals, restaurants,
neighborhoods, and even CEMETERIES.
Whites had their facilities; blacks had theirs. The
white facilities were better built and equipped.
In particular, white schools were almost uniformly
better in every respect, from buildings to
educational materials. States saw to it that their
black citizens were essentially powerless to overturn
these laws, using POLL TAXES and literacy
tests to deny them the right to vote. Jim Crow
even extended to the federal government: Early
in the twentieth century, discriminatory policies
were rife throughout federal departments, and
not until the KOREAN WAR (1950–53) did the
armed forces stop segregating personnel into
black and white units.
Opposition to the policy of Jim Crow came
chiefly from African Americans. Early leadership
was provided by the Afro-American National
League in the 1890s and, after the turn of the
century, the influential author and activist
W. E. B. DU BOIS. The National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
established in 1909, became the most powerful
force for the repeal of Jim Crow laws during the
next half century. The NAACP fought numerous
battles in two important arenas: the court of
public opinion and the courts of law.
At first, legal progress came slowly. In a series
of decisions in the 1940s, the U.S. Supreme
Court began to dismantle individual Jim Crow
laws and practices. The Court ruled that political
parties could not exclude voters from primary
elections on the basis of race (Smith v.
Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 64 S. Ct. 757, 88 L. Ed.
987 [1944]). It ruled that black passengers on
interstate buses need not follow the segregation
laws of the states through which those buses
passed (Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U.S. 373, 66 S.
Ct. 1050, 90 L. Ed. 1317 [1946]). It also held that
the judiciary could no longer enforce private
agreements—called restrictive covenants—that
excluded ownership or occupancy of property
based on race (Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68
S. Ct. 836, 92 L. Ed. 1161 [1948]).
By 1950, legal changes were coming in
droves. The Court decided in favor of black student
Herman Marion Sweatt concerning his
appeal for entrance to the University of Texas
Law School. In Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 70
S. Ct. 848, 94 L. Ed. 1114 (1950), the Court ruled
that the educational opportunities offered to
white and black law students by the state of
Texas were not substantially equal, and that the
EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE of the FOURTEENTH
AMENDMENT required that Sweatt be
admitted to classes with white students at the
University of Texas law school. Four years later
came the Court’s most significant decision
affecting Jim Crow: BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION,
347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873
(1954). Overturning the precedent that had
existed since Plessy in 1896, the Court in Brown
decreed unconstitutional the policy of separatebut-
equal educational facilities for blacks and
whites.
Brown marked a turning point in the battle
against the institution of segregation that Jim
Crow laws had created. It was not the death
knell, however. Much remained to be done, not
only to topple legal restrictions but also to
remove the barriers of prejudice and violence
that stood in the way of full INTEGRATION. The
final blows were administered by the civil rights
movement, whose boycotts, sit-ins, and lawsuits
continued over the next two decades. By the
mid-1960s, the last vestiges of legal segregation
were ended by a series of federal laws, including
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000a
et seq.), the VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 (42
U.S.C.A. § 1971 et seq.), and the FAIR HOUSING
ACT OF 1968 (42 U.S.C.A. § 3601 et seq.).
FURTHER READINGS
Chafe, William H., et al, eds. 2001. Remembering Jim Crow:
African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated
South. New York: New Press.
“The Origin of ‘Jim Crow’.” 1996. AFRO-American Almanac.
Available online at (accessed May 25, 2003).
Quarles, Benjamin. 1987. The Negro in the Making of America.
New York: Collier Books.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Civil Rights; Equal Protection; Ku Klux Klan; Ku Klux Klan
Act; School Desegregation.