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An article that discusses what Jim Crow Laws are and how they affected black men and women in America

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Freedom Riders | Article

The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order.

Signs such as "Colored Waiting Room" constantly reminded travelers of the enforced racial order. Credit: Library of Congress

In legal theory, blacks received "separate but equal" treatment under the law - in actuality, public facilities for blacks were nearly always inferior to those for whites, when they existed at all. In addition, blacks were systematically denied the right to vote in most of the rural South through the selective application of literacy tests and other racially motivated criteria.

Sign at a Greyhound Bus Station in Rome, GA. Credit: Library of Congress

The Jim Crow system was upheld by local government officials and reinforced by acts of terror perpetrated by Vigilantes. In 1896, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy v. Ferguson, after a black man in New Orleans attempted to sit in a whites-only railway car.

In 1908, journalist Ray Stannard Baker observed that "no other point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among Negroes as the Jim Crow car." As bus travel became widespread in the South over the first half of the 20th century, it followed the same pattern.

"Travel in the segregated South for black people was humiliating," recalled Diane Nash in her interview for Freedom Riders. "The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use the public facilities that white people used."

Transit was a core component of segregation in the South, as the 1947 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pamphlet and Bayard Rustin song, "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow" attests. Keeping whites and blacks from sitting together on a bus, train, or trolley car might seem insignificant, but it was one more link in a system of segregation that had to be defended at all times - lest it collapse. Thus transit was a logical point of attack for the foes of segregation, in the courtroom and on the buses themselves.

It would take several decades of legal action and months of nonviolent direct action before these efforts achieved their intended result.

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Jim Crow Laws | American Experience | PBS

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The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South.

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This Padlet will be used to describe the events, key figures, and developments from 1950-1975 as it relates to the Civil Rights Movement.

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An article that provides the causes and effects of the Jim Crow Laws.

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The name Jim Crow comes from a once popular stage performance that began in 1828. This type of show, called a minstrel show, encouraged a negative view of blacks, and the term Jim Crow became a derogatory epithet used to refer to blacks.

In response to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, southern states passed numerous laws known as the black codes. Such laws were intended to assure the continuance of white supremacy in the states of the former Confederacy.

In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional.

The Separate Car Act of 1890 in Louisiana required separate seating for whites and blacks on all intrastate carriers.

The landmark case (1896) upheld the Separate Car Act and sanctioned the controversial doctrine of "separate but equal."

Throughout the country Jim Crow laws expanded segregation into nearly every aspect of black citizens' lives.

Until the 1950s, lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan committed acts of terrorism against black communities to reenforce Jim Crow laws.

Restrictions imposed by the black codes made it hard for formerly enslaved people to gain economic independence.

Segregated facilities on all public transportation carriers made it more difficult for black citizens to travel.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The "separate but equal" doctrine resulted in inferior facilities for blacks ranging from schools to housing to employment. Black children had limited opportunities compared with those for white children.

Jim Crow laws made it difficult or impossible for black citizens to vote, be elected to office, serve on juries, or participate as equals in the economic or social life of their area.

The civil rights movement emerged to protest violence and racial segregation and helped bring about the passage of legislation that put an end to the Jim Crow era.

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A list of some of the major causes and effects of the laws known as Jim Crow laws that were created to enforce racial segregation in the United States. How those laws came to be enacted in various states and what some of the effects of those laws were are described.

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This article discusses what Brown v. Board is and how it affected Black Americans in the 1950s

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Separate But Equal Doctrine

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites-known as "Jim Crow" laws -and established the "separate but equal" doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka's all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a "detrimental effect upon the colored children" and contributed to "a sense of inferiority," but still upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown's case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, then governor of California.

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," as segregated schools are "inherently unequal." As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Though well intentioned, the Court's actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students-known as the " Little Rock Nine"- were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board didn't achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr.), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary, ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine, the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation's public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation's school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Sources

History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts.
Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press).
Cass Sunstein, "Did Brown Matter?" The New Yorker, May 3, 2004.
Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org.
Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute, April 17, 2014.

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Brown v. Board of Education: Summary, Ruling & Impact | HISTORY

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

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Marshall's most famous case came in 1954. It was called Brown v. Board of Education. In this case Marshall argued that schools should not be segregated.

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In 1960, Ruby Bridges (September 8, 1954—present) walked through the doors of William Frantz Elementary School, in New Orleans, Louisiana. By doing so, she became the first African-American student to attend an all-white elementary school in the Southern United States.

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A video explaining who Rosa Parks was and the impact she made on the civil rights movement.

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Rosa Parks: The 'no' that sparked the civil rights movement | BBC News

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Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929—April 4, 1968) is considered one of history’s greatest speakers and social activists. His leadership in peaceful protests helped end segregation during the American civil rights movement.

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President Lyndon B. Johnson (August 27, 1908—January 22, 1973) advanced equality through major civil rights legislation and social service programs. He is also remembered for expanding U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.

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A video about Cesar Chavez and his impact on American civil rights.

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Cesar Chavez - American Civil Rights Activist | Mini Bio | BIO

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This video discusses events such as, the Montgomery Bus Boycott & Brown Vs. Board.

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Civil Rights and the 1950s: Crash Course US History #39

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This article discusses multiple different things that President JFK accomplished and attempted to fix in America before his assassination.

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On the evening of May 3, 1963, Americans watched on television as Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama collapsed under a wave of officially sanctioned violence. Birmingham police attacked peaceful black demonstrators with clubs, dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses, and for the first time many citizens understood the breadth of America's racial divide. Perhaps no one regarded the events with more anguish than President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The violence in Birmingham proved that Kennedy's piecemeal approach to civil rights had failed.

Martin Luther King. and cabinet meeting , August 5 , 1965. Courtesy: Library of Congress

Elected president in 1960, Kennedy had campaigned on an idealistic New Frontier platform. The president believed that by showing the world what a free and democratic society had to offer, the United States could ensure the defeat of Communism. Unfortunately, since Kennedy had taken office, the world had seen the negative side of America -- intolerance and oppression. Despite Constitutional assurances to the contrary, African Americans were treated as second class citizens. They were frequently denied access to public facilities, prohibited from exercising their voting rights, and subjected to racist violence.

Under leaders such as King, African Americans organized nonviolent protests to gain access to public facilities. They sued in the courts for equal treatment, and used the pulpits and the press to eloquently state the case for full citizenship. And they implored their president to take a forceful public stand by issuing a call for comprehensive civil rights legislation. For the first two years of his administration, Kennedy ignored the call.

The Democrats held a narrow majority in Congress, and many of the Democratic seats were held by Southerners who opposed civil rights legislation. The president needed the white Southern vote to win reelection in 1964. So Kennedy adopted a cautious approach to civil rights, emphasizing enforcement of existing laws over the creation of new ones.

Kennedy pushed civil rights on many fronts. He ordered his attorney general to submit friends of the court briefs on behalf of civil rights litigants. He appointed African Americans to positions within his administration, named Thurgood Marshall to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, and supported voter registration drives.

But such an approach was problematic. By not addressing civil rights publicly and comprehensively, Kennedy was forced to address racial incidents on a case by case basis -- often after they had escalated to violence. In May, 1961, racists attacked Freedom Riders traveling by bus from Washington, D.C. to Birmingham, Alabama. Kennedy sent federal marshals to protect the protesters. But even armed marshals could not guarantee protection.

James Meredith at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, Courtesy: Library of Congress

In September 1962, James Meredith, a black man, attempted to register at the segregated University of Mississippi at Oxford. Kennedy had brokered a deal with segregationist governor Ross Barnett. The registration would occur on a Sunday, when opposition forces were least likely to be active. Federal marshals would be there to protect Meredith. But as Kennedy prematurely announced Meredith's successful registration on national television, marshals were fighting -- and losing -- a battle to control violent segregationists at the university.

If this incident embarrassed the Kennedy administration, it did little to alter the president's approach to civil rights. Activists asked Kennedy to issue an executive order ending discrimination in Federal mortgage loans. He put off the action for months, and issued a watered-down order in November of 1962. In February, 1963, he sent a civil rights package to Congress which included legislation to secure black voting rights. That the bill failed to address access to public facilities -- a major point of contention for civil rights activists -- was a moot point. The president did little to promote the bill's passage, and it quickly expired.

Kennedy's approach to civil rights was viewed, by civil rights leaders, as noncommittal. But the violence in Birmingham on May 3 of 1963 left him no choice but to alter his course. The nightsticks, the police dogs, and the fire hoses had revealed a glimpse of what America could become. Unless Kennedy took a firm stand, the New Frontier might deteriorate into a bloody race war.

On the evening of June 11, just hours after federal marshals had escorted black students to their dormitories at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the president delivered a televised address to the nation. Speaking with conviction, Kennedy announced he would send comprehensive civil rights legislation to Congress. The package would include provisions for access to public facilities, voting rights, and technical and monetary support for school desegregation.

"The heart of the question," the president said, "is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and opportunities." The answer from those who opposed civil rights came later that evening, when segregationist Byron de La Beckwith shot and killed Medgar Evers, the NAACP's Mississippi field secretary.

Five months later, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Comprehensive civil rights legislation had not yet passed. It would be up to Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kennedy's successor -- and to committed activists across the nation -- to resume the battle for equality.

Kennedy's failure to secure meaningful civil rights legislation was emblematic of other stalled domestic policy initiatives introduced by his administration. His efforts to cut taxes and increase funding for education also died in Congress. At the end of his brief presidency, much of the bright promise of the New Frontier had yet to be fulfilled.

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JFK and Civil Rights | American Experience | PBS

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On the evening of May 3, 1963, Americans watched on television as Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama collapsed under a wave of officially sanctioned violence. Birmingham police attacked peaceful black demonstrators with clubs, dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses, and for the first time many citizens understood the breadth of America's racial divide.

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An article about who RFK was and all that he did for America.