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Jim Crow Laws were local and state rules used in the south. They were used to make racial segregation legal. This started right after slavery ended in 1865. The laws were named after a famous minstrel show character. Thomas Dartmouth Rice, Jim Crow, stated, "to have first created the character after witnessing an elderly Black man singing a tune called “Jump Jim Crow” in Louisville, Kentucky. As the show’s got popular, "“Jim Crow” became a widely used derogatory term for Black people." These laws lasted for about 100 years after the civil war.

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Black Codes

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

Ku Klux Klan

During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.

Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.

The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.

The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

Jim Crow Laws Expand

At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.

This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.

Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.

Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.

It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there.

Ida B. Wells

As oppressive as the Jim Crow era was, it was also a time when many African Americans around the country stepped forward into leadership roles to vigorously oppose the laws.

Memphis teacher Ida B. Wells became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a first-class train car designated for white people only. A conductor forcibly removed her and she successfully sued the railroad, though that decision was later reversed by a higher court.

Angry at the injustice, Wells devoted herself to fighting Jim Crow laws. Her vehicle for dissent was newspaper writing: In 1889 she became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and used her position to take on school segregation and sexual harassment.

Wells traveled throughout the South to publicize her work and advocated for the arming of Black citizens. Wells also investigated lynchings and wrote about her findings.

A mob destroyed her newspaper and threatened her with death, forcing her to move to the North, where she continued her efforts against Jim Crow laws and lynching.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a North Carolina-born, Massachusetts-raised Black woman who returned to her birthplace at the age of 17, in 1901, to work as a teacher for the American Missionary Association.

After funding was withdrawn for that school, Brown began fundraising to start her own school, named the Palmer Memorial Institute.

Brown became the first Black woman to create a Black school in North Carolina and through her education work became a fierce and vocal opponent of Jim Crow laws.

Isaiah Montgomery

Not everyone battled for equal rights within white society-some chose a separatist approach.

Convinced by Jim Crow laws that Black and white people could not live peaceably together, formerly enslaved Isaiah Montgomery created the African American-only town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in 1887.

Montgomery recruited other former enslaved people to settle in the wilderness with him, clearing the land and forging a settlement that included several schools, an Andrew Carnegie-funded library, a hospital, three cotton gins, a bank and a sawmill. Mound Bayou still exists today, and is still almost 100 percent Black.

Jim Crow Laws in the 20th Century

As the 20th century progressed, Jim Crow laws flourished within an oppressive society marked by violence.

Following World War I, the NAACP noted that lynchings had become so prevalent that it sent investigator Walter White to the South. White had lighter skin and could infiltrate white hate groups.

As lynchings increased, so did race riots, with at least 25 across the United States over several months in 1919, a period sometimes referred to as " Red Summer." In retaliation, white authorities charged Black communities with conspiring to conquer white America.

With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South, spurred on by publications like The Chicago Defender, which encouraged Black Americans to move north.

Read by millions of Southern Black people, white people attempted to ban the newspaper and threatened violence against any caught reading or distributing it.

The poverty of the Great Depression only deepened resentment, with a rise in lynchings, and after World War II, even Black veterans returning home met with segregation and violence.

Jim Crow in the North

The North was not immune to Jim Crow-like laws. Some states required Black people to own property before they could vote, schools and neighborhoods were segregated, and businesses displayed "Whites Only" signs.

In Ohio, segregationist Allen Granbery Thurman ran for governor in 1867 promising to bar Black citizens from voting. After he narrowly lost that political race, Thurman was appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he fought to dissolve Reconstruction-era reforms benefiting African Americans.

After World War II, suburban developments in the North and South were created with legal covenants that did not allow Black families, and Black people often found it difficult or impossible to obtain mortgages for homes in certain "red-lined" neighborhoods.

When Did Jim Crow Laws End?

The post-World War II era saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote. This ushered in the civil rights movement, resulting in the removal of Jim Crow laws.

In 1948 President Harry Truman ordered integration in the military, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of "separate-but-equal" education.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.

And in 1965, the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.

Jim Crow laws were technically off the books, though that has not always guaranteed full integration or adherence to anti-racism laws throughout the United States. Several recent pieces of legislation-such as House Bill 1020 in Mississippi, which aimed to disenfranchise the majority-Black capital city of Jackson by creating a new judicial district overseen by white leaders-are often compared to Jim Crow laws.

Sources

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Richard Wormser.
Segregated America. Smithsonian Institute.
Jim Crow Laws. National Park Service.
"Exploiting Black Labor After the Abolition of Slavery." The Conversation.
"Hundreds of black Americans were killed during 'Red Summer.' A century later, still ignored." Associated Press/USA Today.
"Here's What's Become Of A Historic All-Black Town In The Mississippi Delta." NPR.

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Jim Crow Laws: Definition, Facts & Timeline | HISTORY

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Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Enacted after the Civil War, the laws denied equal opportunity to Black citizens.

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Many of the Southern states did not allow black and white people to get married. For example Georgia had a law that stated, "It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void."

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Nurses: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed. Alabama

Buses: All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races. Alabama

Railroads: The conductor of each passenger train is authorized and required to assign each passenger to the car or the division of the car, when it is divided by a partition, designated for the race to which such passenger belongs. Alabama

Restaurants: It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment. Alabama

Pool and Billiard Rooms: It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards. Alabama

Toilet Facilities, Male: Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities.

Intermarriage: The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void. Arizona

Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited. Florida

Cohabitation: Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars. Florida

Education: The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately. Florida

Juvenile Delinquents: There shall be separate buildings, not nearer than one fourth mile to each other, one for white boys and one for negro boys. White boys and negro boys shall not, in any manner, be associated together or worked together. Florida

Mental Hospitals: The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be together. Georgia

Intermarriage: It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void. Georgia

Barbers: No colored barber shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls. Georgia

Burial: The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons. Georgia

Restaurants: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license. Georgia

Amateur Baseball: It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race. Georgia

Parks: It shall be unlawful for colored people to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the benefit, use and enjoyment of white persons...and unlawful for any white person to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the use and benefit of colored persons. Georgia

Wine and Beer: All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room at any time. Georgia

Reform Schools: The children of white and colored races committed to the houses of reform shall be kept entirely separate from each other. Kentucky

Circus Tickets: All circuses, shows, and tent exhibitions, to which the attendance of...more than one race is invited or expected to attend shall provide for the convenience of its patrons not less than two ticket offices with individual ticket sellers, and not less than two entrances to the said performance, with individual ticket takers and receivers, and in the case of outside or tent performances, the said ticket offices shall not be less than twenty-five (25) feet apart. Louisiana

Housing: Any person...who shall rent any part of any such building to a negro person or a negro family when such building is already in whole or in part in occupancy by a white person or white family, or vice versa when the building is in occupancy by a negro person or negro family, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five ($25.00) nor more than one hundred ($100.00) dollars or be imprisoned not less than 10, or more than 60 days, or both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court. Louisiana

The Blind: The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race. Louisiana

Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive, or between a white person and a member of the Malay race; or between the negro a nd a member of the Malay race; or between a person of Negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive, and a member of the Malay race, are forever prohibited, and shall be void. Maryland

Railroads: All railroad companies and corporations, and all persons running or operating cars or coaches by steam on any railroad line or track in the State of Maryland, for the transportation of passengers, are hereby required to provide separate cars or coaches for the travel and transportation of the white and colored passengers. Maryland

Education: Separate schools shall be maintained for the children of the white and colored races. Mississippi

Promotion of Equality: Any person...who shall be guilty of printing, publishing or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fine or not exceeding five hundred (500.00) dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six (6) months or both. Mississippi

Intermarriage: The marriage of a white person with a negro or mulatto or person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood, shall be unlawful and void. Mississippi

Hospital Entrances: There shall be maintained by the governing authorities of every hospital maintained by the state for treatment of white and colored patients separate entrances for white and colored patients and visitors, and such entrances shall be used by the race only for which they are prepared. Mississippi

Prisons: The warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the negro convicts. Mississippi

Education: 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

Intermarriage: All marriages between...white persons and negroes or white persons and Mongolians...are prohibited and declared absolutely void...No person having one-eighth part or more of negro blood shall be permitted to marry any white person, nor shall any white person be permitted to marry any negro or person having one-eighth part or more of negro blood. Missouri

Education: Separate rooms [shall] be provided for the teaching of pupils of African descent, and [when] said rooms are so provided, such pupils may not be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent. New Mexico

Textbooks: Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. North Carolina

Libraries: The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals. North Carolina

Militia: The white and colored militia shall be separately enrolled, and shall never be compelled to serve in the same organization.No organization of colored troops shall be permitted where white troops are available, and while white permitted to be organized, colored troops shall be under the command of white officers. North Carolina

Transportation: The...Utilities Commission...is empowered and directed to require the establishment of separate waiting rooms at all stations for the white and colored races. North Carolina

Teaching: Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined in any sum not less than ten dollars ($10.00) nor more than fifty dollars ($50.00) for each offense. Oklahoma

Fishing, Boating, and Bathing: The [Conservation] Commission shall have the right to make segregation of the white and colored races as to the exercise of rights of fishing, boating and bathing. Oklahoma

Mining: The baths and lockers for the negroes shall be separate from the white race, but may be in the same building. Oklahoma

Telephone Booths: The Corporation Commission is hereby vested with power and authority to require telephone companies...to maintain separate booths for white and colored patrons when there is a demand for such separate booths. That the Corporation Commission shall determine the necessity for said separate booths only upon complaint of the people in the town and vicinity to be served after due hearing as now provided by law in other complaints filed with the Corporation Commission. Oklahoma

Lunch Counters: No persons, firms, or corporations, who or which furnish meals to passengers at station restaurants or station eating houses, in times limited by common carriers of said passengers, shall furnish said meals to white and colored passengers in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter. South Carolina

Child Custody: It shall be unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in this State, having the control or custody of any white child, by right of guardianship, natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or surrender such white child permanently into the custody, control, maintenance, or support, of a negro. South Carolina

Libraries: Any white person of such county may use the county free library under the rules and regulations prescribed by the commissioners court and may be entitled to all the privileges thereof. Said court shall make proper provision for the negroes of said county to be served through a separate branch or branches of the county free library, which shall be administered by [a] custodian of the negro race under the supervision of the county librarian. Texas

Education [The County Board of Education]: shall provide schools of two kinds; those for white children and those for colored children. Texas

Theaters: Every person...operating...any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or any place of public entertainment or public assemblage which is attended by both white and colored persons, shall separate the white race and the colored race and shall set apart and designate...certain seats therein to be occupied by white persons and a portion thereof , or certain seats therein, to be occupied by colored persons. Virginia

Railroads: The conductors or managers on all such railroads shall have power, and are hereby required, to assign to each white or colored passenger his or her respective car, coach or compartment. If the passenger fails to disclose his race, the conductor and managers, acting in good faith, shall be the sole judges of his race. Virginia

Intermarriage: All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void. Wyoming

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Examples of Jim Crow Laws - Oct. 1960 - Civil Rights

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Nurses: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed. Alabama Buses: All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races.

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The law made it necessary that all railroads in the state provide “equal but separate accommodations” for white and African American passengers. It forbid passengers from going into other transportation ways than those they had been assigned on based on their race.

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How did Plessy v. Ferguson affect segregation in the United States?

Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial " separate but equal" doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying "equal protection of the laws" to any person within their jurisdictions. Although the majority opinion did not contain the phrase "separate but equal," it gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites. It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).

Background

The case originated in 1892 as a challenge to Louisiana's Separate Car Act (1890). The law required that all railroads operating in the state provide "equal but separate accommodations" for white and African American passengers and prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race. In 1891 a group of Creole professionals in New Orleans formed the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. They hired Albion Tourgée, a Reconstruction-era judge and social reformer, as their legal counsel. As plaintiff in the test case the committee chose a person of mixed race in order to support its contention that the law could not be consistently applied, because it failed to define the white and "coloured" races. Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act. At Plessy's trial in U.S. District Court, Judge John H. Ferguson dismissed his contention that the act was unconstitutional. After the state Supreme Court affirmed the district court's ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari, and oral arguments were heard on April 13, 1896. The court rendered its decision one month later, on May 18.

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Plessy v. Ferguson | Summary, Ruling, Background, & Impact

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Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial " separate but equal" doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Plessy v.

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In Mississippi ,and many more places, the law was that, "There shall be maintained by the governing authorities of every hospital maintained by the state for treatment of white and colored patients separate entrances for white and colored patients and visitors, and such entrances shall be used by the race only for which they are prepared." In Alabama the law for nurses was, " No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed." There were many more restriction to getting doctors for African Americans because they could not get the same education, so there were a lot of shortages with African American doctors. African Americans could not get some treatments and blood even had to be separated by color.

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"It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards." This selection is an example of a Jim Crow law that was in effect in the state of Alabama from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

Jim Crow was the name of a minstrel character created in 1828 by Thomas Dartmouth ("Daddy") Rice. Rice's comedy routines and the popular song "Jump, Jim Crow" established the common name for laws that enforced racial prejudice and denied human rights to black people in the United States.

Legal History of Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws started to come into effect, primarily but not exclusively in southern states, after the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

The legal principle of separate but equal was established in the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1895. The Court's decision was summarized by Chief Justice Henry Billings Brown, who stated that the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause "could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either."

That distinction of social, as opposed to strictly legal, discrimination, provided the foundation for states to keep black and white people separated, particularly in social settings and social institutions such as marriage. The convenient fiction of "separate but equal" was quickly abandoned and African Americans were treated as second-class citizens by institutions and laws that persist to this day.

Jim Crow Laws in Daily Life

These laws worked to enforce segregation amongst the races, which led to civil rights actions by individuals such as Ida B. Wells, and ultimately to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s led by people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr..

Examples of Jim Crow laws that caused these extreme tensions in the country included the following.

Business

"The business of America is business," said President Calvin Coolidge, but in his own era and in the present, it has been the country's business to enforce racial inequality. Buying, selling and the simplest activities of daily life - symbolized most famously by the simple water fountain - were firmly segregated by Jim Crow laws.

Alabama: "Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities."

Alabama: "It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment."

Georgia: "All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to two races within the same room at any time.

Georgia: "It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race."

Louisiana: "All carriers must provide equal but separate seats for white and colored. No person of one race is allowed to be in the section set aside for the other race."

Marriage

Marriage has always been a highly politicized issue. As one of the most fundamental institutions of society, when social change occurs, marriage changes with it. Examples of Jim Crow laws like the following were intended to freeze marriage into a perceived ideal where racial mixing was impossible:

California: "All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void."

Florida: "All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited."

Wyoming: "All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void."

Medicine

Jim Crow laws required separate hospitals for whites and African Americans. What's more, restrictions on education guaranteed a constant shortage of African American medical professionals. Many treatments were only available to white patients, and even blood transfusions were segregated by race, in spite of the fact that Charles R. Drew, one of the pioneers of American blood banks and a groundbreaking scientist in the field, was himself African American.

Alabama: "No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms or hospitals, either public or private, where negro men are placed."

Georgia: "The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients [in a mental hospital], so that in no cases shall Negroes and white persons be together."

Georgia: "The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons."

Education

No single issue since the abolition of slavery has been the subject of more race-based conflict than education. Even after the 1964 Civil Rights Act banned segregated schooling, de facto segregation was maintained, both in and out of the Jim Crow South, through redistricting, redlining and covenants of parents and school administrators to maintain the racial homogeneity of white schools.

When desegregation busing threatened to integrate student bodies, parents protested, sometimes violently. Even in 2019, many cities have acknowledged "black schools" and "white schools," and people offer the same Jim Crow-era arguments against the admission of minority students.

New Mexico: "Separate rooms [shall] be provided for the teaching of pupils of African descent, and [when] said rooms are provided, such pupils may not be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent."

North Carolina: "The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals."

Oklahoma: "Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored races are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined."

Texas: The County Board of Education "shall provide schools of two kinds; those for white children and those for colored children."

From schools and hospitals to prisons and pool halls, the Jim Crow laws sought to keep white and black people separate, and to guarantee the continued subjugation of black people.

Racial Codes of Behavior

As Plessy v. Ferguson explicitly protected social, as opposed to legal, discrimination, African Americans and members of other minorities experienced systematic personal discrimination at the hands of whites. The classic instance is of a white person referring to a grown black man as "boy." The reverse also applied: African Americans were expected to show deference and submission to whites, invariably referring to them as "Mister" or "Miss."

But to describe what was expected of African Americans as a "code of behavior" is misleading. There were no rules, and so no one knew when they had broken them. It was simply a matter of whether white people chose to be offended.

In the famous case of Emmett Till, for instance, a 14-year-old African American boy was mutilated and murdered for speaking to a white woman in what his murderers considered an inappropriate fashion. What did Till say? No one knows. The white woman, Carolyn Bryant, gave, and continues to give, conflicting stories. The men who murdered Till weren't even present. It was enough that someone told them he had spoken inappropriately. That was the "code" that justified lynchings, beatings and police violence in the Jim Crow South.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws were subject to legal challenges throughout their existence, but real change would have to wait until the 1950s and '60s. Thanks in large part to the work of NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, officially abolishing all Jim Crow laws.

While there are technically no examples of Jim Crow laws today, they cast a long shadow over American life. A Texas cemetery attempted to defend its whites only policy as recently as 2016. To learn more about the heroes who helped to end the laws, have a look at our biographies of Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis.

Examples of Jim Crow Laws

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Reviewing examples of Jim Crow laws shows how the laws sought to separate white and black people in many areas of life. These hateful laws ultimately led to civil rights actions led by individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

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Schools in the south were racially segregated and black and white students had to go to different schools. The separate schools were not equal. Many Black children could not attend school because they had to help work on the fields and they would typically stop going to school after fourth grade. Many black children were not able to attend college. African-American students did not have the same resources that white students had. The classrooms were often crowded too with multiple grades in one class. It was also difficult to find qualified teachers because they don't get trained that much and they do not have a good salary.

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Copy Editors: Adekola Adedapo and Fran Kaplan, EdD

Photo Editor: Fran Kaplan, EdD

Education is the key to economic success. It is true now, and it was true in the South. Southern education was not very good - even for white children. But education for blacks in the South in the early 1900s was worse in many ways.
Why Education for African American Children Was Inferior

Southern schools were racially segregated. Blacks and whites had to attend different schools. The separate school systems were not equal. Schools for white children received more public money.

Fewer African Americans were enrolled in school. Black children were often pulled out school because they were needed on the farm. Many of their parents were sharecroppers. To plant and harvest enough crops, sharecroppers' children had to work alongside their parents.

Even if they weren't needed on the farm, the white owner of their farm might pull black children out if he decided they were needed for work. Or he might simply believe that African American children did not deserve an education.

There were not as many public schools available for blacks. If a town did not have enough money for two separate schools, they built only one school - for white children. This was especially true in the rural towns, because most rural towns had little money.

City school systems had more money than rural ones. However, at that time in the South, most African Americans lived in rural areas, on farms. On the other hand, many white children lived in cities and could attend well-funded city schools. In rural areas, schools for both black and white children were scheduled around the cotton growing season. These schools were open fewer days than city schools. As a result, many black children went to school only two or three months out of the year.

Among the African Americans who did attend school, most were in the fourth grade or lower. Many left school after fourth grade. Therefore it would be a long time before there would be a large number of blacks going to college.

The Conditions in the Schools Where Black Children Studied

Many school buildings for African Americans had leaking roofs, sagging floors, and windows without glass. They ranged from untidy to positively filthy, according to a study issued in 1917.

If black children had any books at all, they were hand-me-downs from white schools.

Black schools were overcrowded, with too many students per teacher. More black schools than white had only one teacher to handle students from toddlers to 8th graders. Black schools were more likely to have all grades together in one room.

There were not enough desks for the over-crowded classrooms.

Black teachers did not receive as much training as white teachers. On top of that, the salary for black teachers was so low that it was hard to find fully qualified ones.

There were limits on what blacks could be taught in school. White school leaders did not want black children to be exposed to ideas like equality and freedom. Carter G. Woodson told how some black children in Southern schools were not allowed to use books that included the Declaration of Independence or the U. S. Constitution. These documents state that government should get its power from the consent of the governed. Reading them would confirm for African Americans that they were being denied the rights due to all citizens of the United States.

The One Bright Light
Fortunately, some schools for black children were built with money sent by Northern foundations. The Rosenwald Foundation was most important of these. It gave over four million dollars to help build nearly 5,000 black schools throughout the South. These schools were built with the health and comfort of the children and teachers in mind. Thousands of African American children received a good education in the Rosenwald Schools. (Visit the Rosenwald Schools exhibit .)
Russell G. Brooker, PhD, is Professor of Political Science at Alverno College, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He teaches courses in political science, and research methodology. He has taught courses in African American history, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement since 1981. He is currently writing a book on the civil rights movement before 1954.

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The Education of Black Children in the Jim Crow South - America's Black Holocaust Museum

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Education is the key to economic success. It is true now, and it was true in the Jim Crow South. Southern education was not very good - even for white children. But education for blacks in the South in the early 1900s was worse in many ways.

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The Jim Crow laws made African-Americans eat at different places. They had to enter through the backs of buildings, order in different places, and wait in colored areas. They also didn't get the same type of food options at the restaurants. If black people wanted to order at a white counter they would not get served.

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Never was the complex relationship between (CNN) - food and civil rights more evident than during the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins. Students from North Carolina to Tennessee sat stoically in protest against segregated diners, often enduring spitting, racist verbal abuse and physical violence in response.

The "Jim Crow" segregation laws -- which required people to dine separately based on the color of their skin -- meant African-Americans were often required to enter restaurants through back doors, order from hidden hatches and sit in designated areas. Some establishments refused to serve them altogether, making travel hard to plan.

Food was subverted from a unifying, nourishing force to a politically charged weapon. At the most basic level, people were denied the chance to go out and enjoy a decent meal.

Yet a handful of restaurants took a different stand. Some refused to observe segregation.

Neighborhood diners became meeting spots for civil rights leaders and activists -- often the only safe spaces to gather and strategize. Others were simply among few places where nonwhite people could dine outside their homes.

From the site of the Nashville sit-ins to a pig ear sandwich that eavesdropped on history, these five restaurants on the Southern civil rights trail serve up much more than just great food:

1. Chris' Hot Dogs, Montgomery, Alabama

This quiet city is home to confederate museums, a Hank Williams tribute, restaurants serving southern food with a side of history, and now a new museum dedicated to lynching victims.

King's first church posting was at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, steps from the green awnings and tiny Formica tables of this narrow diner.

Before the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott propelled him to civil rights leadership, King would swing by Chris' Hot Dogs to say hello and pick up his morning paper.

Operating since 1917 on Dexter Avenue -- the very street where Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat -- this hot dog joint was one of few eateries to ignore segregation laws and feed all its hungry customers equally.

In addition to King, Chris' counts Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley and Whoopi Goldberg among those who have enjoyed the no-frills (but delicious) dogs smothered in mustard, onions and chili sauce.

But you get the impression most diners would barely bat an eyelid if Barack Obama stepped through the doors. They're much more interested in the food and catching up with old friends -- like King's former barber, Nelson Malden, who swings by regularly for a hamburger.

A monochrome illustration of Martin Luther King Jr. dominates the brown-brick walls of this restaurant in Atlanta's Castleberry Hill neighborhood. Not so surprising -- he's an international hero. But King's association with this unassuming spot (which opened its original location on Hunter Street in 1947) runs far deeper.

Diners who encounter Marshall Slack, a Paschal's historian who long worked as a server, are regaled by tales about the eatery's civil rights history.

King held meetings in the upstairs rooms and, often, in the leather-upholstered booths of the main restaurant. The 1963 March on Washington is among historical events that were organized at Paschal's.

Co-owners and brothers Robert and James Paschal were active in the movement, delivering sandwiches and baskets of fried chicken to protesters and marchers. They even posted bail for those arrested for fighting against segregation, staying open late to shelter -- and feed -- those awaiting the release of loved ones.

The fried chicken is pretty good, too. Made to the original recipe and served with wilted collard greens and oozy mac 'n' cheese, its crispy, peppery coating gives way to buttery-soft meat.

3. Woolworth on 5th, Nashville

Though the first lunch counter sit-in was in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, the protests gathered momentum in Nashville -- and many were held at Woolworth on 5th, on the edge of downtown.

The former five-and-dime store stood neglected and crumbling for decades. Now the lower floors have been transformed into a soul food spot and live music venue by restaurateur Tom Morales, who opened the revamped Woolworth on 5th in February 2018.

Morales worked with local civil rights experts during the restoration, keen to represent the building's history as accurately as possible. Original details include wall tiles and handrails around the mezzanine. The lunch counter was rebuilt as a nod to the fearless protesters who made history right here.

4. The Four Way, Memphis, Tennessee

This Soulsville spot is as cozy and comforting as its food. The Four Way has been serving fried catfish and collard greens since 1946, making it the oldest soul food restaurant in Memphis.

King and other civil rights leaders often dined here when in town, discussing their latest plans over baked chicken and huge slices of sticky, tangy lemon meringue pie -- MLK's favorite, apparently.

The Four Way was one of few places in the city where everyone could eat together, any day of the week. There were no separate entrances, no segregated areas.

Located a few blocks from Stax Records, the family-run restaurant has also served its beloved soul food dishes to Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers and Al Green.

The Four Way, 998 Mississippi Blvd, Memphis, TN 38126, +1 (901) 507-1519

5. Big Apple Inn, Jackson, Mississippi

This Mississippi institution is famous for creating what must surely be one of the world's weirdest sandwiches: a pig ear, tenderized in a pressure cooker and slapped in a slider bun with mustard, slaw and homemade hot sauce.

Surprisingly, though, that isn't the most interesting thing about the Big Apple Inn. The rooms above this hole-in-the-wall joint on Farish Street were once rented out as offices, with civil rights heroes Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers among the tenants.

Evers, who was assassinated outside his Jackson home by a white supremacist in 1963, held NAACP meetings here, strategizing and organizing protests including the 1961 Freedom Rides.

Owner Geno Lee, whose great-grandfather opened the Big Apple Inn in 1939, has two other locations in Jackson, each more lucrative than the original Farish Street diner.

Yet, because of the history, family ties and nostalgia for a time when this was the heart of a flourishing black neighborhood, he is determined not to shut its doors.

Big Apple Inn, 509 N Farish St, Jackson, MS 39202, +1 (601) 354-9371

Ella Buchan is a London-based travel writer specializing in road trips, food and drink. She writes for titles including the Guardian, Independent and BBC Travel.

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5 restaurants that served a role in civil rights history - cnn

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5 great restaurants that serve a side of civil rights history

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Never was the complex relationship between (CNN) - food and civil rights more evident than during the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins. Students from North Carolina to Tennessee sat stoically in protest against segregated diners, often enduring spitting, racist verbal abuse and physical violence in response.