Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that whites were the Chosen people, blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial segregation. Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists, and Social Darwinists, at every educational level, buttressed the belief that blacks were innately intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. Pro-segregation politicians gave eloquent speeches on the great danger of integration: the mongrelization of the white race. Newspaper and magazine writers routinely referred to blacks as n***ers, c**ns, and d**kies; and worse, their articles reinforced anti-black stereotypes. Even children's games portrayed blacks as inferior beings. All major societal institutions reflected and supported the oppression of blacks.
Jim Crow was the name of a minstrel routine (actually Jump Jim Crow) performed beginning in 1828 by its author, Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice, and by many imitators, including actor Joseph Jefferson. The term came to be a derogatory epithet for African Americans and a designation for their segregated life. The laws, named after the Black minstrel show character, existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968 and were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence and death.
From the late 1870s, Southern state legislatures passed laws requiring the separation of whites from “persons of color” in public transportation and schools. Generally, anyone of ascertainable or strongly suspected Black ancestry in any degree was for that purpose a “person of color”; the pre-Civil War distinction favoring those whose ancestry was known to be mixed—particularly the half-French “free persons of color” in Louisiana—was abandoned. The segregation principle was extended to parks, cemeteries, theatres, and restaurants in an effort to prevent any contact between Blacks and whites as equals. It was codified on local and state levels and most famously with the “separate but equal” decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). 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.
In South Carolina, black and white textile workers could not work in the same room, enter through the same door, or gaze out of the same window. Many industries would not hire blacks: Many unions passed rules to exclude them. In Richmond, one could not live on a street unless most of the residents were people one could marry. (One could not marry someone of a different race.) By 1914, Texas had six entire towns in which blacks could not live. Mobile passed a Jim Crow curfew: Blacks could not leave their homes after 10 p.m. Signs marked “Whites Only” or “Colored” hung over doors, ticket windows, and drinking fountains. Georgia had black and white parks. Oklahoma had black and white phone booths.
In North Carolina, black and white students had to use separate sets of textbooks. In Florida, the books could not even be stored together. Atlanta courts kept two Bibles: one for black witnesses and one for whites. Virginia told fraternal social groups that black and white members could not address each other as “Brother.” Texas required that every train have one car in which all people of color had to sit. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.
Prisons, hospitals, and orphanages were segregated as were schools and colleges. 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.
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. It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there. The movement for racial separation reached far beyond the South and targeted many people besides African Americans. White communities across the country erected various kinds of barriers between themselves and other racial and ethnic groups.
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