During 1965, this was still a time of great turmoil. US was still recovering from the war, there was the Watts Riots, the North East blackout and before just the year before that, on July 2nd the civil right act of 1964 was signed which put into law that segregation as illegal but ironically the Jim crow laws remained in effect. However, the major event that year was the racial violence between blacks and white that erupted in Selma Alabama. The voter’s rights movement, to sum up was when blacks marched out to Edmund Pettus Bridge, when they got there they were greeted by a wall of state troopers on the other side. They were attacked by the police with sticks, tear gas and other elements. There was a lot of violence and murders.…
Opposed to popular belief, the prosperity of that era didn’t extend to all citizens. Many of the Black American citizens didn’t have the privilege to move to the Northern cities which meant they had to continue living an unpleasant reality that was influenced by their segregated environment . Jim Crow Laws continued to subjugate Blacks into being strictly inferior and in essence, oppressed. A court case that heavily impacted society during the 1950s is Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas which went against the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (“separate but equal”) and deemed the segregation in public schools as “ unlawful and unconstitutional” . Due to the South being very resistant to this new mentality, Southern Senators signed the…
Some critics say that C. V. Woodward’s novel “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” was simply a book about racism. Other critics also attack his style of writing in this very popular novel. However, I believe that Woodward’s novel is not just a book about racism. It is a book about history. I believe it is a book about race relations, not racism. Woodward shatters the stereotypical view of segregation through chronicling the history of America from reconstruction through the late 1960’s.…
There are more African Americans under correctional control today, in prison or jail, on probation or parole then where enslaved in 1850s. Civil Rights advocate and writer of The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander acknowledges in her book that the African American community is suffering more than the non-colored people when it comes to the U.S Justice system. Alexander introduces the book with a story about a man names Jarvious Cotton. Cotton was not allowed to vote just like his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather because of the history behind their color. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather beaten to death…
According to the article “Jim Crow and segregation” says the Jim Crows are just a set list of laws that violated blacks as human beings. When one thinks of the past, many images come to mind. One of the most prominent images of the early twentieth century in the South was the COLORED and WHITE signs that dotted the landscape across the South. They were separated from everything from water fountains to restaurants and even churches. I read a story of 2 young boys ages 12 and 13, Who walked into a restaurant to eat some lunch, And they were mobbed by all of the white people in the restaurant and severely beat up over the fact that they did not see the white only sign on the front door. This was just one incident back in the day.. Blacks all…
Supposedly, the New South was based on rich natural resources, economic opportunity and increased racial equality, but after the North removed military control in the South in 1877, the Southern White Democrats went to work at changing their states constitutions and establishing legal barriers that kept the Black Southerners from voting. By 1913 new laws had been enacted, known as the Jim Crow laws, the made it unlawful for Black Southerners to comingle with White Southerners everywhere.…
Jim Crow laws had an immense impact on Americans in their daily lives. Many times African Americans would be separated from white people on common tasks such as doing their laundry, waiting in waiting rooms, even drinking water. This is obvious due to all of the times whites and African Americans were separated from other humans in all of those simple tasks and more. The white people were basically disgusted by the African Americans, afraid to drink the same water, or even eat in the same general area.…
In chapter two of Michelle Anderson’s “The New Jim Crow,” Alexander explains how the system of mass incarceration works. Anderson argues that the War on Drugs has led to the increment of African Americans in state and federal prisons for non-serious drug violations (possession). Most of these men have no serious criminal histories and are rarely drug kings or high ranked drug dealers. Due to the government’s persistence in making the community safer by removing “criminals,” they have developed programs to crack down on drugs. Law enforcement agencies were using illegal tactics, which became legalized, to capture people. Tactics like pretext or using drug-sniffing dogs became admissible ways to obtain drugs. Alexander discusses how the system of mass incarceration works. The usage of rules, laws and policies to place African Americans in prison for minor offenses is also known as mass incarceration. After reading this chapter, I became perplexed that the government, Federal (DEA) and state, decided that it is expectable to use their “sixth” sense to lead to a systematic mass incarceration of people of color. I was stunned to know that the Supreme Court has encouraged the usage of violations to the fourth amendment by making exceptions. When the amendment was constituted, it specifically stated that there should be no exceptions;…
Although new additions to the Constitution, as well as an increase in social developments, did help to add to a positive revolution, there were some bad aspects of social development such as the KKK and Jim Crow Laws that put a damper on the country. In Document I, the reader is presented with a very famous image in the history of the black race. The overall purpose of this image is to represent southern rebellion or resistance to the developments of reconstruction such as the 14th and 15th Amendments which try to promote equality regardless of race. This image counters the revolution by promoting terrorist-like activities such as lynching and the targeting of helpless victims like the degraded race the freedmen were during this time. The Jim Crow laws created in 1877, which enforced racial segregation, along with the horrific acts as seen in Document I by the KKK demonstrates the anger and continual rebellion of the white citizens which prevented such a wonderful and peaceful revolution in American history from being 100%…
Jim Crow laws are about power. Power of one race over another. These laws really highlight the flaws and weakness of human nature. One group of people asserting power over another for the pride and vanity of a system of politics that had been defeated at the cost of thousands of American lives during the civil war.…
“Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans” states Michelle Alexander, (the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010) ), in an interview with a nonprofit, independent publisher of educational materials known as Rethinking Schools. A perfect example of Michelle Alexander’s statement is Sonya Jennings who is an African American mother, as well as a convicted drug felon. She was sentenced to eight years probation after being arrested for possession of drugs, and since she is now labeled as a felon, illegal discrimination such as, denial of the right to vote, denial of public assistance, and employment discrimination have now become legal (Alexander). The Jim Crow system has been redesigned in America today, legalizing discrimination against people with criminal backgrounds (Alexander).…
I must say that I may have been completely wrong about the state of diversity in our country. I have worked in public service for literally my entire working life (30 years) and in public safety for all of it. I have worked in inner city areas and subsidized housing plans. But my opinion has been similar to that of most white Americans; that people of color do not want a hand up, they want a hand out. Not to be derogatory but that’s what I concluded based on what I experienced. That minorities, especially African-Americans, were using their race and situation to justify their poor choices. After reading The New Jim Crow, by Michelle…
Slavery ending in the United States in 1865, once slavery ended there was the belief that the end racism and oppression would soon follow. However, almost 150 years later racism and the oppression of people of color is still very present in society. The most prevalent form of racism in the United States is institutional racism. Institutional racism is any kind of system of inequality based on race that can occur in institutions. Once slavery ended slaves did not automatically become integrated in society.…
When you hear the words “Jim Crow Law” you just know that nothing good can come out of these words. The Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. These laws were all very unreasonable. In this essay I will be explaining how Jim Crow laws and practices deprived American citizens of their civil rights.…
Thomas D. Rice was a white man but was wearing black face makeup, in 1832; Thomas started performing “Jump Jim Crow”. The Jim Crow laws came to existence in 1877 when the whites regained power in the government in the South after the war and made it law. The Civil Rights act passed in 1964 ended discrimination by law and said no one may be discriminated against race, gender, or religious reasons. There were many court cases that helped fight the Jim Crow Laws. The Jim Crow Laws were the laws that people had to live by, it was racial segregation towards colored people and it separated the blacks from the whites in schools, busses, bathrooms, work, and many other places. The laws were to keep the African Americans out…