Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow Laws are defined: The systematic practice of discriminating against and segregating black people, especially as practiced in the American South from the end of Reconstruction to the mid-20th century. The Jim Crow system wasn't just a way of doing things in the South, but a way of life. Many preachers and ministers taught that God supported segregation since black people were a "cursed people". It was largely accepted because most Christians were being taught it Sunday after Sunday.

Jim Crow Laws were in place throughout the majority of the South, and covered every base one could think of. For example, in Louisiana, a law was passed where there would be two separate ("but equal") cars for blacks and whites. In Oklahoma, blacks and whites were prohibited from boating together, for that implied social equality. In Georgia, a black barber could not cut a white girl/woman's hair. In Florida, schools for the two different races had to be conducted separately. In Mississippi, all white convicts were to have their own, separate, eating and sleeping quarters from the black convicts. In most of the southern states, a black man could not reach out his hand to shake a white man's, for that implied they were socially equal. A black man could never offer a light to a white woman's cigarette because that implied obvious intimacy. Speaking of intimacy, black couples could not show affection in public, for that offended the white folks. Blacks and whites were not to eat together, but if so, whites would be served first, and would be seated in the nicer part of the restaurant.


One of the biggest, most well-known Jim Crows laws were the grandfather clauses. These basically stated that if your grandparents weren't able to vote, neither are you. They enacted laws such as all white primaries, poll taxes, and literacy tests. These laws were the main focus of the movie "Mississippi Burning" because the Freedom Summer of 1964 called upon whites and blacks to get registered to vote for the upcoming election.


http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm