How Did Jim Crow Laws Impact The Civil Rights Movement

The Impact of Jim Crow Over one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, black people in the south still faced oppression brought on by the Jim Crow laws. One of the most crucial reasons for the civil rights movement was because of the Jim Crow laws. Between 1877 and the mid-1960s, a series of segregation laws were used throughout the south in order to keep blacks away from whites. Although the Jim Crow laws claimed to keep the races separate but equal, the laws focused on keeping blacks powerless and without rights. This oppression eventually led to the civil rights movement. The name of the Jim Crow laws was derived from a famous actor named Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice. In the early 1830’s Rice, one of the first known black face performers, would perform as a simple-minded black slave named “Jim Crow.” The influence

Blacks began to stand up against the racial segregation. In December of 1955, four months after Emmett Till’s death, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man and was arrested for breaking the Jim Crow law. It was a law for blacks to always sit in the back of the bus away from whites or give up their seats for whites. When Rosa Parks was later asked why she refused to give up her seat she replied, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired…but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically…No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in” (History.com Rosa Parks). By refusing to follow the Jim Crow laws, Rosa Parks started the movement of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and civil rights movement. Led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., over a thousand blacks refused to ride the Montgomery buses, which resulted in the bus company’s massive loss in business since 70% of their customers were black. Thirteen months later, the Supreme Court finally ruled that segregated bus seating was unconstitutional (History.com Rosa