Jim Crow Era Research Paper

The Jim Crow Era is considered by historians to be one of the darkest moments in American history. Following the Reconstruction era, many African Americans assumed that with the passing of the 14th Amendment and the abolishment of slavery, that they would live free lives as free Americans. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The Jim Crow Era was an era full of legalized segregation, lynch mobs, and white supremacy. These factors arose from the actions of white southerners who viewed African Americans as a “threat” to their manhood. The most well known factor was the Jim Crow laws themselves, which were local and state laws that enforced racial segregation in the South, most notably the states that were in the former Confederate States of

In 1890, the state of Louisiana created an ordinance that required that railroads “provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” (Course Reader 17). One African American, Homer Plessy, tested out the new law by sitting in a “whites only” portion of a train, and was promptly arrested. This spawned the now infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case. The decision that the Supreme Court held was that the state of Louisiana did not violate the 14th Amendment by establishing and enforcing a policy of racial segregation in its railway. The rationale behind this decision was that this separation will help the two races to come together on their own terms to reach social quality, rather than relying on legislation and the government. Justice Henry Brown stated that “if one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane” (Course Reader 18). However, this idealistic view is flawed, because most whites overall felt as if they were superior to blacks in every way

As the year turned into 1900, the South passed law after law that disenfranchise African Americans and enforced even more racial segregation in public facilities. One of the most cruel acts performed against blacks was death by lynching. Often white vigilantes, including the “red-shirts,” will accuse blacks for various crimes. Rather than waiting for the police or the law to deal the punishment, the vigilantes will take matters into their own hands and lynch the blacks themselves. As a result, an average of one hundred African Americans were lynched every year. These lynchings were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. Ida B. Wells, a journalist, teacher, and civil rights leader lost three friends due to lynching. As a result, she launched a national crusade against lynching in the early 1900s, calling it “our country’s national crime” (Course Reader 21). This fear of lynching was a major factor in the Great Black Migration of millions of African Americans from the farms in the South to the urban cities of the North. Eventually, the morale of many blacks became low enough that separatists like Marcus Garvey are advocating for leaving the United States and going back to Africa to establish themselves as an independent global power in order to gain the respect they sought. The back and forth fighting