In the second half of the 19th century, comedy rap performance became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States. The so-called burlesque refers to a burlesque that pretends to be a black man to perform black songs and dances. These whites smeared their faces with charcoal and pretended to be various absurd images in the black culture of southern America to please the audience. These images are mostly clumsy, funny, and absurd. The most popular characters are Zip Coon and Jim Crow.
Jim Crow was a stage role created by American comedian Thomas Rice (1808-1860) in the first half of the 19th century. The songs performed by this character are full of racial ridicule and discrimination against blacks.
Because of its popularity among white audiences at the time, the image of Jim Crow was finalized. The basic feature of the image is "lazy, stupid, lack of humanity, not worthy of integration", which is a very negative, stereotyped black image, the term later became synonymous with discrimination against black Americans.
In April 1865, the American Civil War ended for four years. People have different views on the cause of the American Civil War. One of them is slavery in the South. The other is the difference in moral concepts between North and South, which makes it impossible to reconcile the conflict between the two parties. ; The third is the difference in culture and ideology. The fourth is the political incompetence of the leaders of the "clumsy generation". The fifth is political incitement and ethnic cultural conflicts, among which slavery and ethnic cultural conflicts are undoubtedly particularly important. Based on this, Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents in American history, was assassinated on April 14th, the fifth day after the war.
One of the greatest achievements of the Civil War was that the United States unified its domestic system. The second result was the abolition of slavery and the freedom of African Americans.
However, the understanding of the right to freedom is full of differences. This difference naturally led to the subsequent separation of American whites and people of color. This is the Jim Crow law, which has been in the United States for nearly a hundred years.
Jim Crow laws usually refer to the laws of the southern and border states of the United States. These laws imposed a segregation system on people of color (mainly African Americans, but also other races) from 1876 to 1965. . These legal apartheid systems are compulsory public facilities that must be used separately according to different races, and under the principle of segregation but equality, apartheid is interpreted as an equal protection right and does not violate the constitutional guarantee, so it can continue to exist.
These apartheids include but are not limited to the following:
1. Transportation and public facilities
Alabama: All stations operated by any transportation company should provide separate waiting rooms or spaces for whites and people of color, and provide separate ticket windows.
Maryland: All railroad companies, all cars, buses, or any rail transportation system should provide separate vehicles for whites and people of color to travel or transport.
Oklahoma: Separate phone booths should be set up for whites and people of color.
2. Interracial marriage
Arizona: Marriage between white descent and black, Mongolian, Malay, or Indian should be declared invalid.
Florida: Permanently prohibit all marriages within four generations between whites and blacks or between whites and blacks. Any unmarried black or white woman, white and black woman living in the same room, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of up to 12 months or a fine of up to 500 yuan.
3. Education
Florida: Schools for white and black children should be operated separately.
Missouri: In order to educate African American children, separate schools should be established; it is illegal for colored children to go to white schools, and it is illegal for white children to go to color schools.
North Carolina: Textbooks should not be exchanged between white schools and schools of color. The book should continue to be used in the first game.
4. Diet, exercise, and leisure
Georgia: All restaurant operators should provide exclusive white services or exclusive services for people of color, and should not serve different people in the same room at the same time. It is illegal for a white amateur basketball team to play basketball in two blocks of the court reserved for a black basketball team, and it is also illegal for a black basketball team to play basketball in two blocks of a white basketball team.
Oklahoma: The committee has the right to separate fishing, boating, and bathing between white and colored races.
5. Residential
Louisiana: Renting a room in an all-white apartment from a black person and renting a white room from a black person shall be fined 25 yuan to 100 yuan, or fined for service. No more than 10 days, no more than 60 days of imprisonment, or, if the court decides, both a fine and imprisonment.
6. Promote equality
Mississippi: All printing, publishing, dissemination, or public display of information, arguments, or suggestions supporting social equality or inter-ethnic marriage is a crime and shall be punished with imprisonment of more than 500 yuan or less than six months, or a fine together.
These seemingly equal laws are actually full of inequality. At that time, the American Civil War had just ended. In addition to protecting political rights for African Americans in the first few years of reconstruction work, these rights will be deprived or diminished again as the reconstruction work ends and southern whites return to power.
From slaves to free citizens, African Americans have gone through a difficult process. After becoming free citizens, they were unable to make ends meet and had to become the tenants of white Americans again. Their material dependence and political rights have decreased, making them unable to resist. In this case, the southern states of the United States have introduced the seemingly equal Jim Crow law. In fact, this is the greatest inequality in the actual sense.
The name Jim Crow Law also shows his discriminatory nature. It was not until the end of World War II that the African American civil rights movement emerged. In the end, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the conflict was finally persecuted by minorities in the United States for more than a century. The law has just ended.
This shows that among the races with racial superiority and dominance, it is difficult for non-dominant races to obtain sufficient respect and equal treatment. It is not difficult to understand why criminals commit crimes. After the Americans were accidentally killed by the violent law enforcement of the American police, many protests and sabotage activities took place across the United States.
Cited:
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/150986289
https://cnu.libguides.com/c.php?g=23158&p=136325
Hi Jenny! I agree with @Amany Alderawan, I do like how you focused on several key points--I found the list of laws and fines from different states to be very effective in communicating how widespread and insidious Jim Crow laws were. It is an interesting way to group the laws too by category. (This is something to keep in mind for the unessay. Organizing them like this and linking to primary source texts could be a great interactive way to explain the scope of Jim Crow.) Like Amany said above, I was interested in understanding how you found your sources too.
I like how you focused on several points. But perhaps you could have added a personal story or went more in deep. I agree the Jim Crow Law has affected African American's freedom and rights. They have been through a lot. Great Job!