Jim Crow Laws In American History

From 1877 to the mid 1960s the Southern United States enforced a series of rigid anti-black laws known as the Jim Crow Laws. In theory these laws were to create a “separate but equal” treatment, but in reality the Jim Crow Laws only sentenced people of color to inferior treatment and facilities. Under these laws, public organizations such as schools, hotels, restaurants, and the United States Military were segregated. Blacks were even expected to conduct themselves in accordance with the Jim Crow Etiquette. This prejudice standard of conduct used in the south, enforced blacks to treat whites as their superiors. Despite its racial remembrance, the Jim Crow Laws and Etiquette were an important part of American history and should be looked

In the act Thomas Rice used blackface,a popular form of entertainment during the 19th century, to imitate and exaggerate the life of an “old and decrepit black man’’ named Jim Crow (United States History). The song became a great hit, and Rice performed all over ‘the country as "Daddy Jim Crow." As a result of Rice’s fame, the term “Jim Crow” had become a household word for African Americans. After the American Civil War during the time known as the Reconstruction Era, Federal Law provided civil rights protection to all people. Despite this, corrupted racial legislators rose to power in the South and passed laws to segregate and separate blacks and whites. Beginning in 1896 with the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, these laws known as Jim Crow Laws restricted the rights of blacks and gained popularity among the Southern states (National Historic

This etiquette kept blacks at the “bottom of the racial hierarchy,” and gave whites the right to remain socially superior (Rewald). According to this standard of conduct, whites were superior in intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior. As a result, blacks were expected to address all whites with formal titles such as Mr, Mrs, and Cap’n while whites were able to address blacks by their first name. Also, blacks were always introduced to whites; never whites to blacks. Jim Crow Etiquette even applied while driving. A black person was always required to sit in the back seat of the car and was never allowed to have the right away at an intersection