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Jim Crow Laws Dbq

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Opening Statement: The Jim Crow Laws were a local and state law that was enforced in the early 20th century that regulated segregation. My side of the argument is that they were unconstitutional. During this time period the color of your skin played a big role in who you were as a person. The passing of the Jim Crow Laws made an already racist and unconstitutional mindset legal. Argument 1: During this time period there was a lot of violence towards African Americans. Once the southern social order was emancipated and all the enslaved Americans were set free with their full freedom. The white Americans rebutted by creating terroristic hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan whose main goal was to ensure a white supremacy for the country. …show more content…

The Jim Crow laws were in direct conflict with federal laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed equal protection under the law to all citizens, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional, further affirming the supremacy of federal law over state law and rendering Jim Crow laws …show more content…

Board of Education and various Civil Rights Acts passed by Congress.While it is true that the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment were violated by Jim Crow laws, some proponents of segregation argued that these laws were necessary to maintain order and protect the interests of both whites and blacks. They argued that separate facilities for different races were not inherently unequal and that the federal government had no right to interfere in state affairs.However, the Supreme Court's decisions in Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent cases recognized that separate facilities for different races were inherently unequal, as they perpetuated a system of segregation that denied African Americans equal access to resources and opportunities. The Court also held that the federal government had a duty to ensure that state laws did not violate individual rights protected by the Constitution.Therefore, while there may be arguments against the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws, the fact remains that they were struck down by the Supreme Court as violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and were superseded by federal civil rights

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