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The Jim Crow Laws: The Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case

451 Words2 Pages

“What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens?”- John Marshall Harlan. On May 18, 1896, the Supreme court passed the separate but equal act on a vote of 7-1. This allowed separate facilities to be made for whites and blacks. This was the result of the Plessy vs Ferguson case, where a man was forced out of a whites-only car because he had African descent. The Supreme court couldn’t find any differences in the train cars, yet separate facilities for blacks had a decrease in quality. After this decision, many laws would be made …show more content…

Most places banned interracial marriage, adoption, or even living together. These kinds of laws had a huge impact on segregation. It separated the races, making everyone believe the world was us or them. Henry Tajfel proposed the Social Identity theory in 1979. This theory says that the group a person belonged to was a source of self-esteem. He whites-only that a group would put another group down to increase their self-image. This kind of thinking was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. The separation of the two groups made it so people would see each other as lesser, allowing more Jim Crow laws to be put in place.

During the Jim Crow era, many activist fought against these laws. Although the activists had a variety of jobs, many of the activists were teachers or scholars. Another similarity is that they all believed that the way to end segregation was to increase education. The school system was segregated, and the white school was always superior. This means the higher positions in jobs would go to whites. By educating african-american children, they were trying to ensure that the next generation would have more

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