Saturday, March 3, 2018
Jim Crow Segregation Laws
From 1877 to the beginning of the 1950s, Jim Crow laws were a part of the lives of African Americans. These laws stated that all public places were to be separate for blacks and whites. For example, there were separate water fountains, one for "colored" people and one for white people. Jim Crow laws also stated that it was legal to segregate blacks and whites as long as it remained separate but equal. For example, there was a separate school for blacks, and a separate school for whites. Schools were not separate but equal. Instead, they were separate and unequal. African American schools typically did not have a heater, and schoolchildren often had to sit two or more to a desk. In contrast, white schools had all the basic necessities, and were much fancier. Even restaurants were separate and unequal. Some even denied service to African Americans on no rational basis other than the fact that they were black. Eventually however, Jim Crow laws were challenged in court and, after much fighting, civil rights activists finally succeeded, and schools became desegregated.
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In addition to your point of segregation, Blacks at the time had also been harshly treated and beaten. The majority of people belonging to WASP held a mutual agreement of blacks being inferior than them and therefore treated them as such, as if the Black people had done something to personally offend them when they actually haven't. You mention that Jim Crow laws states that there'll be segregation but equality as well, which would be contradictory. Whenever one thinks of segregation in any case, siblings, the two chairs at the desk, people's kidneys, racial differences, nothing is really the same or treated the exact same. There'll always be a slight difference, 1 more piece of grain in one of the plates, 3 more nails hammered into one of the chairs, mutated cells that make up a person's kidneys, or people's opinions when it comes to people of different races, they won't ever be the same nor equal.
ReplyDeleteYour post clearly explains the Jim Crow segregation laws and how the mindset during the time was that facilities were "separate but equal." This phrase came from the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling, which ensued after Homer Plessy, who was part black, sat in a whites-only railroad car in Louisiana. I actually had the opportunity to see Plessy's grave while in New Orleans, and find his courage admirable for standing up to segregationists even when he didn't visibly appear black.
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