The Civil Rights Act of 1875, introduced by Charles Sumner and Benjamin F. Butler, established a guarantee that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous state of servitude, was entitled to equal treatment in public housing such as inns, public transportation, theaters, and other resorts. This law has had little effect in practice. [37] An 1883 Supreme Court decision ruled that the law was unconstitutional in some respects, stating that Congress did not have control over individuals or corporations. Since the white Democrats of the South formed a strong electoral bloc in Congress because they had disproportionate power in distributing seats to the entire population of the South (even though hundreds of thousands had been disenfranchised), Congress did not pass another civil rights bill until 1957. [38] From 1887 to 1892, nine states, including Louisiana, passed laws requiring the separation of public transportation such as streetcars and railroads. Although they differ in detail, most of these laws require equal provisions for black passengers and impose fines and even jail terms on railroad employees who do not enforce them. Five of the states also provided for fines or prison sentences for passengers who tried to sit in cars whose race excluded them. The Louisiana Separate Car Act was passed in July 1890. To “promote passenger comfort,” the railroads were to provide “equal but separate accommodation for white and colorful races” on roads traveling through the state. At home, when the new Eisenhower administration downplayed civil rights, the federal courts took the lead. In 1950, the NAACP decided to question the concept of “separate but equal.” Black parents in South Carolina and Virginia, who were fed up with poor and overcrowded schools, filed a lawsuit to take their children to white schools.
Both times, the federal courts upheld racial segregation. Both times, the parents appealed. In a similar case, the Delaware Supreme Court ordered a district to admit black students to white schools until adequate classrooms could be provided to blacks. This time, the district appealed. Although they were supported by both races, these groups barely stopped the flood. The 1920s and 30s gave birth to new Jim Crow laws. Until 1944, a Swede visiting the South declared racial segregation so complete that whites did not see blacks except when they were served by them. As African-American artists, musicians, and writers gradually burst into the white-dominated world of American art and culture after 1890, African-American athletes faced obstacles. In 1900, white opposition to African-American boxers, baseball players, track and field athletes, and basketball players kept them separate and limited in what they could do. However, their athletic skills in purely African-American teams and sporting events could not be denied, and one by one, barriers to African-American participation in all major sports began to plummet, especially after the end of World War II, as many African Americans who had served in the military refused to tolerate racial segregation any longer. The poverty of the Great Depression only compounded resentment, with an increase in lynchings, and after World War II, even black veterans returning home faced segregation and violence. At the end of the Civil War in 1865 and until 1876, during the reconstruction period, the federal government took a positive and aggressive stance when it enacted new federal laws that protected the civil rights of African Americans who had previously been slaves.
These new laws included the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. These decrees ensured that everyone, regardless of race, color or previous state of servitude, was entitled to the same use of public accommodation facilities, which included inns, hotels, motels, public transport such as buses and wagons, theatres and other places of public entertainment. In 1948, President Harry Truman ordered integration into the military, and in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional and ended the era of “separate but equal” education. On May 17, 1954, just before noon, the nine justices of the Supreme Court announced their unanimous decision in the four cases now consolidated as Brown v. Education Committee. They believed that the racial segregation of children in public schools, even in schools of equal quality, harmed minority children. “Separate educational institutions are inherently unequal.” This practice violates the 14th Amendment and must stop. For some, the verdict seemed like the fruitful end of a long struggle. In fact, the fight had only just begun.
Stewart was wrong. Over the next 20 years, blacks would lose almost everything they had gained. Worse still, denying their rights and freedoms would be legalized by a series of racist laws, the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow label worked in conjunction with Jim Crow laws (black codes). When most people think of Jim Crow, they think of laws (not Jim Crow etiquette) that exclude blacks from public transportation and facilities, juries, jobs, and neighborhoods. The passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments gave blacks the same legal protections as whites. After 1877 and the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, the southern and border states began to restrict black freedoms. Unfortunately for blacks, the Supreme Court helped protect blacks constitutionally with the infamous Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896), which legitimized Jim Crow laws and the Jim Crow way of life. “Jump Jim Crow” was the name of a minstrel routine created around 1830 by Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice. He portrayed the Jim Crow character primarily as a stupid joker who relied on and reinforced contemporary negative stereotypes of African Americans. “Jim Crow” became a pejorative term for blacks and, in the late 19th century, became an identifier for the laws that restored white supremacy in the American South after Reconstruction. The degrading nature symbolically rationalized segregation and the denial of equal opportunities. In 2013, Roberts Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, removed the requirement in the Voting Rights Act that southern states must obtain federal approval to change their voting policies. Several states immediately made changes to their laws that restricted access to voting. [72] In some cases, progressive measures to combat voter fraud, such as South Carolina`s eight box bill, targeted black and white voters who were illiterate because they could not follow instructions. [29] While the separation of African Americans from the general white population was legalized and formalized during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s), it also became commonplace.
