Jim Crow and Segregation U.S. and Virginia History

Origins After Reconstruction, many southern states passed Jim Crow Laws – designed to legally separate black and white people in public places Voting and segregation laws were instigated throughout the South in order to keep blacks inferior to the white majority Intimidation and crimes (such as lynchings) were directed at black people in order to keep them subjugated

Plessy v. Ferguson African-Americans hoped that the courts would safeguard their rights In the Supreme Court case known as Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ruled that “separate but equal” did not violate the 14th amendment In other words, segregation was legal as long as blacks were still considered and treated as equal to whites However, black facilities (such as bathrooms and water fountains) were often inferior to white facilities

The Great Migration In response to the poor treatment in the South, many freedmen decided to leave their homes in search of a better life and better opportunities In what is known as the Great Migration, millions of black southerners migrated to the North and West in search of jobs and an escape from the poverty and discrimination of Jim Crow

Responses to Jim Crow Ida B. Wells, a journalist from Mississippi, famously wrote about the horrors of lynching in the black community She argued that lynchings often occurred to control or punish blacks who competed with whites for jobs, as opposed to just being used to punish black criminals (as was often claimed by whites) She was also one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Responses to Jim Crow cont. Booker T. Washington, a Virginian author and scholar, argued that the pathway to success for blacks was through patience and education While he accepted social segregation, he believed that if black people were able to educate and better themselves then segregation would eventually die out He founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a college that promotes the advancement of African-Americans

Responses to Jim Crow cont. Unlike Washington, W.E.B. Dubois advocated for immediate equality for African-Americans DuBois was the first black person to earn a doctorate from Harvard University, and argued that education for African-Americans was meaningless without equality Along with Ida B. Wells, he was one of the co-founders of the NAACP