Jim Crow a statue or law created to enforce segregation in such places as schools, buses, and hotels

Photo 1 "Every Saturday morning there was a matinee at these movies, and we would pay 15 cents... but we were separated; we went upstairs, the white kids went downstairs."--Willie Wallace, Natchez, MS

Photo 2 The "Jim Crow" figure was a fixture of the minstrel shows that toured the South; a white man made up as a black man sang and mimicked stereotypical behavior in the name of comedy.

Photo3 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 1939: "Colored" water fountains were fixtures throughout the South during the Jim Crow era. Photo by Russell Lee.

Photo 4 The Rex Theater for Colored People, Leland, Mississippi, 1939: Although many motion picture houses admitted both black and white patrons, they did so by segregating the audience. In such movie houses the blacks were seated upstairs in the balcony. A few theaters, like the Rex, completely separated the races, however, playing to all black audiences. The Rex was probably a black-owned theater.

Sample of Jim Crow Laws EDUCATION Florida: The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately. Kentucky: The children of white and colored races committed to reform schools shall be kept entirely separate from each other. Mississippi: Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school. North Carolina: School textbooks shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

Sample of Jim Crow Laws ENTERTAINMENT Georgia: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or under the same license. Georgia: It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race. Louisiana: All circuses, shows, and tent exhibitions, to which the attendance of more than one race is invited shall provide not less than two ticket offices and not less than two entrances. Virginia: Any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or place of public entertainment which is attended by both white and colored persons shall separate the white race and the colored race.

Literacy Test Jim Crow Literacy Test

Jim Crow Jim Crow video clip 5 minutes Please be aware that there are some disturbing images and scenes in this video segment.

Billie Holiday The song, "Strange Fruit," written by Lewis Allen and made famous by the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday, is a mournful description of a lynching in the American South. At the time of the song's initial recording in 1939, music was rarely the venue for such a direct social protest.

Strange Fruit Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood on the root, Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree. Pastoral scenes of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and twisted mouth, The scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Noose [A noose says] says, 'get out of here; we hate you; you're in danger. It's another way of saying nigger. It's another way of saying, 'We don't want you here.' Rita Smith-Wade-El, psychology professor and director of African American studies at Millersville University

Lynching The song is about the lynching of a black man. Columbia denied the song so she recorded it under a different label Commodore. This is a picture of two men getting lynched that the songwriter had seen that inspired him to write the poem.

Lynching In the US Video clip including Strange Fruit