A Picture Can Say 1,000 words… Especially During Reconstruction

Lynching

Execution by a mob of one individual who committed crimes/broke unwritten social laws Five or more persons taking the law into their own hands Mob assemblage without legal right acting to kill or injure people, depriving them the right to due process or equal protection Expression of the community’s will → tacit compliance with lynching= participation What Is Lynching?

Opposition to Reconstruction

5 White Supremacy Jim Crow, Intimidation and Fear Segregation

Jim Crow Laws

What were Jim Crow laws? From the 1880s into the 1960s, most American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for mingling with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep blacks and whites separated.

Minstrel Shows American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface Minstrel shows lampooned black people as ignorant, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, joyous, and musical.

Some Facilities that Were Separate:  Bus station waiting rooms and ticket windows  Railroad cars or coaches  Restaurants and lunch counters  Schools and public parks  Restrooms and water fountains  Sections of movie theaters  There were even separate cemeteries

Stetson Kennedy, the author of Jim Crow Guide, offered these simple rules that Blacks were supposed to observe in conversing with Whites:

Never assert or even intimate that a White person is lying. Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White person. Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class. Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence. Never curse a White person. Never laugh derisively at a White person. Never comment upon the appearance of a White female.

At the bus station, Durham, North Carolina, 1940.

Greyhound bus terminal, Memphis, Tennessee

A rest stop for bus passengers on the way from Louisville, Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee, with separate entrance for Blacks

A sign at bus station, Rome, Georgia

A highway sign advertising tourist cabins for Blacks, South Carolina

Cafe, Durham, North Carolina

Drinking fountain on the courthouse lawn, Halifax, North Carolina

Movie theater’s "Colored" entrance, Belzoni, Mississippi

The Rex theater for colored people, Leland, Mississippi. June 1937.

Restaurant, Lancaster, Ohio

Water cooler in the street car terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Sign above movie theater, Waco, Texas

Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee