JIM CROW LAWS 1880s to 1960

AMERICAN HISTORY FROM THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE

Jim Crow was a character in an old song who was revived by a white comedian called Daddy Rice. Rice used the character to make fun of black people and the way that they spoke. The term Jim Crow came to be used as an insult against black people.

“WHITE ONLY” JIM CROW IN AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

White citizen league barring black voters Harper’s Weekly magazine

“One Vote Less”

Taking Away the Vote The laws proved very effective. In Mississippi, fewer than 9,000 of the 147,000 voting-age African Americans were registered after In Louisiana, where more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in 1896, the number had plummeted to 1,342 by 1904.

Poll Tax Receipt

Jim Crow Songbook

Advertising Cards

JIM CROW LAWS

“Separate but Equal”

Transportation, Hospitals, Prisons, Schools, Restaurants, Buses, Juvenile Delinquents, Barbers, Cemeteries, Parks, the Circus, Housing, & Telephone booths!

“It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers.” —Birmingham, Alabama, 1930

“Marriages are void when one party is a white person and the other is possessed of one-eighth or more negro, Japanese, or Chinese blood.” —Nebraska, 1911

“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.” —Missouri, 1929

“All railroads carrying passengers in the state (other than street railroads) shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the cars by a partition, so as to secure separate accommodations.” —Tennessee, 1891

Buses All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races. Alabama

Toilet Facilities, Male Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities. Alabama

Theaters

Restaurants 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 serve the two races anywhere under the same license. Georgia

Department Stores 1956

Water Fountains

Early Klan Image

KKK robe and hood

KKK parade in Washington

Martin Luther King Jr

“I Have a Dream”

I Have a Dream I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

I Have a Dream Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

I Have a Dream But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition....

I Have a Dream I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I Have a Dream I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I Have a Dream I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

I Have a Dream I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.“ Isaiah 40:4-5

Assassination April 4 th, 1968

I Have a Dream... From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks, age 42 in 1955

Rosa Parks & MLK

Rosa Parks lived to age 92