jim crow america’s post-reconstruction legacy. “jim crow” refers to laws, prejudices,...
TRANSCRIPT
• “Jim Crow” refers to laws, prejudices, stereotypes, and attitudes in society about African-Americans– Segregation, “separate but equal”– Lack of equal rights– African-Americans were not allowed to serve
on juries in some counties/states– Discrimination in voting
• Poll taxes, literacy tests, violence Blacks portrayed as unintelligent and animal-like
– Black men portrayed as dangerous to white women
– Discrimination in employment
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.
Sheet music cover illustration with caricatures of ragged African-American musicians and dancers. pub. C1847
1866: One of a number of highly racist posters issued as part of a smear campaign against PA Republican gubernatorial nominee John White Geary by supporters of
Democratic candidate Hiester Clymer. Indicative of Clymer's white-supremacy platform, the posters attack postwar Republican efforts to pass a constitutional amendment
enfranchising blacks. Artist: Reynolds NY
“They are rich, and want to make the Negro the Equal of the Poor White Man, and then rule them both.”
Another in a series of racist posters attacking Radical Republican exponents of black suffrage, issued during the 1866 PA gubernatorial race.
The most recognizable trademark in the world by 1900, Bull Durham tobacco ads and trading cards typically depicted caricatures of foolish looking or silly acting blacks to draw attention to its product. Each ad has a green bull somewhere in the image.
Two foolish looking black hunters have all the equipment for the hunt, but no match with which to light their cigarettes. The hunters are exaggerated images of blacks trying to imitate white people at sport.
Removing an African American from a Philadelphia Railway car--after the implementation of Jim Crow, the integration imposed by Reconstruction was stripped away by new laws.
Sign in Virginia, posted in the 1920s. This sign gives one origin of the term "Lynch law.“
Note the use of the word “justice.”
Rocky Ford, Mississippi: September 1925--Arrow (in red) points to the victim, JP Ivy, a timber cutter who was burned to death by a mob from Union and Lee Counties.
Ivy was accused of assaulting a white girl.
Illustration (1891) by I. Garland Penn. Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She raised her four orphaned brothers and then became a schoolteacher in Memphis, Tennessee, where she purchased and edited a newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech. Wells was an outspoken and courageous opponent of lynching.
Booker T. Washington
Thought that the key to equal rights was to prove to white society that blacks were “worthy” of respect. Believed in a slow, gradual approach to creating equality.
Helped to found the Tuskegee Institute
"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, Eyewitness Narrative, Natchez, MS
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 1939: "Colored" water fountains were fixtures throughout the South during the Jim Crow era.