WEBVTT - What Were Jim Crow Laws? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.440 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:10.600 brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. Today's episode speaks frankly but 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:15.079 non graphically about racial violence. For the better part of 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:17.960 a century, American people of color lived under the burden 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:20.880 of what are now known as Jim Crow Laws. This 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:24.720 racist system of segregation, mainly of black people from white people, 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.480 affected virtually every sector of American life and reached far 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:30.800 beyond the South, where it was best known and most 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.880 harshly practiced. Jim Crow Laws and the deep wounds that 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:37.640 they inflicted on American society are not relegated to the 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:41.600 past tense. Their legacy is still felt in many ways today. 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:46.040 We spoke with Stephen Barry, a professor of American culture 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:48.519 at the University of Michigan and the author of the 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:52.320 Jim Crow Routine, Everyday Performances of Race, civil Rights, and 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:56.920 Segregation in Mississippi. He said Jim Crow was about so 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:00.160 much more than laws. It really was an all encompass 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:05.720 system that involved political practices, economic practices, social practices, cultural practices. 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:09.000 Some of that was about legal things, but some of 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.160 it wasn't. One of the challenges why Jim Crow often 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:14.880 seems like it's in the past. People tend to think that, oh, 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:16.560 it was a few laws, and we got rid of 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.560 segregation laws and we got the Voting Rights Act, so 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:24.080 that must have taken care of it. It didn't. These 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:27.640 laws weren't named after a real life person. Jim Crow 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.000 was a fictional character in a minstrel show representation of 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:35.160 a black man and exaggerated, stereotyped and racist representation, played 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:37.480 by a white man on stage in black face in 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:41.160 the early eighteen hundreds. This character was a hit with 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:45.119 many audiences, and by ninety eight the term Jim Crow 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:49.400 had become a racial epithet. Estates began passing laws to 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:51.640 restrict the rights of slaves freed at the end of 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:54.440 the Civil War. The laws came to be known as 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:59.640 Jim Crow laws. The Emancipation Proclamation of eighteen sixty three 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.760 freed all slaves from states that had ceded from the Union, 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.440 and in the following years three amendments to the U. 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:10.080 S Constitution gave former slaves rights. Thirteenth in eighteen sixty 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:14.200 five abolished slavery, the fourteenth in eighteen sixty eight guaranteed 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.680 equal protection to all citizens, and the fifteenth in eighteen 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.359 seventy guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race, color, 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:25.600 or previous condition of servitude. The South, coping with its 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:27.680 loss in the Civil War and what it felt was 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.800 punishment meeted out by the U S government, responded by 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.960 enacting a series of laws over several years to severely 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.440 restrict the rights that had been granted to black people. 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:39.959 These laws were said to be enacted for many reasons, 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:44.200 but the simplest explanation is this they aimed to maintain 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.280 white people's claim to first class status in American society 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.600 and to keep black people a second class citizens. Here 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.760 are a few early examples of these laws. In eighteen 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.600 sixty six, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill requiring separate 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.280 schools for black and white people. Between eighteen sixty six 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.080 and nineteen fifty five, Tennessee passed twenty Jim Crow laws, 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:11.120 including ones that outlawed misagenation and required segregation in public accommodations. 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.839 In eighteen seventy seven, the new constitution of the State 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.919 of Georgia included requirements the primary schools be segregated, and 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:22.200 it established a separate university for black people. It also 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.200 instituted a poll tax, which disproportionately affected poor black people, 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.680 effectively stripping them of the right to vote. Laws like 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.040 these kept black people from voting and thereby from having 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:37.360 a say in governance. It barred them from holding public office, 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.160 thus slanting the justice system against them. It restricted them socially, 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:45.280 requiring Black people to use different phone booths, drinking fountains, restrooms, 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:49.200 and so on. It's stymied them economically, and in all 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:54.520 prohibited them from gaining equal footing with white citizens by themselves. 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:58.360 The Jim Crow laws were devastating, but as Barry points out, 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.200 the legal aspect of Jim Crow was only part of 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:05.280 the problem. Black people were also subjected to widespread violence 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.520 and murder, implicitly condoned by much of white society and 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:12.720 rarely prosecuted, that continued well into the twentieth century. The 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.440 Ku Klux Klan, originally a club for Confederate veterans, was 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.840 born in the aftermath of the Civil War and has 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:24.200 terrorized black people for decades. In the Equal Justice Initiative 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:28.120 released a report called Lynching in America, confronting the legacy 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.679 of racial terror. It documented in the period between eighteen 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:37.080 seventy seven and nineteen fifty, almost four thousand lynchings. From 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:41.400 that report quote racial terror. Lynching was a tool used 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:45.080 to enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation, a tactic 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:49.360 for maintaining racial control by victimizing the entire African American community, 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.640 not merely punishment of an alleged perpetrator for a crime. 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:58.160 Barry explained that the fears, frustrations, and injustices created by 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:02.440 these laws and this violence seeped into everyday life. He said, 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.839 there's this tendency to think of both Jim Crow specifically 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.400 and racism more broadly as being this overt form that 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.440 looks like the KKK, that looks like a cross burning, 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:15.920 that looks like dramatic acts of violence. Sometimes it is that, 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.000 but often it's much more subtle. It's in the air 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.920 that we breathe and the water that we drink. Up 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:25.320 until eight Jim Crow laws were limited to state and 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:29.560 local regulations, but in a landmark case that year, the U. S. 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:33.840 Supreme Court codified the laws nationally. In Plus e versus Ferguson, 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:39.160 the court upheld the Louisiana Separate Car Act. Of this act, 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:43.320 also known as the Louisiana Railways Accommodation Act required railways 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:47.200 to quote provide equal but separate accommodations for white people 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:50.880 and people of color. Unsuccessful challenges to this law brought 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:53.760 it to the Supreme Court in Plessy versus Ferguson, and 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.560 in their decision, the Court held up the constitutionality of 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.040 states segregation laws, which opened the door for even more 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:04.960 restrictive Jim Crow laws in the coming years across the country. 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.480 These included one that passed in Arkansas in three stating 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:12.320 that it was unlawful for white prisoners to be handcuffed 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.760 or chained to black prisoners, and one from nineteen eleven 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:18.880 in Nebraska which stated that marriages would be void if 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.640 one person was white and one was one eighth or 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:26.279 more black, Japanese or Chinese, and one from nineteen twenty 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.640 six in Atlanta that stated the black barbers couldn't serve 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:34.920 white women or girls. In Californian ninety four, the state's 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:38.000 constitution was amended to strip voting rights from anyone quote 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:40.280 who shall not be able to read the Constitution in 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:43.720 the English language and write his name. Remember that under 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.600 these laws, even basic schooling wasn't necessarily available to people 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:51.120 of color and On top of all of this violence 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:55.880 and lynchings, continued pockets of resistance to Jim Crow formed 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.279 from time to time, Barry says, especially after Black soldiers 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:01.679 returned home from World War One and World War Two 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:05.240 and pressed for equal treatment, but the system of oppression 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:09.119 remained strong. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, a white 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.679 mob and Blakely Georgia lynched William Little in nineteen nineteen 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.880 for refusing to take off his uniform after returning home 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:21.160 from World War One. Barry said African Americans always challenged 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.400 the system. They always pushed back. Sometimes it came just 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.760 in terms of teaching your children how you survive this system. 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.000 Not only we want you to know these rules so 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:32.440 that you're safe, but we also want you to know 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:36.080 that you're just pretending. The poet Lawrence Dunbar referred to 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.200 this as we wear the mask. The idea was, you're 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:41.480 wearing this mask and pretending to go through the rules, 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:43.840 but you're learning that that's not who you really are, 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:46.960 that you're not really inferior, even though you're following those 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.840 rules that are meant to tell you that. Three years 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:54.920 after the end of World War Two, on July, President 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:58.880 Harry s. Truman desegregated the military, which was perhaps one 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.080 of the first real steps towards the downfall of Jim 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:04.680 Crow Laws. It wasn't until nineteen fifty four Supreme Court 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.600 decision in Brown versus the Board of Education, though, which 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:10.160 ruled that separating school children on the basis of race 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:14.200 was unconstitutional, thus overturning the idea of separate but equal 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:17.560 expressed in the Plessy decision about sixty years earlier. The 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:21.840 Jim Crow Laws were dealt a fatal blow. Barry explained, 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.720 World War Two was a huge turning point. People are 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.760 always pushing back and fighting. There's this constant struggle, but 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:30.080 it became more visible then, and you do get this 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:34.360 mobilization in the mid nineteen fifties. The struggle to free 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.160 black Americans from Jim Crow had more setbacks to come. 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:39.680 The Cold War was a hard time for anyone to 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:42.640 question American values for fear of being branded a communist. 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.400 But the turbulent nineteen sixties, with the full throated protests 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:48.920 of the Freedom Rides of nineteen sixty one and the 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.439 passage of the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty eight, 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.360 helped solidify the idea that Jim Crow laws were a 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.240 thing of the past, and that segregation had no place 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:02.800 in American society of the Gerald M. Packard in American Nightmare, 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.280 The History of Jim Crow wrote that quote Jim Crow 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.840 was a disease that once permeated every fissure and fold 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:14.600 of American society. Yet in the past few years voter 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:17.920 suppression measures have been introduced by the hundreds. Black people 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.640 in America today are incarcerated at a rate of more 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:24.040 than five times that of white people, and as of 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.720 investigative journalism by The Guardian found the black citizens and 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.760 black men ages fifteen to thirty four years in particular, 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.560 are disproportionately the victims of deadly forced by police officers. 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:38.240 Young black men made up just two percent of the 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:42.040 population but accounted for fifteen percent of deaths perpetrated by 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:44.920 the police. And we're nine times more likely to die 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:49.040 in police instance than any other demographic. Jim Crow Laws 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:57.640 may be dead, Jim Crow, though, is not. Today's episode 0:09:57.640 --> 0:09:59.880 was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Klang. 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.120 For more on listen lots of other topics, visit how 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.880 Stuff Works dot com. Brainstuff is a production of I 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:07.520 Heart Radio. For more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.280 the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:11.200 to your favorite shows.