The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    The strangest and most notable fact about Jim Crow’s career was that Jim Crow was not a person at all. In fact, Crow were racial and segregation state and local laws that were enforced after the Reconstruction period that withheld until 1965. The laws began in 1890 and held strong for seven and a half decades. These laws proved that African Americans were inferior to white people, and also stereotyped a disadvantage toward African Americans socially, economically and religiously. The strange career of Jim Crow became a way of life for a divided race in the Southern United States and which ultimately, led to the downfall of a constructed and powerful segregation.

    Jim Crow began his career as an offensive slang term toward a black man and became a law to separate the rights of black and white men. Jim Crow laws were passed in the North long before the Civil War in which white-supremacy ran rampant. Not only did this racial divide occur, but blacks were also brought to media. Newspapers around the Southern United States exposed blacks as a less superior race and oftentimes, even made up criminal crimes committed by the race. This law affected people everywhere. A black man could not work, eat or even marry in the same place as a white man. By 1944, the laws had become so extreme that a black man could not even be in a white man’s presence unless he was serving them.

           

The demise of the Jim Crow laws began in World War II where Hitler held supreme of the white race. The destruction of World War II started raising questions about the Democratic faith of society and what these laws really mean in the midst of the Great Depression. In 1948, President Harry Truman took action. He decided to enforce fair voting and hiring and to unite the armed forces, regardless of race. Although this did not end the war on race, it did start a very long road in which black people had equal rights.

Finally, in 1954, the Supreme Court Justices announced that the laws of Jim Crow and the segregation of races in public schools hurt African Americans to gain the full amount of education. Many people protested, but it was the final stepping stone in what became only the start of a very long struggle. Although we have come a long way from the Jim Crow laws in 1890, we still have a long way to go as far as race and stereotyping goes. Hopefully, society will continue to be able to put these ideas in the past and finally Jim Crow rest in peace.