The Jim Crow Laws and Racism in United States History (2 page)

Black Codes denied African Americans the right to enter schools, theaters, hotels, and other public facilities. Black Codes all but forced freedmen back to plantations. A South Carolina law prohibited black people from taking any job other than agricultural or domestic work, unless they obtained a special license from the local judge. That license could cost from ten to one hundred dollars—a fortune for a postwar worker. A South Carolina code stated that, in contracts, “persons of color shall be known as servants and those with whom they contract shall be known as masters.”
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In Opelousas, Louisiana, African Americans needed written permission from an employer to enter the city. No freedman could rent or keep a house there unless employed by a white person who would be responsible for his or her conduct. Each January, Mississippi required blacks to have written evidence of employment for the coming year. A laborer leaving his or her job before the end of the harvest season could forfeit any wages already earned for the year. He or she could also be arrested by any white person. Many Southern states had vagrancy laws; blacks who had no employer could be arrested. If they lacked money to pay a fine, they could be sent to work off the debt at a local farm. Apprenticeship laws produced a labor supply of young black workers for white planters. Laws allowed judges to bind black orphans or those with parents deemed unfit to white farmers.

In 1866, the United States government passed the Civil Rights Act. This law gave all citizens rights, regardless of race. Blacks could now make and enforce contracts, own and sell property, and file lawsuits in court. President Johnson vetoed the bill, but both houses of Congress overrode his veto. It became law.

Congress extended the life of a major agency over another Johnson veto. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, tried to ease the transition of former slaves to free life. It provided food, shelter, medical care, and education. The bureau set up more than four thousand schools throughout the South. It also sent hundreds of agents to help blacks find jobs. Despite success in establishing schools, the undermanned Freedmen’s Bureau was short-lived. Few agents had the ability or knowledge to deal with freedmen’s problems. The bureau was disbanded in 1872.

Reconstruction

In 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which divided the South into five military zones, each under a major general. President Johnson vetoed the bill, but Congress once again overrode his veto. The purpose of the Reconstruction Act was to supervise the return of Southern states to the Union. In theory, the act would allow for federal officers to help set up new governments for the South and to make sure that the civil rights of the former slaves were protected as they made the transition to freedom.

Under the Reconstruction Act, new elections would be held. Black men could vote in these elections. After the elections, Southern states would draw up new constitutions that were acceptable to Congress. The new state constitutions would have to allow blacks to vote. Only then could a former Confederate state re-enter the Union. Interestingly, despite this requirement, some Northern states at the time also refused to allow blacks the right to vote.

Not all white men, most of whom had fought in the Confederate Army, re-registered to vote. Some, in fact, were not permitted to do so. As a result, 703,000 blacks registered in Southern states, compared with only 660,000 whites. Blacks formed the majority of voters in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi.

Although whites tried to stop blacks from exercising this newly gained right, the large black registration to vote showed results. Men who had been slaves just a few years earlier became legislators. In some states, they even became lieutenant governors or secretaries of their states. Sixteen African Americans were elected to Congress. In 1870, Mississippi’s Hiram Revels became the first black U.S. senator. Four years later, fellow Mississippian Blanche K. Bruce joined him.

Revels, Bruce, and most other blacks joined the Republican party. This was the party of Abraham Lincoln, the president who had freed the slaves. Some whites in the South also joined the Republicans. They became known as scalawags. White Southerners who remained loyal to the Democratic party despised the Republicans.

The Reconstruction era provided for more than black votes. Congress, fearing that the Supreme Court might declare the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, introduced the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. This amendment granted full citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including blacks. Southern states would have objected to this amendment. However, those states had not yet been readmitted into the Union. The Republican-controlled Congress would not allow states to reenter until they agreed to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Seven years later, the 1875 Civil Rights Act forbade discrimination in hotels, railways, theaters, and other private businesses providing public services. Those who did not comply faced serious fines and prison terms.

Ku Klux Klan

On Christmas Eve, 1865, six young men in Pulaski, Tennessee, formed a club called the Ku Klux Klan. Southern supporter Claude Bowers claimed, “the Klan was organized for the protection of women, property, civilization itself.”
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Because Southern whites could no longer legally dominate blacks, the Ku Klux Klan attempted to do so with fear.

Soon, the Tennessee club spread throughout the South. Hooded night riders dressed up like ghosts spread “
a nameless terror
among Negroes, poor whites,” and Republicans.
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By 1870, other similar organizations had formed. Raiders burned black schools and churches. They whipped or murdered African Americans and their white allies. They threatened blacks who tried to register to vote or demanded civil rights.

Klansmen attacked for a variety of reasons. In 1869, they lynched (killed) a freedman and his wife who were accused of “resenting a blow from his employer.”
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A black man named Andrew Flowers was whipped in 1870 after defeating a white candidate in an election. Flowers commented, “They said they had nothing particular against me, that they didn’t dispute I was a very good fellow . . . but they did not intend any nigger to hold office in the United States.”
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Opponents of the Klan fought back. Many of the men from Blount County in northern Alabama had fought for the Union in the Civil War. After the war, these veterans formed an anti-Klan organization. They threatened retaliation unless Klan members stopped whipping Union sympathizers and burning African-American properties.

In 1871, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan act, or Force Bill. It gave the president the authority to use federal troops against the Klan. It made violent acts by the Klan and other terrorist groups punishable under federal law. This meant that juries composed of Unionists, not sympathetic white Southerners, would determine the Klan members’ innocence or guilt. Although the anti-Klan laws led to only a few hundred prosecutions, the Ku Klux Klan was stopped—at least temporarily.

The End of Reconstruction

Most Southern whites resented Reconstruction. Some historians later referred to the period as “The Tragic Era.”
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By the mid-1870s, the North was growing tired of military rule over the former Confederacy. Besides, Northern industrialists wanted Southern markets and trade. They believed business could thrive better if the South were not under military rule.

In 1876, the presidential election led to changes in the South. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio, ran against Samuel Tilden, the Democratic governor of New York. At first, it appeared that the Democrat had won. Tilden had 4,287,670 popular votes, compared with 4,035,924 for Hayes. However, the winning candidate needed a majority of electoral votes. Tilden was one electoral vote short.

By this time, the former Confederate states had rejoined the Union. Federal troops remained only in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. All three states at first gave majorities to Tilden. But Republican-heavy election boards canceled many Democratic votes in those states. The boards declared Hayes the winner in all three. Democrats protested this apparent fraud.

Congress created a special election panel to determine the winner. At first, the panel was made up of seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and one independent. Shortly before the panel was to meet, the independent resigned. A Republican replaced him. The panel’s vote followed party lines. Rutherford Hayes became the nineteenth president.

Southern Democrats reportedly struck a deal. In exchange for not contesting the election further, Hayes would withdraw the remaining troops from the South. Whether or not there actually was a deal, Democrats kept silent and Hayes withdrew the troops.
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Without the federal troops, Southern blacks had little protection. Southern whites who referred to themselves Redeemers began to take over power. They hoped to restore the South to what it once was—a society divided by race in which the whites had all the power and blacks were forced to carry out the whites’ will. After the end of Reconstruction, life in the South became a caste system. Birth determined destiny. The most educated and accomplished black person would rank lower than the poorest white.

In 1883, the United States Supreme Court ruled the 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. It declared that the Fourteenth Amendment did not allow Congress to pass laws prohibiting discrimination in privately owned businesses. John Harlan, a former slave owner, cast the only dissenting vote. Harlan wrote that the decision of his eight colleagues reduced the Fourteenth Amendment to “splendid baubles, thrown out to delude those who deserved fair and generous treatment at the hands of the nation.”
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Well-known African-American writer and activist Frederick Douglass declared the ruling a disaster. He feared it would leave blacks with no legal defense: “They can put [an African American] in a smoking car or baggage car . . . take him or leave him from all places of amusement or instruction, without the least fear that the National Government will interfere for the protection of his liberty.”
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For the most part, the governments of Southern states lived up to Douglass’s fears. The age of Jim Crow would soon be under way.

Chapter 3

LIFE UNDER JIM CROW

Traveling performer Thomas “Daddy” Rice needed a new act for his 1820s show. One day, he saw a raggedly dressed elderly black man dancing. Rice borrowed the man’s clothes, blackened his own face, and then performed a ridiculous shuffling dance. Daddy Rice sang, “Wheelabout and turn about and jump just so, every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.”
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Rice’s act was a crude mockery of blacks. But white audiences in both the South and the North made the act a huge success. Soon the term
Jim Crow
, referring to African Americans, became part of America’s vocabulary.

“Jim Crow” laws passed in the late 1800s greatly limited blacks’ freedom. After a while, the term
Jim Crow
became more than a set of laws. It referred to a way of life that was full of limitations for African Americans. In some ways, these humiliations were as bad as slavery.

“Colored Water and White Water”

In 1900, 10 million whites and 6 million blacks shared the eleven states that made up the former Confederate South. They saw and worked with each other every day. But in some respects, they might as well have lived on different planets.

Jim Crow laws separated blacks from whites in public transportation, schools, hospitals, and orphanages. Even death did not end this segregation. Blacks had separate funeral homes and separate cemeteries.

Signs reading “white only” or “colored only” proclaimed Jim Crow facilities everywhere. They showed up in washrooms, parks, hotels, and restaurants. In some places, such as post offices or banks, whites and blacks shared facilities. However, blacks had to wait until whites were finished before they could be served. The Reverend Ernest Whitehead commented, “We had colored fountains to drink out of, and white fountains. We had colored water and white water.”
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Houses of worship, which had often been segregated in both the North and the South in the years before the Civil War, especially reflected the racial divisions of the Jim Crow era. A white deacon in a Mississippi church saw an unknown black man in the church building. “Boy, what you doin’ in there?” he asked. “Don’t you know this is a white church?”

“Boss, I only just got here to mop up the floor,” the black man answered.

The white man thought a minute. “Well, that’s all right then,” he answered. “But don’t let me catch you prayin.”
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“There Were to Be
No
Victories”

Life in the South had become a caste system. Anyone who was born black, no matter how high the person’s education or abilities, had fewer rights than the poorest white. “We came to know that whatever we had was always inferior,” noted author Pauli Murray. “We came to understand that no matter how neat and clean, how law abiding churchgoing and moral . . . it made no essential difference in our own place.”
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