While it is often thought that all white people in the South discriminated against blacks and fully supported the segregation laws now commonly known as the Jim Crow laws, this is not necessarily the case. Social pressures that motivate the political process are very different from today’s more familiar motivations that drive the economic process. The Jim Crow laws of the South disenfranchised black voters through a variety of means and therefore ensured that only white opinions were voiced in the political process. Just like today, though, an overwhelming majority of the white votes was not necessarily required in order to legally mandate racial segregation. If a minority of powerful white voters wanted to enforce segregation while other white people were kept from voting for a variety of reasons – no opinion, no awareness of the vote, or inability to get the time off work for their powerful landlord – the vote was easily swayed the way the minority voters wanted. This stranglehold on the rule of law was maintained throughout the South largely due to the determined oversight or even willing participation in practices designed to subdue the black population by the law enforcement officials appointed to protect their newly won rights of citizenship. It wasn’t until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that the problems of law enforcement in the South was truly recognized and reforms started designed to reduce the influence of political agendas on the practice of law.
The roots of the problem began with Reconstruction. To Lincoln, the first priority following war’s end was re-establishing the rule of law followed by rebuilding the infrastructure and economy and introduce measures designed to prevent the drafting of laws that would introduce racial discrimination into the legal code (Wills, 1992). However, Lincoln’s vision was subverted following his assassination by his successor Vice President Andrew Johnson. Just three years before taking oath as the new President of the United States, Johnson had told the citizens of Tennessee “I believe slaves should be in subordination and I will live and die so believing” (“Andrew Johnson”, 2007). Despite Johnson’s efforts to prevent it, Congress passed several Reconstruction Acts such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside” and no state can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (Amendment XIV). This same legislation made it possible for black men over the age of 21 to vote and to run for public office. Despite this attempt to protect black people in the South, this legislation was not able to prevent the passing and enforcement of the so-called Jim Crow laws that had police officials actually enforcing the removal of rights from legal citizens in response to political forces.
Jim Crow Laws and the means to defeat them were introduced as a result of the need for the white on black terrorist organization known as the Klu Klux Klan to go underground. Blacks were terrorized and threatened not vote and certainly not run for office. The horrific violence perpetrated by whites on blacks during this period has been described as “the most relentless and large-scale terrorism in American history” (McPherson, 1988: 75-77). What gave the Klan its strength and durability was the significant number of powerful people, including political officials, law enforcement agents, editors, ministers and soldiers, who appeared to be respectable citizens during the day but participated in these violent acts of terrorism by night. By 1868, the Klan was well-known for its practice of flogging, mutilating and lynching black people and their sympathizers as well as creating general chaos within the towns. It was in response to the activities of the Klan that the federal government passed new legislation that would become necessary during the Civil Rights Era. “Under the new federal law, Southerners lost their jurisdiction over the crimes of assault, robbery and murder and the president was authorized to declare martial law. Night riding and the wearing of masks were expressly prohibited” (“A Hundred Years” 2001).
By the mid-1870’s, Southerners had regained the necessary majority in state governments. The Southern majority quickly reversed many laws of the previous legislation particularly those pertaining to civil rights for blacks. The oppressive ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws made it illegal for a black man to speak to a white woman in public in many parts of the South. Black people were not permitted to attend public schools, use the same restrooms or other amenities as white people and were required to always provide white people with the right of way regardless of the circumstances. Although tested in the Supreme Court, these laws were upheld as long as equal facilities were made available for blacks. “The result was a system of segregation which was the law of the land for more than 80 years. This system was called ‘separate but equal,’ which was half true, everything was separate, but nothing was equal” (“A Hundred Years” 2001). These laws stayed on the books until the 1950’s.
The Civil Rights Movement started in 1955 with a few major events. One of these was the Montgomery bus boycott which proved to be highly successful in gaining public attention. It was instigated when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing the driver’s request to give up her seat to a white man, this act of civil disobedience became the spark that ignited the masses during the 1950’s and 1960’s in protesting the racial inequalities. On August 28 of that same year in Glendora, Mississippi, a young man named Emmitt Till was brutally beaten, shot and his body thrown into the river for having done nothing more sinister than whistle at a white woman. It had only been the year before, in 1954, that the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the previous practice of racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This was decided in the landmark case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Although the decision directly opposed the earlier 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case in which the ‘separate but equal’ segregation laws were deemed acceptable, the judges determined that ‘separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.’ While Martin Luther King Jr. and others were working on developing different methods of peaceful resistance to unfair laws, it took until September 1957 before nine black students attempted to enter the formerly all-white Central High School located in Little Rock, AR. They were blocked from entry on the explicit instructions of Governor Orval Faubus but these instructions, and the police force sent to enforce them, were overwhelmed by the federal troops and the National Guardsmen sent on behalf of the students by President Eisenhower. The students became known as the ‘Little Rock Nine’ (“Civil Rights”, 1998). These events set the stage for the decade-long movement that led to the Civil Rights Act. This high-profile and historic quest for human rights, led by Martin Luther King Jr. who was himself assassinated in pursuit of the cause, achieved world notice and also brought to light America’s racist segregation of non-white immigrants. Energized and encouraged by the successes of the civil rights movement, activists worked to reverse the discriminatory laws restricting the influx of darker-skinned peoples into the U.S. The Civil Rights Movement became a ‘stencil’ for human rights worldwide and revolution world wide.
Jim Crow segregation laws were banned by the 1964 Civil Rights Act causing segregation to become a thing of the dark past. Blacks now had social equality, at least in legal terms. The Civil Rights Act also prohibited discrimination in employment practices and the 1965 Voting Rights Act made the process to register to vote more accessible for blacks. Up until this point, numerous methods had been employed to restrict black voting including high (to the poverty-stricken black farmers) poll taxes and so-called ‘literacy tests administered only to black people and rarely passed based upon technicalities if nothing else. These and other ‘tricks’ were made illegal allowing all adult blacks the right and means to vote thereby giving them political equality. All other discriminatory laws were also banned in the 1960’s such as laws prohibiting inter-racial marriages and racist housing practices. By the end of the 1960s, the “Civil Rights Movement had achieved both social and political equality for blacks. This was a significant success” (“Civil Rights”, 1998).
Works Cited
- “Civil Rights Movement, The.” Theale Green Community School. Berkshire. (1998).
- “A Hundred Years of Terror” Southern Poverty Law Center. Montgomery, AL, 2001.
- “Amendment XIV” The United States Constitution Cornell Law School. 2009. Web.
- “Andrew Johnson.” Spartacus Educational. (2007).
- McPherson, James. “Reconstruction Reconsidered” (book review) The Atlantic Vol. 261, N. 4, (1988): pp 75-77.
- Wills, Gary. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Reshaped America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.