JIM CROW LAWS
1880s to 1960
AMERICAN HISTORY FROM THE
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE
Jim Crow was a
character in an old
song who was revived
by a white comedian
called Daddy Rice. Rice
used the character to
make fun of black
people and the way
that they spoke. The
term Jim Crow came to
be used as an insult
against black people.
“WHITE ONLY”
JIM CROW IN AMERICA AFTER
THE CIVIL WAR
White citizen
league barring
black voters
Harper’s Weekly
magazine 10-31-1874
“One Vote Less”
Taking Away the Vote
The laws proved very effective. In Mississippi,
fewer than 9,000 of the 147,000 voting-age
African Americans were registered after 1890.
In Louisiana, where more than 130,000 black
voters had been registered in 1896, the
number had plummeted to 1,342 by 1904.
Poll Tax Receipt
Jim Crow Songbook
Advertising Cards
JIM CROW LAWS
“Separate but Equal”
Transportation, Hospitals, Prisons,
Schools, Restaurants, Buses,
Juvenile Delinquents, Barbers,
Cemeteries, Parks, the Circus,
Housing, & Telephone booths!
“It shall be unlawful for a negro and
white person to play together or in
company with each other in any game
of cards or dice, dominoes or
checkers.”
—Birmingham, Alabama, 1930
“Marriages are void when one
party is a white person and the
other is possessed of one-eighth or
more negro, Japanese, or Chinese
blood.”
—Nebraska, 1911
“Separate free schools shall be
established for the education of
children of African descent; and it shall
be unlawful for any colored child to
attend any white school, or any white
child to attend a colored school.”
—Missouri, 1929
“All railroads carrying passengers in the
state (other than street railroads) shall
provide equal but separate
accommodations for the white and colored
races, by providing two or more passenger
cars for each passenger train, or by dividing
the cars by a partition, so as to secure
separate accommodations.”
—Tennessee, 1891
Buses All passenger stations in this state
operated by any motor transportation company
shall have separate waiting rooms or space and
separate ticket windows for the white and
colored races. Alabama
Toilet Facilities, Male Every employer of white or
negro males shall provide for such white or negro
males reasonably accessible and separate toilet
facilities. Alabama
Theaters
Restaurants All persons
licensed to conduct a
restaurant, shall serve
either white people
exclusively or colored
people exclusively and
shall not sell to the two
races within the same
room or serve the two
races anywhere under the
same license. Georgia
Department
Stores
1956
Water Fountains
Early Klan
Image
KKK robe and
hood
KKK parade in Washington
Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968
“I Have a
Dream”
I Have a Dream
I am happy to join with you today in what will go
down in history as the greatest demonstration
for freedom in the history of our nation.
I Have a Dream
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose
symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the
Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous
decree came as a great beacon light of hope
to millions of Negro slaves who had been
seared in the flames of withering injustice. It
came as a joyous daybreak to end the long
night of their captivity.
I Have a Dream
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not
free. One hundred years later, the life of the
Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of
segregation and the chains of discrimination. One
hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely
island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of
material prosperity. One hundred years later, the
Negro is still languished in the corners of
American society and finds himself an exile in his
own land. And so we've come here today to
dramatize a shameful condition. . . .
I Have a Dream
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise
up and live out the true meaning of its creed:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of
Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit
down together at the table of brotherhood.
I Have a Dream
I have a dream that one day even the state of
Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression,
will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and
justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one
day live in a nation where they will not be judged
by the color of their skin but by the content of
their character.
I have a dream today!
I Have a Dream
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama,
with its vicious racists, with its governor
having his lips dripping with the words of
"interposition" and "nullification" -- one day
right there in Alabama little black boys and
black girls will be able to join hands with little
white boys and white girls as sisters and
brothers.
I have a dream today!
I Have a Dream
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be
exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be
made low, the rough places will be made
plain, and the crooked places will be made
straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed and all flesh shall see it together.“
Isaiah
40:4-5
Assassination April 4th, 1968
I Have a Dream
. . . From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom
ring, when we let it ring from every village and
every hamlet, from every state and every city, we
will be able to speed up that day when all of
God's children, black men and white men, Jews
and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be
able to join hands and sing in the words of the
old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Rosa Parks 1913 - 2005
Rosa Parks, age 42 in 1955
Rosa Parks & MLK
Rosa Parks
lived to age
92