BLACK PEOPLE IN THE USA
THE JIM CROW LAWS
UNTIL 1863 MOST BLACK PEOPLE
WERE SLAVES ...
BLACK PEOPLE HAD NOT CHOSEN TO
COME TO THE USA...
SLAVES
FREE LABOUR FOR PLANTATIONS
THEY WERE TAKEN FROM AFRICA
AGAINST THEIR WILL!
THE AFRICANS WERE TRANSPORTED IN
APPAULING CONDITIONS...
ONCE THEY ARRIVED IN THE USA THEY
WERE SOLD AS SLAVES...
THEY WERE SOLD TO WORK ON PLANTATIONS
IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
IN 1863 SLAVERY WAS ABOLISHED...
UNFORTUNATELY THE PROBLEMS FOR
AFRICAN-AMERICANS DID NOT END THERE...
In 1865 southerners
created BLACK CODES to
control and limit the freedom
of former slaves.
 In 1866 the codes were
suspended
CHANGES WERE MADE TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
WHICH GAVE HOPE FOR A BETTER LIFE...
1868
1870
Fourteenth Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment
Stated Black people had the
right to freedom and be
treated by law in the same
as White people.
Gave Black American adult
males the right to vote .
THE JIM CROW LAWS
WHAT WERE
THESE JIM
CROW
LAWS??
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE JIM CROW
LAWS WERE DESIGNED TO DO?
THE JIM CROW LAWS...
 Laws passed by the Southern
states between 1877 and the
mid-1960s.
The South wanted to keep control
over the Blacks
WHO WAS
JIM CROW???
1828 Thomas Dartmouth Rice
 Performed a song-and-dance routine
pretending he was a black man
 Made fun of black people
 stupid, lazy & unreliable
WATCH A CLIP FROM BIRTH OF A NATION
(1915) AND THE JAZZ SINGER (1928)...
WHILE WATCHING THE CLIPS THINK ABOUT HOW
THEY ARE PORTRAYING BLACK PEOPLE AND WHY THE
FILM STUDIOS DIDN’T HIRE BLACK PEOPLE.
SO WHAT WERE THE JIM CROW LAWS?
Jim Crow laws created two
separate societies:
one black, one white
This is called segregation
Under these laws, Black became
legally inferior to whites
Each Southern states had its own
Jim Crow Laws...
CAN YOU THINK HOW AND WHERE BLACK
AND WHITE PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE BEEN
KEPT SEPARATE OR SEGREGATED??
EXAMPLES...
Education
[The County Board of Education] shall provide schools of
two kinds; those for white children and those for colored
children. Texas
Theatres / Cinemas
Every person...operating...any
public hall, theatre, opera house,
motion picture show or any place
of public entertainment or public
assemblage which is attended by
both white and colored persons,
shall separate the white race and
the colored race and shall set
apart and designate...certain
seats therein to be occupied by
white persons and a portion
thereof , or certain seats
therein, to be occupied by
colored persons. Virginia
Barbers
No colored barber shall serve as a barber [to] white
women or girls. Georgia
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).
Intermarriage
All marriages between a white person and a negro, or
between a white person and a person of negro descent
to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever
prohibited. Florida
EVEN NOW SOME PEOPLE ARE AGAINST
INTERMARRIAGE
JIM CROW “ETIQUETTE”
A Black man not allowed to
offer to shake hands with a
White man or woman.
Not meant to eat together. If
did Whites to be served first
and a screen put between them.
JIM CROW “ETIQUETTE”
Blacks had to address Whites formally, while Whites could
call Black people by their first names.