Civil Rights- Jim Crow Laws

By melanie.0716

  • Ku Klux Klan

    The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

  • Black Codes

    Strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation

  • Jim Crow Laws Expand

    Big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them. This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

  • Isaiah Montgomery

    Formerly enslaved Isaiah Montgomery created the African American-only town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Montgomery recruited other former enslaved people to settle in the wilderness with him. Mound Bayou still exists today, and is still almost 100 percent Black.

  • Ida B. Wells

    Ida B. Wells was a Memphis teacher who became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a first-class train car designated for white people only. Wells traveled throughout the South to publicize her work and advocated for the arming of Black citizens.

  • Charlotte Hawkins Brown

    Brown became the first Black woman to create a Black school in North Carolina and through her education work became a fierce and vocal opponent of Jim Crow laws.

  • "Red Summer"

    A time where lynchings increased with at least 25 across the United States over several months.

  • The Great Migration

    With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South.

  • Brown vs. Board of Education

    The supreme court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of "separate-but-equal" education.

  • Civil Rights Act

    President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.