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The beginning of the Jim Crow Laws
The Jim Crow Laws started with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation was Abraham's plan to eradicate all slavery. However, the southern part of the United States disagreed with Abe. So to solve their problems they went to war. This war is one of the most famous wars in all of U.S. history... The Civil War. -
The Civil War
The Civil War played a major part in the Jim Crow Laws. The war was fought to either end slavery or enforce it, that, depended on where you lived and what you believed. The North fought to end slavery and the South fought to enforce it. The war ended when the Supreme Court ruled slavery illeagal, but getting there took lots of time and thousands of lives lost. The North won the Civil War and slavery was outlawed, but that didn't mean the problem was solved. -
The Blues
Most experts of the Blues say it was born in the Mississippi Delta between 1898-1900. The Blues had its roots in other forms of black music that included African rhythyms, field hollers, jump-ups, spirituals, and church music. It soon became a distinct form by the turn of the century. It grew out of hard lives of black workers and sharecroppers. J.C. Handy (who made the blues popular) said that "The blues did not come from books. The blues were concieved by midwives with aching hearts." -
The Moore V. Dempsey Case
The Moore V. Dempsey case was a major legal victory for the NAACP. The case was about 12 black farmers who had been sentenced to death for allegedly killing some white people during the Elaine, Arkansas, riot in 1919. Some of the dead white people were probably shot on accident by other white people. They arrested over 700 blacks, sent over 67 to prison, and had those 12 farmers tried for murder by an all white jury. During the trial a mob surrounded the courthouse threatening to Lynch the jury. -
The Great Depression
In 1929, hard times came to the people through out the United States, especially the blacks. The price for cotton plunged from 18 cents to 6 cents a pound. 2/3 of about 1,000,000 black farmers earned nothing and went into debt. The jobs that blacks usually had were despratley sought out by white people. Some white people even started yelling and carrying signs saying, "Niggers back to the cotton fields. City jobs are for white men." And terrible things like that. -
Morgan V. Virgina
Irene Morgan, a black woman, boarded a bus in the spring of 1946. The bus was headed to Baltimore, Maryland from Virgina. She was told to sit in the back of the bus, as the Virgina state laws required. She argued that since the bus was an interstate bus the Virginia las didn't apply. She was arrested and fined $10. The NAACP argued that since the 1877 supreme court ruled it illeagal to forbid segregation, it was likewise illeagal to require it. -
Jackie Robinson
A major breakthrough of the color line in sports occurred when Jackie Robinson, a 28 year old African American baseball player and war veteran, was brought up from the minor leagues to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. At first many white people were super angry, even willing to kill. But many white people and almost all black people thought that the draft was long overdue. But a lot of whites and several MLB teams objected the draft and didn't want Jackie in the majors. It was a really rough time. -
Brown V. Board of Education
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unanimously that racial segregation in schools violated the Fourteenth Ammendment to the constitution, which says that no state may deny equal protection of the laws to any person within its juristiction. This decision declared that seperate educational facilitites for different raceswas inheritly unequal. Between 1938 and 1950 the Supreme Court chipped away at legalized segregation. BY the end of 1954, black and white kids were going to school together.
