Jim Crow wasn’t real. Rather, he was a buffoon-like character from a song called “Jump Jim Crow”, written by a white minstrel named Thomas Rice. The song caricatured black culture and was received with enthusiasm by the white crowd. On the other hand, “Jim Crow Laws” were very real, aimed at separating blacks from whites, implemented after the Civil War. Until the Civil Rights Movement put an end to legal segregation, the Jim Crow Laws were supported by the Supreme Court and stepped on the rights of African-Americans.
The very first Jim Crow Law, passed in 1888, separated blacks and whites on railway cars in Louisiana. So, when Homer Plessy, a black man who purchased a first-class train ticket, refused to move to the colored section of the train, he was jailed. The ensuing court case, known as Plessy vs. Ferguson, was appealed to the Supreme Court, which eventually denied Plessy’s 14th amendment rights and ruled the practice of segregation constitutional. This case was famous for establishing the policy of “separate but equal.” The ruling eventually led to “separate but equal” churches, schools, housing, jobs, public transportation, sports, hospitals, and even cemeteries. Of course, Jim Crow Laws emphasized separation far more than equality.
Living in the shadow of Jim Crow for more than half a century was not easy, and tensions grew between African Americans and the white majority. However, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 58-year-old decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education. Oliver Brown, the father of young Linda Brown, wasn’t allowed to enroll his daughter in the local white public school and he took his grievance to the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This case also found its way to the Supreme Court, which concluded that in the field of public education “separate but equal” had no place. Although this was a resounding victory of the Civil Rights movement, it would take many marches, many violent outbreaks, and charismatic leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. to effectively render segregation obsolete.
African-American Civil Rights activist, W.E.B. Du Bois, was born in an integrated community in Massachusetts. He was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard and was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP. He strongly protested Jim Crow Laws and opposed all forms of discrimination amongst all colored people everywhere in the world.
He was appointed the Director of Publicity and Research of the NAACP, and he wrote many scathing articles against racism in the organization’s monthly magazine, The Crisis. His book, the Souls of Black Folk, raised awareness of the difficulty of being African-American (a dual consciousness of being both black and American) and although it was viewed as a handicap in the past, he believed it could be a strength in the future.
Du Bois believed that African-Americans should be multicultural, retaining their identity, contributing to America, and being treated as equals. In his words “[The black man] simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
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W.E.B. Du Bois
"There was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency."
W.E.B. Du Bois
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