Jim Crow Era

After the Civil War, there was a period from about 1865 to 1877 where federal laws offered observable protection of civil rights for former slaves and free blacks; it wasn’t entirely awful to be an African American, even in the South. However, starting in the 1870s, as the Southern economy continued its decline, Democrats took over power in Southern legislatures and used intimidation tactics to suppress black voters. Tactics included violence against blacks and those tactics continued well into the 1900s. Lynchings were a common form of terrorism practiced against blacks to intimidate them. It is important to remember that the Democrats and Republicans of the late 1800s were very different parties from their current iterations. Republicans in the time of the Civil War and directly after were literally the party of Lincoln and anathema to the South. As white, Southern Democrats took over legislatures in the former Confederate states, they began passing more restrictive voter registration and electoral laws, as well as passing legislation to segregate blacks and whites.

It wasn’t enough just to separate out blacks – segregation was never about “separate but equal.” While the Supreme Court naively speculated in Plessy v. Ferguson that somehow mankind wouldn’t show its worst nature and that segregation could occur without one side being significantly disadvantaged despite all evidence to the contrary, we can look back in hindsight and see that the Court was either foolishly optimistic or suffering from the same racism that gripped the other arms of the government at the time. In practice, the services and facilities for blacks were consistently inferior, underfunded, and more inconvenient as compared to those offered to whites – or the services and facilities did not exist at all for blacks. And while segregation was literal law in the South, it was also practiced in the northern United States via housing patterns enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices.

This kind of de facto segregation has lasted well into our own time.

The era of Jim Crow laws saw a dramatic reduction in the number of blacks registered to vote within the South. This time period brought about the Great Migration of blacks to northern and western cities like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a resurgence and spread all over the country, finding a significant popularity that has lingered to this day in the Midwest. It was claimed at the height of the second incarnation of the KKK that its membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide. The Klan didn’t shy away from using burning crosses and other intimidation tools to strike fear into their opponents, who included not just blacks, but also Catholics, Jews, and anyone who wasn’t a white Protestant.

This time period was not without its triumphs for blacks, even if they came at a cost or if they were smaller than one would have preferred. The NAACP was founded in 1909, in response to the continued practice of lynching and race riots in Springfield, Ill. From the 1920s through the 1930s in Harlem, New York, a cultural, social, and artistic movement took place that was later coined the Harlem Renaissance. Musicians like Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton, writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, it-girls like Josephine Baker, and philosophers like W.E.B. Du Bois all had a hand in the Harlem Renaissance and American culture as a whole is richer and better for it. 

Notable Supreme Court Cases:

• The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873) – this series of three cases, which were consolidated into one issue, offered the first opinion from the Supreme Court on the 14th Amendment. The court chose to interpret the rights protected by the 14th Amendment as very narrow and this precedent would be followed for many years to come.
• Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) – in this set of five cases that were consolidated into one issue, a majority of the court held the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional against the lone famous dissent of Justice Harlan. The majority argued that Congress lacked authority to regulate private affairs under the 14th Amendment and that the 13th Amendment “merely abolishe[d] slavery”. Segregation in public accommodations would not be declared illegal after these cases until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) – this is the case which gave us the phrase “separate but equal” and upheld state racial segregation laws for public facilities. Justice Harlan again offered a lone dissent. These laws would remain in play until 1954.

Selected Library Resources:

• Ronald M. Labbé and Jonathan Lurie, The Slaughterhouse Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment, KF228.S545 L33 2003
• Williamjames Hull Hoffer, ‘Plessy v. Ferguson’: Race and Inequality in Jim Crow America, KF223. P56 H64 2012
• Laurie Collier Hillstrom, Plessy v. Ferguson (2013, available as an ebook) 
• Christopher Waldep, African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era, HV6457 .W347 2009
• Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy, Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles in Washington, D.C., 1920-1945, E185.86 .M9525 2018
• Proquest Historical Newspapers – this collection provides access to African American newspapers including Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Chicago Defender (1909-1975), Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1991), Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2003), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001), Pittsburg Courier (1911-2002). 
• Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law – HeinOnline
• Gale Archives Unbound Collections (available through Howard University Libraries):
  • Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress 
  • Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League
  • Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984

Additional Resources:

• Congressional Research Services, Juneteenth: Fact Sheet (Updated June 3, 2020)

library.law.howard.edu

1741 – Benjamin Franklin published America’s second magazine, “The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle”.

1804 – A raid was led by Lt. Stephen Decatur to burn the U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia. The ship had been taken by pirates.

1857 – The National Deaf Mute College was incorporated in Washington, DC. It was the first school in the world for advanced education of the deaf. The school was later renamed Gallaudet College.

1862 – During the U.S. Civil War, about 14,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Fort Donelson, TN.

1868 – The Jolly Corks organization, in New York City, changed it name to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE).

1883 – “Ladies Home Journal” began publication.

1914 – The first airplane flight between Los Angeles and San Francisco took place.

1918 – Lithuania proclaimed its independence.

1923 – Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen. The next day he entered the chamber with several invited guests. He had originally found the tomb on November 4, 1922.

1932 – The first fruit tree patent was issued to James E. Markham for a peach tree which ripens later than other varieties.

1937 – Wallace H. Carothers received a patent for nylon. Carothers was a research chemist for Du Pont.

1938 – The U.S. Federal Crop Insurance program was authorized.

1945 – During World War II, U.S. troops landed on the island of Corregidor in the Philippines.

1946 – The first commercially designed helicopter was tested in Connecticut.

1948 – NBC-TV began airing its first nightly newscast, “The Camel Newsreel Theatre”, which consisted of Fox Movietone newsreels.

1858 – The first ironing board was patented by William Vandenburg and James Harvey.

1959 – Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba after the overthrow of President Fulgencio Batista.

1960 – The U.S.S. Triton began the first circumnavigation of the globe under water. The trip ended on May 10.

1962 – Jimmy Bostwick defeated his brother, Pete, to win the U.S. Open Court-Tennis championships for the third time.

1963 – Paul Anka married Marie-Ann DeZogheb in Paris.

1968 – In the U.S., the first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated in Haleyville, AL.

1970 – Joe Frazier began his reign as the undefeated heavyweight world champion when he knocked out Jimmy Ellis in five rounds. He lost the title on January 22, 1973, when he lost for the first time in his professional career to George Foreman.

1972 – Wilt Chamberlain (Los Angeles Lakers) reached the 30,000-point mark in his NBA career during a game against the Phoenix Suns.

1977 – The Anglican archbishop of Uganda, Janani Luwum, was killed in automobile accident. Two other men were also killed.

1985 – “Kojak” returned to network television after an absence of seven years with the CBS-TV special, “Kojak: The Belarus File.”

1987 – John Demjanjuk went on trial in Jerusalem. He was accused of being “Ivan the Terrible”, a guard at the Treblinka concentration camp. He was convicted, but the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the ruling.

1989 – Investigators in Lockerbie, Scotland, announced that a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player was the reason that Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down the previous December. All 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground were killed.

1999 – A bomb exploded at the government headquarters in Uzbekistan. Gunfire followed the incident. The event apparently was an attempt on the life of President Islam Karimov.

1999 – Kurds seized embassies and held hostages across Europe following Turkey’s arrest of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

1999 – Testimony began in the Jasper, TX, trial of John William King. He was charged with murder in the gruesome dragging death of James Byrd Jr. King was later convicted and sentenced to death.

2002 – The operator of a crematory in Noble, GA, was arrested after dozens of corpses were found stacked in storage sheds and scattered around in the surrounding woods.

2005 – The Kyoto global warming pact went into effect in 140 nations.

2005 – The NHL announced the cancellation of the 2004-2005 season due to a labor dispute. It was the first time a major sports league in North America lost an entire season to a labor dispute

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