Civil Rights Jim Crow Jim Crow Laws

Civil Rights

Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws were a set of "black codes" designed to perpetuate a system of racism and near-slavery for African-Americans, predominantly in the South. The Jim Crow laws existed from the end of the Civil War until the Civil Rights movement -- nearly a century. Jim Crow laws represent a clear case of how racism becomes institutionalized. In the case of the Jim Crow laws, racism was embedded into legal and social codes. Jim Crow made it so that slavery never really ended; African-Americans were excluded from participating in economic, social, and political life in America. The Jim Crow laws included those related to segregation of schools and segregation of public spaces. Black people had to drink from different water fountains, eat in different restaurants, and sit in a different part of the bus. Moreover, Jim Crow laws led to the labeling and stigmatizing of African-Americans as criminals. This has caused generations of African-Americans to mistrust the white dominant culture and its system of laws.

Brown V. Board Case

Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark Supreme Court case that overturned an earlier ruling called Plessy vs. Ferguson, which was the entrenchment of school segregation. With Brown vs. The Board of Education, segregation in public schools was outlawed. Schools were then legally obliged to be integrated, leading to a tremendous transformation of American society in the affected communities. Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling was passed in 1954. The ruling was based on the Constitutional Rights of equal protection under the law, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. It was ruled that separate schools are by definition not equal schools. The fact remained that African-American schools were impoverished, and therefore African-American students were denied access to educational services.

Civil Rights Movement