African American History

Jim Crow laws, aimed at segregating, disempowering, and disenfranchising African0-Americans in the antebellum South, served the economic, cultural, and political interests of the established white patriarchy for nearly a century before being eradicated. The laws effectively kept most African-Americans poor, unable to vote, denied them an adequate and equal education to that of white students, and kept them generally separated from white communities, organizations, buildings, and activities throughout much of the South.

This served the interests of the white power establishment in many ways. First, by denying African-Americans employment in many companies and for many types of work, the established hierarchy ensured a cheap labor pool. Having lost their slaves following the end of the Civil War, plantation owners and even white owners of smaller farms needed to find a way to have their craps planted and harvested without paying a living wage -- and thus eating up their profits -- and the Jim Crow laws helped to accomplish this.

In addition to the direct economic impact of the Jim Crow laws on both the African-American and white communities, political control was put entirely in the hands of the whites to prevent the African-Americans from achieving the justice they deserved and were legally entitled to. Poll taxes and "random" tests prevented many African-Americans from voting, let alone running for office, and thus prevented them from making any institutional changes that would have eliminated Jim Crow and his economic designs.

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington's philosophy of slow improvement through education and economic opportunities met with a great deal of resistance in the antebellum period, especially around the turn of the century when W.E.B. DuBois arose as a prominent voice calling for more direct civil confrontation. It is impossible to judge who was right given the context in which the two sides were working, but an analysis of how history played out reveals both the wisdom and the shortcomings of Washington's approach to equality.