Kyles+historic+event

=Racism in the USA=

Jim Crow Laws
The "Jim Crow Laws" were laws that were enforced in the southern and border states of the USA during the years of 1876 and 1965. These laws were brought about in order to make the African-Americans "equal" however they made them "seperate but equal".The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for whites and blacks.

Origins of the Jim Crow Laws
In the first stage of [|Presidential Reconstruction], all white Southern legislatures overwhelmingly dominated by ex-Confederates, abolished laws regarding slavery but passed the [|black codes], which gave new rights to the freed men but fewer than whites possessed. The North reacted against those codes, which never went into effect in any state. Instead, the [|Radical Republicans] passed the [|Civil Rights Act of 1866] which gave freed men legal rights (but not the right to vote). The country, by 1870, passed the [|14th] and [|15th] Amendments to the [|United States Constitution], guaranteeing civil rights and the right to vote. The southern states came under Republican control--a party comprising the [|Freedmen], white Southerners ("[|Scalawags]") and migrants from the North ("[|Carpetbaggers]"). The [|Ku Klux Klan] and related groups reacted violently, but they were suppressed by President [|Ulysses S. Grant] using the federal courts and troops. By 1877, the conservatives and Democrats, forming a [|Redeemer] coalition, ousted all the Republican governments. From 1877 down to the 1970s, the Southern Democrats largely controlled every Southern state. After 1877, the [|Redeemers] reversed many of the civil rights gains that African Americans had made during Reconstruction, passing laws that mandated discrimination by both local governments and by private citizens. Since "Jim Crow law" is a blanket term for any of this type of legislation, the exact date of inception for the laws varies by state. The most important laws came in the 1890s with the adoption of legislation segregating railroad cars in New Orleans as the first genuine Jim Crow law. By 1915, every Southern state had effectively destroyed the gains in civil rights and liberties that blacks had enjoyed due to the Reconstructionist efforts. It is thought that the term 'Jim Crow laws' originated from the [|1828] popular song [|Jump Jim Crow], a [|blackface] song which made derogatory references to the character of African-American people. As a result of this song, the term 'Jim Crow' became a pejorative or mocking term for African-American people, used in the [|Deep South]. Between 1890 and 1920, many state governments prevented most blacks from voting by various techniques, such as [|poll taxes] and [|literacy tests]. (These could be waived for whites due to [|grandfather clauses].) It is estimated that of 181,000 African-American males of voting age in [|Alabama] in 1900, only 3,000 were registered to vote. Many of the discriminatory Jim Crow laws were enacted to support [|racial segregation] in everyday life. They required black and white people to use separate water fountains, public schools, public bath houses, restaurants, public libraries, buses and rail cars -- although, even without legal segregation, the desire of the white majority to use the frequently inferior facilities set aside for black use was admittedly limited.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws)

Examples of Jim Crow laws in various states
Whites and Blacks had to sit on different sides of buses and railroad cars. Interracial marriages were punishable with imprisonment. Cohabitation was punishable with imprisonment or fines. Restaurants had to serve either whites only or blacks only.

These Laws show that even when the people of the South are trying to be far and make the African Americans equal with them, they still seperated them and treated them as if they were inferior. Even though the problem of racism was slowly getting better in a sense that people were getting more of the same rights, racism itself did not diminish that much.