Jim Crow and America's Racism Explained

[Music] warning if you do not know the significance of the 14th amendment watch at your own risk a 14th amendment video is linked in the description for your learning convenience hey guys welcome to hip hughes history we're going to take a quick look at the term jim crow its meaning its influence its impact on the united states of america because you need to know whether you're a kid in school whether you're a lifelong learner or whether you're cray cray in the internet understanding jim crow should be a requirement of citizenship [Music] so let's talk a little bit about the origin of the word jim crow before we go into kind of the concept of de jure and de facto segregation jump jim crow was an old song and dance routine that originated in 1828 which was written by a white comedian by the name of td daddy rice who would perform in blackface basically to make fun of slaves reel about and turn about and do just so every time i wheel about a jump jim pro the term gym itself is short for jimmy like i'm going to jimmy a lock and that was a crowbar so a crowbar in the 1800s was sometimes called a gym or a jimmy and then of course crow itself was used as a term for blacks as early as the 1700s in terms of jump jim crow farmers used to feed their crows corn soaked whiskey then the crows would get drunk and kind of dance around not being able to fly as the farmers you know kind of beat the crows to death so there's multiple meanings behind the term jim crow they all refer in a negative connotation to slaves and to freedmen to blacks and now we're going to turn that term jim crow into a system of racial oppression so jim crow laws and that would be segregation day jury meaning that by jurisdiction local and state ordinance and we're also going to talk about federal ordinances which mandate by law segregation now early on right after the civil war and that's where we're going to start in 1865 we still had those southern governments that were being controlled by kind of confederate forces so those southern white democratic dominated legislatures would pass something called black codes right after the civil war that severely limited the rights of these new freedmen and most of these black codes were based on vagrancy laws where if you were black you had to prove that you had a job and that job was recognized by whites and if you couldn't do that you would be forced into labor you could be put in prison and then kind of you know leased out to people in order to do jobs so many historians have called black code slavery by another name but that's going to change during reconstruction because starting in 1867 the republican-dominated congress is going to basically mandate through the enforcement of the 13th and 14th and 15th amendment the military occupation of the south this is the period of history from basically 1867 to 1877 about a decade called reconstruction and during reconstruction the black codes were eliminated and for the most part african americans were allowed to vote and you did have african-americans that were elected to high office you had governors uh there was a african-american senator there were african-american state legislators so it was kind of working but of course it's all being held together by military occupation and then there was an incident in louisiana in 1873 called the coal facts massacre and this is really kind of the southern democratic forces trying to coalesce around groups in order to take back what they see as their rightful place as leaders of these southern governments and in louisiana at the colfax massacre in 1873 there was a group called the white league in this white league unlike the clan which was kind of a terrorist under the ground organization the white leagues and the red shirts groups throughout the south were open about their you know opposition to african-american rights and their wanting of power so it colfax this white league basically attacked a courthouse that was being held by republican forces and we basically have a mini civil war at colfax we ended up having about 150 african americans that were murdered maybe more were not really sure about mass graves and people that were thrown into the river and such but that culminated in a federal trial with the conviction of some of those people who did that based on the 1870 enforcement act saying that you know congress is going to have the ability to prosecute people that are violating the rights of freedmen in 1876 the supreme court comes out with a decision called united states versus khrushchev where they basically kind of take the teeth out of the enforcement act by saying that because this white league was not a government group but a private organization the enforcement act didn't hold that private groups could discriminate you had to get them a different way you probably had to use state and local courts which weren't going to work back then so that's kind of a breakdown of federal control over you know the southern governments and the the rise of what's going to become jim crow and then really it all falls apart in the election of 1876. you can watch there's a video on the compromise of 1877. you can click down in the description below to watch that but basically there is a deal in the presidential election where the southern democrats kind of give their votes to the republicans in rutherford beat hayes samuel tilden the democrat lost even though he was from new york that's another story but the the sticking point the compromise the sellout is going to be the end of military occupation in the south by reconstruction forces that they're going to be able to own their governments again and this is really the beginning of the birth of jim crow and segregation day jury down south so let's take a look at some of the specifics of what jim crow laws we're talking about and how they're going to affect freedmen african americans in the south as they seek to claim the mantle of the american dream [Music] now congress wasn't done in the 1870s they passed something called the civil rights act of 1875 which was basically kind of a reclaim to the 14th amendment in terms of public accommodations that there would be no segregation in places of public accommodations like restaurants and hotels and trains and all of that kind of jazz but that's going to be torn apart in 1896 with plessy versus ferguson now plessy versus ferguson isn't based on schools even though brown versus board of that is going to overturn it it's really based on the concept of segregation by legislation and in louisiana it was always illegal for blacks and whites to ride on the same car but the separate car act of louisiana kind of added colors to the mix they had a classification for mixed races and if you were 1 8 of african ancestry you were considered colored and you couldn't ride on the train so this was an organized effort by the black and colored community to fight this new law and homer plessy who was one-eighth black he was very of light complexion kind of walked onto the train one day and he had to announce to the steward of the train his racial heritage because nobody could tell just by looking at him then he proceeded to sit down and get arrested and in the spirit of rosa parks which launched the court case plessy versus ferguson where the court is going to end up saying separate is equal that segregational laws are constitutional because they are still giving african americans i'm a seat at the table it's just a separate table and it's an equal table and of course we all know that not to be true so jim crow itself in terms of segregation day jury is going to be the laws that are passed which are going to segregate african americans from whites so following plessy versus ferguson the south kind of has legislative and and judicial authority to segregate and they're going to do that rapidly by passing laws jim crow laws which are going to segregate not only the public schools but libraries and hospitals and transportation and all of that jazz the other big huge segregation day jury piece is going to be voting restrictions and you only have to look at louisiana to see the effect that jim crow is going to have on voting rights we we talked about this before louisiana had african-american representation they were being elected to high office you know all the way up through the 1870s by 1900 there's only a couple hundred african-americans that are registered to vote only 0.

5 of the african-american population had registered to vote that could vote and in fact in north carolina it was zero no african-americans registered to vote how did they do this they did this by passing a series of poll taxes meaning that you had to pay to vote and that got a huge majority of the african-american population from being able to vote because they simply couldn't afford it and then they had literacy and comprehension tests where you had to put you know pen to paper and prove that you were smart enough to vote now you might ask well there were certainly a lot of poor whites that couldn't read and write so how did they get away with it they had something called grandfather clauses where if you could prove your ancestry and your grandfather voted that you were allowed to vote and of course african americans don't have that luxury because of slavery so that's how they did it and now that is a humongous humongous thing because that means that if african-americans can't vote their interests are not going to be served they're not going to be in any type of powerful situation where their voice is going to be heard their interests are going to be served so they are literally going to get swept under the rug and of course we could also talk about the effect in terms of cultural social psychological effect on african americans i don't even want to talk about all of the lost opportunity all of the poets we didn't get to read all of the scientific inventions that didn't get invented all of the books that were written all of the songs that were never heard because of course jim crow is putting a kibosh on that because it's literally putting a a plug in the in the hose of opportunity i don't know if that analogy works but i think that you get what i mean now it's not just state and local that's the majority of it and we're not even talking about segregation de facto just segregation by custom and of course in the south this means you know calling everybody sir you know crossing the road if a white person is coming at you there were even customs where if you pulled up to a stop sign you had to let the white guy go even if he got to the stop sign after you i kid you not and this is of course not just regulated to the southern hemisphere of the united states we have segregation de facto in the north we have banking policies and housing policies and all kinds of different private customs which are going to put african-americans in a different category in the north as well but of course it's more widespread in the south we also have federal jim crow federal you know segregation and we're going to put the blame squarely on maybe one of the most racist presidents a democrat by the name of woodrow wilson even though woodrow wilson was the head of princeton in new jersey and people tend to think him as a progressive he may have been a progressive in some respects but he was born down in virginia you know before the civil war so he's the first southerner to be elected to the presidency of the united states since the civil war and one of his first things that he's going to do he's going to segregate the federal workplace he's going to segregate the army in fact if you were applying for a position in the wilson administration you had to send a photo just to make sure you were the right you know skin color so wilson and the democrats are just as guilty as the democrats in the south on a state and local level of of kind of making this happen so we've talked a little bit about you know jim crow and in terms of segregation day jury and a little bit of segregation de facto there's lots more that we could talk about and of course the enforcement of at least segregation de facto and i guess segregation day jury is is happening through the use of uh terrorist organizations like the kkk which are widespread throughout the early 20th century which are going to use intimidation humiliation and violence to make sure that african-americans are put in their place that they're not fighting back but why don't we start talking about kind of the slow road to the end of this you know century jim crow system of racial so we're going to get to the good stuff in a moment we'll talk a little bit about kind of the civil rights movement as most people understand it in terms of martin luther king and montgomery and selma and all of the laws that are passed but one of the earlier origins of the fight against jim crow and segregation occurs on the federal level and there was an incident in 1946 called the blinding of isaac woodward jr where a member of the armed services and african-american isaac woodward who had just been honorably discharged literally a few hours later had an incident with the sheriff department where he was beaten to a bloody pulp where he was basically blinded and that caught the attention of the nation and there were popular songs written about it woody guthrie one of my favorite musical peeps wrote a song called the blinding of isaac woodward this caught the attention of the truman administration who forcefully went after the guys who did this one of the sheriffs in the sheriff's department the local police they were then tried in a federal court in south carolina where it happened and of course you know what happened they were all found not guilty by an all-white jury this probably changed harry truman's approach immediately after that he starts giving speeches to the naacp he puts civil rights on the radar and he issues two executive orders 9880 and 98. 81 and using his power of the presidency he wipes away wilson's action desegregating the army and desegregating the federal workplace that's really the first big movement we have in terms of knocking down jim crow and of course that's at the federal level the southern states are going to be much slower to respond so we're going to have to have darn it all a civil rights movement based on the concept of non-violence and of course most people associate this with martin luther king the the baptist preacher from alabama who's going to be the spiritual leader of the civil rights movement and of course that's going to really begin in montgomery alabama in 1955 in 1956 where martin luther king using what he's learned from kind of the teachings of jesus and mahatmas gandhi of non-violence to do the bus boycott which is successful it was successful they desegregated the buses they showed african-americans and progressive whites that they could use their power as citizens to boycott and to engage in civil disobedience in order to change the law so that's eventually going to lead of course we all know about the i have a dream speech in washington in 1963.