The Civil War ended slavery, but it did not give African-Americans equality. Southern whites, upon regaining power in the late 1870s and early 1880s, instituted black codes, also known as ôJim Crowö laws. Those statutes, coupled with racist terrorism and official indifference (if not hostility), relegated African-Americans to permanent second-class status for decades, until the U.S. Supreme Court began dismantling ôJim Crowö in the 1950s. This paper will analyze the impact and the legacy of Jim Crow laws, from their birth in the 19th century, their death in this century, and their lingering effect as the new millennium dawns.
After the Civil War, Congress passed (and the states ratified) three amendments to the U.S. Constitution: the thirteenth, which ended slavery; the fourteenth, which barred discrimination based on race; and the fifteenth, which enfranchised African-American males. Congress also established the FreedmenÆs Bureau, which helped freed slaves gain access to education, technical assistance, and land. Furthermore, the Republican party helped African-Americans win elective office at the local, state, and federal level (Barker and McCorry 94).
Those advances came to the halt after the 1876 presidential election. Republican candidate Rutherford Hayes won the support of Congress, which decided the election because of a tie in electoral college votes, by agreeing to end military rule in the South. Whites soon returned to power in the former Confederacy, and, aided by the U.S. Supreme Court, they built a rigid social structure separating the races (Barker and McCorry 18).
In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Court invalidated a federal law that barred discrimination by private actors. Prior to that case, blacks and whites had dined in the same restaurants, stayed in the same hotels, and sat in the same places on public transit, albeit in separate clusters. Afterwards, they would not do so again fo...