American History: Jim Crow and Social Injustice in the 20th Century

Jim Crow Etiquette and Jim Crow Laws were the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively, in southern and border states between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was not merely a series of rigid anti-black laws; it was a way of life and a method of domestic terrorism committed against African Americans. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second-class citizens, and anti-black racism was legitimized. Such laws and methods of terrorism were further bolstered by the Christian churches of America, many of which taught that whites were the “chosen people” of God, while blacks were cursed to be servants and were not technically human. Pseudosciences – Craniology, Eugenics, Phrenology, and Social Darwinism – all popular in and original to the United States during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, were implemented at every educational level to buttress the belief that blacks were innately intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. Pro-segregation politicians gave eloquent speeches on the great danger of integration, often warning of the “mongrelization” of the white race. Even things as benign as children’s games and dolls portrayed blacks as inferior beings. All major societal institutions reflected and supported the oppression of blacks.

Summarily, the Jim Crow system was undergirded by the following beliefs or rationalizations:

1. whites are superior to blacks in all “important” ways, including but not limited to intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior. Unimportant things that blacks might be recognized as superior in could include athletics, singing, dancing, and manual labor, which explains the popularity of black music and athletes during the early 20^th century despite general animosity towards black people.
2. sexual relations between blacks and whites will produce a “mongrel race” which will destroy America; treating blacks as equals will likely encourage interracial sexual unions, which are an abomination in the eyes of God. “Miscegenation Laws,” as they were called, were still upheld in the US until the 1980s. Such interracial relations included not only white-black, but any race (Asian, Latin, Indian, Native American, etc.).
3. any activity which suggested social equality encouraged interracial sexual relations and so should be avoided if not made wholly illegal.
4. if necessary, violence, often in the form of lynching, is necessary to keep blacks (and other racial minorities) in their appropriately subjugated position.

The following Jim Crow etiquette norms show how inclusive and pervasive these norms were:

1. A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a white woman, because he risked being accused of rape.
2. Blacks and whites should not eat together. If they did eat together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them.
3. Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another, especially kissing, because it offended whites.
4. Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma’am. Instead, blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.
5. If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person sat in the back seat, or the back of a truck.
6. White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.

Stetson Kennedy, the author of Jim Crow Guide (1990), offered these simple rules that blacks were supposed to observe in conversing with whites:

1. Never assert or even intimate that a white person is lying.
2. Never impute dishonorable intentions to a white person.
3. Never suggest that a white person is from an inferior class.
4. Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence.
5. Never curse a white person.
6. Never laugh derisively at a white person.
7. Never comment upon the appearance of a white female.

If any of these rules were broken, especially by a black person, they were very likely arrested if not lynched by a mob at some point in the near future.

Jim Crow etiquette operated in conjunction with Jim Crow laws (black codes). When most people think of Jim Crow they think of laws, which legally excluded blacks from public transport and facilities, juries, jobs, and neighborhoods.

The passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution had granted blacks the same legal protections as whites. However, after 1877, and the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, southern and border states began restricting the liberties of blacks. Unfortunately for blacks, the Supreme Court helped undermine the Constitutional protections of blacks with the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case, which legitimized Jim Crow. In Plessy, the Supreme Court stated that so long as “state governments provided legal process and legal freedoms for blacks, equal to those of whites, they could maintain separate institutions to facilitate these rights.” In practice, however, Plessy ultimately legitimized the American caste system: one white and advantaged; the other, non-white, disadvantaged, and despised.

Various barriers were erected that restricted non-white person access to the democratic process, essentially silencing the non-white voice of America. Such laws included:

1. Denying non-white people the right to vote by “grandfather clauses” (laws that restricted the right to vote to people whose ancestors had voted before the Civil War)
2. Required poll taxes, which were fees charged to both white and non-white people to vote. However, black and other non-white people being historically forced into poverty had little to no money to pay such taxes.
3. Required literacy tests for non-white people, which might require rather ridiculous knowledge to pass, such as naming all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout America’s history.

There were separate hospitals for blacks and whites, separate prisons, separate public and private schools, separate churches, separate cemeteries, separate public restrooms, and separate public accommodations of all kinds. In most instances, the black facilities were grossly inferior. In many cases, there were no black facilities at all, since many of these facilities are not guaranteed by law. Lack of public toilets for black people could often lead to a black person finding necessity to break some law, either using the white restroom or defecating in public, either of which would have them arrested and possibly lynched; of course, the white people knew this inconvenient reality well and often wickedly used it to commit acts of vile terrorism.

Here are but a few of the typical Jim Crow LAWS (different from the expected Jim Crow etiquette):

1. Burial. “The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons” (Georgia).
2. Buses. “All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races” (Alabama).
3. Education. “The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately” (Florida).
4. Libraries. “The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals” (North Carolina).
5. Nurses. “No person or corporation shall require any White female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed” (Alabama).
6. Teaching. “Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined…” (Oklahoma).

Sinisterly, Jim Crow was undergirded by violence. Blacks who violated Jim Crow norms, even if they, for example, followed all accepted procedures to vote and were permitted to do so, risked their homes, their jobs, even their lives should they actually exercise their ability to vote. Whites could physically beat and murder non-whites (including Asian and Latin people), and such minorities had little legal recourse against such assaults since the American criminal justice system was all-white: police, prosecutors, judges, juries, and prison officials. Jim Crow and its methods of violent intimidation was social control through abject terror.

The most extreme forms of Jim Crow violence were lynchings, which were public, sadistic murders carried out by mobs. Starting with the first reliable data on lynchings in 1882 to 1968 when lynchings had become rare, there were 4,730 known lynchings, about 75% of which were of black people. Victims of Lynch Law could be hanged, shot, burned at the stake, castrated, beaten with clubs, dismembered, or any number of horrific things and combinations of them.

It is even more horrifying to note that, according to Arthur Raper who investigated nearly a century of lynchings, that approximately one-third of all the victims were falsely accused (Myrdal, 1944, p. 561). Of course, most that were accurately accused had committed crimes that we today would not consider crimes. Only the smallest percentage had actually committed heinous crimes (i.e. murder or rape), for which they still should not have been subjected to a lynch mob, which is one of the most cruel and unusual forms of corporal punishment imaginable. Ultimately, most blacks were lynched simply for demanding civil rights or violating twisted etiquettes and unjust laws.

Individuals like Martin Luther King Jr. and Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 dismantled Jim Crow. While Jim Crow is no longer law or etiquette, the spirit of this monster is still with our country, and it is naïve to think that all problems of racism are gone from the United States. Black Americans and other racial minorities still live in the shadow of Jim Crow today and there is much work to be done to achieve full equality among all people in the United States.