By Dr. Robert R. Owens ——Bio and Archives--September 10, 2015
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As time passed, it became more and more obvious that the problems of the South were not being solved by harsh laws and continuing rancor against former Confederates. In May 1872, Congress passed a general Amnesty Act, restoring full political rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers. Gradually Southern states began electing members of the Democratic Party into office, ousting so-called carpetbagger governments and intimidating blacks from voting or attempting to hold public office. By 1876 the Republicans remained in power in only three Southern states. As part of the bargaining that resolved the disputed presidential elections that year in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republicans promised to end Radical Reconstruction, thereby leaving most of the South in the hands of the Democratic Party. In 1877 Hayes withdrew the remaining government troops, tacitly abandoning federal responsibility for enforcing blacks' civil rights. The South was still a region devastated by war, burdened by debt caused by misgovernment, and demoralized by a decade of racial warfare. Unfortunately, the pendulum of national racial policy swung from one extreme to the other. Whereas formerly it had supported harsh penalties against Southern white leaders, it now tolerated new and humiliating kinds of discrimination against blacks. The last quarter of the 19th century saw a profusion of "Jim Crow" laws in Southern states that segregated public schools, forbade or limited black access to many public facilities, such as parks, restaurants and hotels, and denied most blacks the right to vote by imposing poll taxes and arbitrary literacy tests.It was the retreat of the Republicans from power in the South and the re-emergence of the Democrats that ushered in 100 years of racial segregation so harsh and brutal it could have served as the model for South Africa's notorious apartheid society. So who was Jim Crow? Jim Crow was a derisive slang term for a black man. It came to mean any state law passed in the South that established different rules for blacks and whites. Jim Crow laws were based on the theory of white supremacy and were a reaction to Reconstruction. How did this start after Reconstruction ended? In 1890, in spite of its sixteen black members left over from the days of Republican rule, the Louisiana General Assembly now packed with Democrats passed a law to prevent black and white people from riding together on railroads. Plessy v. Ferguson, a case challenging the law, reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. Upholding the law, the court said that public facilities for blacks and whites could be "separate but equal." Soon, throughout the South, they had to be separate. Two years later, the Supreme Court seemed to seal the fate of black Americans when it upheld a Mississippi law designed to deny black men the vote. Given the green light, Southern states began to limit the voting right to those who owned property or could read well, to those whose grandfathers had been able to vote, to those with "good characters," to those who paid poll taxes. In 1896, Louisiana had 130,334 registered black voters. Eight years later, only 1,342, 1 percent, could pass the state's new rules. Jim Crow laws touched every part of life. In South Carolina, black and white textile workers could not work in the same room, enter through the same door, or gaze out of the same window. Many industries wouldn't hire blacks, because many unions passed rules to exclude them. In Richmond, one could not live on a street unless most of the residents were people one could marry. One could not marry someone of a different race. By 1914, Texas had six entire towns where blacks could not live. Mobile passed a Jim Crow curfew: Blacks could not leave their homes after 10 p.m. Signs marked "Whites Only" or "Colored" hung over doors, ticket windows, and drinking fountains. Georgia had black parks and white parks. Oklahoma had black phone booths and white phone booths. Prisons, hospitals, and orphanages were segregated as were schools and colleges. In North Carolina, black and white students had to use separate sets of textbooks. In Florida, the books couldn't even be stored together. Atlanta courts kept two Bibles: one for black witnesses and one for whites, so they did not touch the same one. Virginia told fraternal social groups that black and white members could not address each other as "Brother." This was the democrat imposed regime of Jim Crow. This was the law of the land in the Democrat controlled south. It was the Democrats who fought segregation: standing in school house doors, beating protestors, attacking people with dogs and water hoses. It was the democrats who shut down entire public school systems rather than integrate. One prominent Democrat, the governor of Alabama, George Wallace proclaimed, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" aptly stating the position of the Democrat party.
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Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @
drrobertowens.com
Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens