Causes of the Jim Crow Laws

'Jim Crow' was the nickname given to the laws introduced into the South during the 19th and 20th centuries to enforce racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans. 'Jim Crow' became synonymous with all the racial abuses associated with the southern states. The name stuck during the civil rights era.

The Laws

Beginning in Florida, in 1887, laws were passed which created legal segregation of the races. The Florida law created separated accommodation on railway carriages. Similar laws in Mississippi in 1888, Texas in 1889, Louisiana in 1890 and Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia in 1891 followed this.

Causes

There are many factors involved in how the southern states were able to deny the amendments to the constitution.

• Failure of the Supreme Court to uphold the fourteenth amendment and fifteenth amendment. This period in littered with cases which show a malfunction in legality and a lack of justice
  • In the 'Slaughter House Cases' of 1873, the Court declared that the Fourteenth Amendment rights only covered national citizenship. The Court declared that the federal government did not safeguard civil rights against violation by indivdual states
  • In 1875, in the 'United States versus Cruikshank' case, it was decreed that the civil rights in the Fourteenth Amendment did not protect African Americans against discrimination by individuals, only by state governments
  • In 1876, in the 'United States versus Reese' case, the Court refused to put on trial officials in Kentucky who had prevented African Americans from voting (the officials were acting in violation of the 15th amendment)
  • The 1896 case of 'Plessy versus Ferguson' Homer Plessy, a person of mixed race, challenged the legality of the Louisiana railroad company which had created separated railroad cars for whites and for blacks. The Court declared that Louisiana had not violated the 14th Amendment because it had created 'separate but equal' facilities for the races.  This was a landmark case as it…