Black History Month Minute: Jim Crow

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - Mike Powell with the Alachua County NAACP and the Divine Nine talks about Jim Crow, in Friday’s Black History Month Minute.

Did you know history can and will repeat itself if we are not careful?

Today, let’s learn about Jim Crow: the origin, the laws & the damage done to generations of African American citizens.

Have you ever seen or met Jim? You may be surprised. Let’s break him down into 3 digestible quick chunks.

1. Jim Crow - The origin & caricature

By many accounts, it started to gain notoriety due to a struggling white stage actor and performer by the name of Thomas Wright, in the 1830′s who poorly copied the walk, talk, and mannerisms of an elderly crippled enslaved black man he observed in new york for a few days.

Wright even forcefully took the old man’s clothes and painted his face black to try out his act. Mockingly, disparagingly, and minstrel-esque in his depiction.

The crowd loved it: the cruelty and novelty of this clownish Jim Crow caricature was born!

2. Jim Crow - The laws & their purpose

After the Civil War, there was a 12-year period from about 1865 to 1877 where federal laws offered observable protection of civil rights for former slaves and free blacks; it wasn’t entirely awful because this was the reconstruction period, however, starting in the 1870s, as the southern economy continued its decline,

White, southern democrats took over legislatures in the former Confederate states. They began passing more restrictive voter registration and electoral laws, as well as passing legislation to segregate blacks and whites.

To accelerate the takeover of power in southern legislatures whites used intimidation tactics to suppress black voters, as well as alter local laws to reduce the chances of black candidates having victorious outcomes.

Lynchings were a common form of terrorism practiced against blacks to intimidate them. It is important to remember that the Democrats and Republicans of the late 1800s were very different parties from their current iterations.

Republicans in the time of the Civil War and directly after were the party of Abraham Lincoln & the democrats were backers of the confederacy and secession from the union.

3. Jim Crow - The legacy and damage done to generations

The legacy of Jim Crow was to maintain the antebellum South’s hierarchy of power, status, and access to basic human rights. The passage of the black codes in the post-civil War South was a successful attempt to restrict the rights and freedoms of African Americans, effectively re-establishing a system of racial subjugation.

The cementing of white supremacy as a belief and legal way of everyday life (was accepted in plain sight throughout the South), and was a quieter, but constant and legitimate undertone across the rest of America.

The damage done for the last 150 years has been estimated to cost the family lineage of the formerly enslaved, opportunities to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness connected to generational wealth.

The figures will never be known, but the hard-core fact that home ownership and access to employment and education have traditionally driven generational wealth in America. Something that redlining for example deprived untold millions of African Americans from.

Redlining is the practice of denying people access to credit because of where they live or because of their race, even if they are personally qualified for loans. Historically, mortgage lenders once widely redlined core urban neighborhoods and black-populated neighborhoods. The 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed racially motivated redlining and tasked federal financial regulators, including the Federal Reserve, with enforcement.

As you have just witnessed, Black history is American history.

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