The Jim Crow laws, enacted between 1876 and 1965, were a major factor in the African-American Great Migration during the early part of the 2oth century. These laws mandated de jure (i.e. legalized) racial segregation in all public facilities—public schools, public transportation, and public places such as restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains—in former Confederate states, with a supposedly "separate-but-equal" status for black Americans. In reality, this separation led to inferior treatment, financial support, and accommodations than those provided for white Americans, which systematized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages.

"Colored" Drinking Fountain

An African-American man drinking at a "colored" drinking fountain in a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1939.

De jure segregation applied mainly in the Southern United States. Northern segregation was generally de facto (i.e. occurring in practice, rather than being established by formal laws), with patterns of segregation in housing enforced by covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination—including discriminatory union practices—for decades.

State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, while the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Jim Crow Caricature

Cartoon from 1904 depicting racial segregation in the United States as "White" and "Jim Crow" rail cars.   

Origins of the Laws

During the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, federal law provided civil-rights protection in the Southern United States for African Americans who had formerly been slaves. In the 1870s, white Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state—sometimes as a result of elections in which paramilitary groups intimidated opponents, attacking black people or preventing them from voting. These Democratic, conservative Redeemer governments legislated Jim Crow laws, segregating black people from the white population.

Black people were still elected to local office in the 1880s, but the Democrats passed laws to restrict voter registration and electoral rules, with the result that political participation by most black people and many poor white people began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, 10 of the 11 former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disfranchised most black people and tens of thousands of poor white people through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Voter turnout throughout the South dropped drastically as a result. Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices; they effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked.

Jim Crow in the Early 1920s

The separation of African Americans from the general population was becoming more formalized during the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), but it was also becoming increasingly ingrained tradition. Even in cases where Crow laws did not expressly forbid black people to participate in sports or recreation, for instance, culture did.

As a result, the presidential election of 1912 was steeply slanted against the interests of African Americans. Most black Americans still lived in the South, where they had been effectively disenfranchised, so they could not vote at all. While poll taxes and literacy requirements banned many poor or illiterate Americans from voting, these stipulations frequently had loopholes that exempted white Americans from meeting the requirements. In Oklahoma, for instance, anyone qualified to vote before 1866, or related to someone qualified to vote before 1866 (a type of "grandfather clause"), was exempted from the literacy requirement—but the only people who could vote before that year were white male Americans. That is to say, white Americans were effectively excluded from literacy testing, whereas black Americans were singled out by the law.