Jim Crow Laws

Last week as team 3 and 4 presented the mock trail of Plessy v Ferguson to the class team 1 and 2 taught the class on the Jim Crow laws and the affects they had on both races and how it spelled the start of segregation and foreshadowed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s. These laws most specifically created a racial caste system for the American people and furthered the divide between African Americans and whites. These laws prevented African Americans from taking part in the same activates as whites and prevented them from even being in the same area as a white person. Some of these rules included but weren’t limited to, forcing blacks to move towns or get out of town at any given time without reason or warning, not being able to marriage outside their race or social class, to mandating segregation in public places. These laws were extremely inhumane and unreasonable yet somehow stayed in place for almost one hundred years. They even went as far as to allow public lynching’s for blacks who had broken the law. Lynching is a type of extrajudicial punishment in which a group of people would assemble to execute someone (most often black) that had broken the law. This was a cruel and unusual way to punish someone and they treated it almost like a get together as they would barbeque and socialize with each other as brutally assaulted and killed the individual in which they were supposed to lynch. The lack of respect and care for the black community during this time was despicable and for people who held the Word of God so highly in their life, it was ungodly and sinful. It is shocking to me that it took almost one hundred years for people to realize how unfair these laws were and get rid of them.