What were Jim Crow Laws?
The Jim Crow laws were legal and social restrictions that separated African Americans from white Americans during the late 1800s and early 1900s. (Jim Crow was a stereotype of an African American song-and-dance man). In 1868 the U.S. Congress (the country’s law-making body) passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed all Americans equal rights. In many Southern states, however, local governments and legislatures (law-making bodies) passed laws that segregated (separated) African Americans from white Americans in public places. For example, an African American was not allowed to use a whites-only drinking fountain. The U.S. Supreme Court made rulings that supported state segregation laws. The most famous was the Plessy v. Ferguson case. In 1896 the Court upheld a Louisiana law that required separate-but-equal facilities for whites and African Americans in railroad…
