THE ORIGINS OF JIM CROW SEGREGATION

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

In the 1880s, the states of Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Mississippi required railroad passengers to ride in racially segregated cars. After Louisiana followed suit in 1890 with a similar law, Blacks challenged it in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The case originated in New Orleans when anti-segregation activists convinced Homer Adolph Plessy, an “octoroon” (a derogatory term for a person having one-eighth African ancestry), to refuse to leave a Whites-only railroad car. Plessy, having refused, was convicted of violating the law.

In arguments presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, Plessy’s attorney contended that the Louisiana law sought “to debase and distinguish against the inferior race.” He then asked the justices to imagine a future dictated by such statutes: “Was there any limit to such laws? Why not require all colored people to walk on one side of the street and Whites on the other?” The Court disagreed, ruling that states had a right to create laws segregating public places such as schools, hotels, and restaurants.

The only justice who dissented was again John Marshall Harlan, who feared that the Court’s ruling would plant the “seeds of race hate” under “the sanction of law.” That is precisely what happened. The Plessy ruling endorsed racially “separate but equal” facilities in virtually every area of southern life. In 1900, the editor of the Richmond Times insisted that racial segregation “be applied in every relation of Southern life. God Almighty drew the color line, and it cannot be obliterated. The negro must stay on his side of the line, and the White man must stay on his side, and the sooner both races recognize this fact and accept it, the better it will be for both.”

Jim Crow Segregation.

The new regulations came to be called Jim Crow laws. The name derived from “Jump Jim Crow,” a song-and-dance caricature of African Americans made popular in the 1830s by Thomas D. Rice, a White New York songwriter/dancer and comedian who performed in blackface makeup. By the 1890s, the term Jim Crow had become a satirical expression meaning “Negro.” Signs reading “Whites Only” or “Colored Only” above restrooms and water fountains emerged as hallmarks of the Jim Crow system of racial segregation.

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A black and white photo of a crowd of mostly white people watching a platform on which a group of white men gather around a Black man, Henry Smith, who is tied up. Smith’s shirt has been unbuttoned and pulled down to waist level. The word Justice is painted on the platform.

Murderous violence accompanied the implementation of Jim Crow laws. From 1890 to 1899, the United States averaged 188 racial lynchings per year, 82 percent of which occurred in the South. Lynchings usually involved a Black man (or men) accused of a crime—often the rape of a White woman. White mobs would seize, torture, and kill the accused, often in ghastly ways. Large crowds, including women and children, would watch amid a carnival-like atmosphere. Photographs of gruesome lynchings surrounded by laughing and smiling Whites were reproduced on postcards and mailed across the nation. Mississippi governor James Vardaman declared that “if it is necessary that every Negro in the state will be lynched, it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”

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A black and white photo of a man, Reverend Benjamin Mays, in a suit and tie sitting in a room and resting his chin on his hand. He is in late middle age and has short, curled, white hair. Several men in suits and ties sit in the background.

An Alternative Culture.

Yet accommodation to White supremacy did not mean surrender. African Americans constructed their own alternative culture. Churches continued to provide an anchor for Black communities and were often the only public buildings Blacks could use for large gatherings, such as club meetings, political rallies, and social events. For men especially, churches offered leadership roles and political status. Being a deacon was one of the most prestigious roles a Black man could achieve. As in many White churches, the men preached and governed church affairs; the women often did everything else.

Religious life provided great comfort to a people worn down by the hardships and abuses associated with segregation. As the Reverend Benjamin Mays explained, he and his Black neighbors in South Carolina “believed that the trials and tribulations of the world would be all over when one got to heaven. Beaten down at every turn by the White man, as they were, Negroes could perhaps not have survived without this kind of religion.”

Mays would become a distinguished minister and professor before being named president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he became a mentor to a young student named Martin Luther King Jr. Mays often criticized the Black churches for not confronting the violence of White racism, yet he also acknowledged the crucial spiritual comfort and community solidarity that Black churches and colleges provided during the many violent incidents provoked by White supremacists.

New Opportunities.

One ironic result of Jim Crow segregation was that it created new economic opportunities for African Americans. Black entrepreneurs emerged to provide the essential services denied to the Black community by White supremacists—insurance, banking, barbering, funerals, hair salons. Blacks also formed their own social and fraternal clubs and organizations, all of which provided fellowship, mutual support, and opportunities for service.

Middle-class African American women organized a network of social clubs that served as engines of community service across the South and the nation. They cared for the aged, infirm, orphaned, and abandoned; they provided homes for single mothers and nurseries for working mothers; and they sponsored health clinics and classes in home economics.

In 1896, the leaders of women’s clubs created the National Association of Colored Women. The organization’s first president, Mary Church Terrell, told the members they had an obligation to serve the “lowly, the illiterate, and even the vicious to whom we are bound by the ties of race and sex, and put forth every effort to uplift and reclaim them.” Courageous African American women declared that Black men were not providing sufficient leadership. An editorial in the Woman’s Era called for “timid men and ignorant men” to step aside and let the women show the way.

Others pursued legal recourse to improve their quality of life. Tennessean Callie Guy House launched a mass movement in the 1890s demanding pensions for former slaves. In 1897, she helped found the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association. Its proposals were modeled after the military pensions being paid to Union war veterans. House and others crisscrossed the southern states promoting pensions as “reparation” for the sin of slavery. By 1900, some 300,000 people had joined the organization.

Federal officials, however, opposed the pension idea. At the same time, the U.S. Post Office and Pensions Bureau harassed House and other officers of the group, falsely accusing them of mail fraud. House was arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten months in a federal prison. No pensions were ever paid to any formerly enslaved person.

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A portrait of a Black woman in a striped dress and ornate collar, Ida B Wells. Her hair is gathered up in a soft bouffant and bun.

Ida B. Wells.

One of the most outspoken African American activists was Ida B. Wells. Born into enslavement in 1862 in Mississippi, she attended a school staffed by White missionaries. In 1880, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she taught in segregated schools and gained entrance to the social life of the African American middle class.

In 1883, after losing her seat on a railroad car because she was Black, Wells became the first African American to file a lawsuit challenging such discrimination. The circuit court decided in her favor and fined the railroad, but the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the ruling. Wells thereafter discovered “[my] first and [it] might be said, my only love”—journalism—which she used to fight for justice. She became the fearless editor of Memphis Free Speech, a newspaper that focused on African American issues.

In 1892, after three of her friends were lynched by a White mob, Wells launched a crusade against lynching. “The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs,” Wells argued, “the more he is insulted, outraged, and lynched.” She described Memphis as a White-governed “town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood.”

Angry Whites responded by destroying her office and threatening to lynch her. Wells countered by purchasing a pistol, for she “felt one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” Later she settled in Chicago, where she continued to criticize Jim Crow laws and fought for the restoration of Black voting rights. “Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning,” she explained, “and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.”

Wells helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and worked for women’s suffrage (voting rights). In promoting racial equality, she often found herself in direct opposition to Booker T. Washington, the most influential African American leader in the nation.

Booker T. Washington.

Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Black mother and a White father. At age sixteen he enrolled at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, one of several colleges created during Reconstruction specifically for newly emancipated African Americans. There he met the school’s founder, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who preached moderation and urged the students: “Be thrifty and industrious,” “Command the respect of your neighbors by a good record and a good character,” “Make the best of your difficulties,” and “Live down prejudice.” Washington listened and learned.

Nine years later, Armstrong received a request from a group in northern Alabama who were starting a Black college called Tuskegee Institute. The college needed a president, and Armstrong urged them to hire Washington. Although only twenty-five, he was, according to Armstrong, “a very capable mulatto (a person of mixed Black and White ancestry), clear headed, modest, sensible, polite, and a thorough teacher and superior man.”

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A black and white photographic portrait of a Black man in a light colored suit and bow tie, Booker T Washington. He has short, curly hair that comes down in a widow’s peak. He has striking light-colored eyes.

Young Washington got the job and quickly went to work. The first students had to help construct the institute’s buildings by making the bricks themselves. As the years passed, Tuskegee Institute became celebrated as a college dedicated to promoting self-discipline in students and providing vocational training.

Over time, Washington became a skilled fund-raiser, gathering substantial gifts from wealthy Whites, most of them northerners. The complicated racial dynamics of the late nineteenth century required him to walk a tightrope between being candid and being an effective college president. He learned to act like a fox, masking his militancy to maintain the support of Whites. As the years passed, the pragmatic Washington became a source of inspiration and hope to millions of Blacks.

Washington’s recurring message to Black students emphasized the importance of gaining “practical knowledge.” In part to please his White donors, he argued that African Americans should not focus on fighting racial segregation. They should instead work hard in school and avoid stirring up trouble. Their priority should be self-improvement rather than social change. Washington told them to begin “at the bottom” as well-educated, hardworking farmers, not as social activists.

Washington was often criticized for too readily “accommodating” White concerns, yet his message of Black economic self-sufficiency, self-pride, and the dignity of work infuriated White racists of his day. Thomas Dixon, a North Carolina Baptist minister, state legislator, and novelist, complained that Washington was teaching Black students “to be masters of men, to be independent, to own and operate their own industries,” all of which would “destroy the last vestige of dependence on the white man for anything.”

Washington ignored such critics. In a famous speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, he urged the African American community not to migrate to northern states or to other nations but to “Cast down your [water] bucket where you are—cast it down in making friends . . . of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.” Fighting for “social equality” and directly challenging White rule, Washington asserted, would be “the extremest folly,” and any effort at “agitation” would, he warned, backfire. African Americans first needed to become self-sufficient economically. Civil rights would have to wait.

W.E.B. Du Bois.

Other African American leaders disagreed with Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist strategy. By prioritizing economic progress over political and social rights, they argued, Washington was undermining efforts to achieve full social and political equality for African Americans.

W.E.B. Du Bois emerged as Washington’s foremost rival and critic. A native of Massachusetts, Du Bois recalled that he first experienced racial prejudice as a student at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He later studied in Germany before becoming the first African American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard (in history and sociology). In addition to promoting civil rights, he left a distinguished record as a scholar, authoring more than twenty books.

In his most famous work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois highlighted the “double consciousness” felt by African Americans: “One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” In fact, a young White visitor to Mississippi in 1910 noticed that nearly every Black person he met had “two distinct social selves, the one he reveals to his own people, the other he assumes among the Whites.” Du Bois spent his career exploring this double consciousness and how it inevitably hindered Black progress.

Trim and dapper, Du Bois had a flamboyant personality and a combative spirit. Not long after he began teaching at Atlanta University in 1897, he launched a public assault on Booker T. Washington’s conservative strategy for improving the quality of life for African Americans. Du Bois called Washington’s celebrated 1895 speech the Atlanta Compromise and said that he would not “surrender the leadership of this race to cowards” who, like Washington, “accepted the alleged inferiority of the Negro” so Blacks could “concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.”

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A black and white photographic profile portrait of a Black man with a short, pointed beard wearing a collared shirt and jacket, W. E. B. Du Bois. His curly hair is cut short and he is bald to the top of his head.

Du Bois stressed that the priorities should be reversed—that African American leaders should adopt a strategy of “ceaseless agitation” directed at ensuring the right to vote and winning civil equality. The education of Blacks, he maintained, should not be merely vocational but comparable to that enjoyed by the White elite, and it should help develop bold leaders willing to challenge Jim Crow segregation and discrimination. He demanded that disenfranchisement and legalized segregation cease immediately and that the laws of the land be enforced.

For his part, Washington stressed that Du Bois, a New Englander, never understood the brutal dynamics of southern racism. A more militant strategy in the South, he argued, would only have gotten more Blacks lynched. Nor did Du Bois or other critics know that Washington secretly worked to challenge segregation and disenfranchisement, stop lynchings, increase funding for public schools, and finance legal efforts to oppose Jim Crow laws. He often acted privately because he feared that public activism would trigger violence against Tuskegee and himself. Such “quiet efforts,” he noted, were more successful and realistic than the “brass band” approach championed by Du Bois.

The dispute between Washington and Du Bois exposed the tensions that would ultimately divide the twentieth-century civil rights movement: militancy versus conciliation, separatism versus assimilation, social justice versus economic opportunities. In the end, Washington wanted to engender in his students a confident faith in molding a better future. He counseled them to grasp hope rather than hate, and he told racist Whites that “you can’t keep another man in the ditch without being in the ditch yourself.” By 1915, when Washington died, the leadership of the nation’s Black community was passing to Du Bois and others whose uncompromising efforts to gain true equality signaled the beginning of the civil rights century.

The transformation of southern race relations and politics during the late 1800s and early 1900s was triggered by economic stress and a resurgence of racial prejudice. Jim Crow laws, emblematic of this turbulent era, entrenched segregation and systematically disenfranchised Black Americans through various means such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and residency requirements, while often granting preferential treatment to illiterate Whites. State and federal laws, as well as the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), validated these actions. In the face of these obstacles, as well as increased violence, Black leaders urged African Americans to focus on vocational and educational advancement and economic independence while seeking redress for historical injustices in order to navigate the oppressive and often violent environment of the Jim Crow South.