Reconstruction through the end of Jim Crow Laws
Reconstruction
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of challenges (Reconstruction). In 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African Americans (Reconstruction). The Black Codes were were designed to restrict freed blacks’ activity and ensure their availability as a labor force now that slavery had been abolished. For example , many states required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested as vagrants and fined or forced into unpaid labor (Black Codes).
The begining of Jim Crow
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Jim Crow laws were racial segregation laws that were established in 1876 at the state and local levels. They made it to were racial segregation was in all public facillities in the Southern states. In 1890 the "separate but equal" status for African Americans was enacted. The separation in practice led to conditions for African Americans that tended to be inferior to those provided for white Americans. Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated, as were federal workplaces, initiated in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern president since 1856. His administration practiced overt racial discrimination in hiring, requiring candidates to submit photos.
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Jim Crow finally ended in 1965 after the martin Luther king assassination, but even though this was the end of segregation blacks would still be mistreated and ostracized by the american society. Michelle Alexander the author of The New Jim Crow stated that " Since the nations founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time." this shows that even though slavery and the Jim crow laws are gone there are still many of the same problems that faced back then are still present today in many different forms.