Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow
Jim Crow refers to a large body of law and social custom which served to prove and maintain segregation of the races in the South after the end of Reconstruction and moving into the mid-twentieth century (Woodward). Woodward posits with exist of two "reconstructions" in the South. It first occurred at the end of the Civil War, by radical Republican forces, who enforced the emancipation and equal rights Amendments to the Constitution (Feldman). The long experience of slavery in America left its mark of prosperity on its slaves and mastered influenced relationships between them more than a decade after the end of the old authority (Woodward). Slavery was only one of many ways by which the white …show more content…
Slavery took over in many areas in the United States. Segregation in complete and fully developed form did grow up contemporaneously with slavery, but not in its midst. One of strangest things about Jim Crow was the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force (Woodward). By 1830 slavery was almost abolished by one means or another throughout the North, with only 3500 Negroes remaining in bondage in the nominally free states (Woodward). When Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1929, he entered into a world where Jim Crow reigned supreme. Based on a stereotypical minstrel character of the post-Civil War era, the term "Jim Crow" referred to state laws that segregated white and black Americans in many aspects of life. But by the time King's first child, Yolanda, was born in 1955, Jim Crow was losing ground (Feldman). The new rulers did not, however, inaugurate any revolution in the customs and laws governing racial relations. Separation of the races continued in churches, schools, in military life, and public institutions as it had been before
Jim Crow refers to a large body of law and social custom which served to prove and maintain segregation of the races in the South after the end of Reconstruction and moving into the mid-twentieth century (Woodward). Woodward posits with exist of two "reconstructions" in the South. It first occurred at the end of the Civil War, by radical Republican forces, who enforced the emancipation and equal rights Amendments to the Constitution (Feldman). The long experience of slavery in America left its mark of prosperity on its slaves and mastered influenced relationships between them more than a decade after the end of the old authority (Woodward). Slavery was only one of many ways by which the white …show more content…
Slavery took over in many areas in the United States. Segregation in complete and fully developed form did grow up contemporaneously with slavery, but not in its midst. One of strangest things about Jim Crow was the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force (Woodward). By 1830 slavery was almost abolished by one means or another throughout the North, with only 3500 Negroes remaining in bondage in the nominally free states (Woodward). When Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1929, he entered into a world where Jim Crow reigned supreme. Based on a stereotypical minstrel character of the post-Civil War era, the term "Jim Crow" referred to state laws that segregated white and black Americans in many aspects of life. But by the time King's first child, Yolanda, was born in 1955, Jim Crow was losing ground (Feldman). The new rulers did not, however, inaugurate any revolution in the customs and laws governing racial relations. Separation of the races continued in churches, schools, in military life, and public institutions as it had been before