What are similarities between Jim Crow laws and Apartheid?
1 Answer
Both were laws that restricted the rights of the black population and were designed to prevent contact between the races.
Explanation:
When I was a peace corp volunteer in Swaziland during the 1970's apartheid was still in force. While in South Africa my students and I could no travel on the same bus. The authorities would have made 30 students and three black Swazi teachers walk and allow 1 white teacher to remain riding on the bus. When after hitch hiking to the park to join the students, I wet my pants. The first bathroom was for white women only, the next for Asian women only the third for colored women only, the fourth for Black women only. The other set of bathrooms on the other side of the park were in reverse.
The kind or ridiculous was in force in the Southern United States. Separate bathrooms, buses, train cars, and places to live. In South Africa the blacks were legally restricted to townships that felt like the militarily enforced gettos of Nazi Germany. In the south blacks could not live in white areas or marry white people.
The goal in both societies was to separate the races and limit opportunities for the blacks to prosper and advance. Both were caste systems with the blacks at the bottom of the social structure.
