What was the Jim Crow system?
1 Answer
It was segregation
Explanation:
Jim Crow was the name of a stage character which was derogatory to African Americans. Jim Crow laws were promoted after the end of the Reconstruction(1877) and made legal after the Plessy vs Ferguson decision in 1896. The Supreme Court case ws based on the fact that Homer Plessy who was one eighth Black could not sit in the same car than White people in Louisiana.
It imposed a strict separation between Black and White and a very fierce discrimination against African Americans. People had to use different water fountains, sidewalks, entrances, and public places in general. It was implemented in the former Confederate states which rose against Lincoln during the Civil War. African Americans were not enfranchised.
It lasted until the Sixties when political activism led by Martin Luther King forced the federal government to intervene (Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965 and 1968). They had to go through massive Civil Disobedience and political demonstration (the March on Washington in 1963) to fulfill their goal.
