Jim Crow's Laws

Jim crow’s laws

A. What/who is Jim Crow?

·         Jim Crow is not actually a person, but the subject of a song performed by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice. Rice was a white man who performed in blackface. Like most blackface performers, Rice denigrated Blacks through his music, his stereotypical behaviour, and his rude jokes.

B. What were the Jim Crow Laws?

·         After the American Civil War most states in the South passed anti-African American legislation. These became known as Jim Crow laws. This included laws that discriminated against African Americans with concern to attendance in public schools and the use of facilities such as restaurants, theatres, hotels, cinemas and public baths. Trains and buses were also segregated and in many states marriage between whites and African American people.

C. What was the response of the slaves and the Blacks to these laws?

·         This type of segregation led to fierce civil rights struggles, especially in regards to Jim Crow Laws that segregated schools. Several key events – including Rosa Parks’ refusal to move from her seat on a segregated bus, as well as several bus boycotts – built up and provided enough tension in society that the question of segregation finally had to be dealt with.

D. Do we see the Jim Crow laws surface in the novel? If so then in which part of the novel?

·         Yes. The blacks and the whites go to separate churches.