segregation

Charlotte, Grace and Katarina



__**//JIM CROW LAWS//**__

Segregation laws, or Jim Crow laws, began in the USA in 1876, and were designed to separate African Americans and white people throughout society. Black people were considered ‘impure’ and not worthy of the same respect as white people, and were regarded as second-class citizens, so state and local leaders saw it necessary that they be set apart from the rest of the population. The Jim Crow system stated that a black man was inferior to a white man in every way, including intellectually, culturally, physically and morally.

According to Jim Crow laws, blacks and whites were not to eat together, or be sexually involved. A black man may not offer his hand to be shaken by a white man, because he implies that they are equal by doing so. A black man may under no circumstances offer his hand to a white woman, and if he did, he ran the risk of being accused of rape. Black people could not show public affection, as it offended others. White motorists always had right of way on the roads, and if a black man was to ride in a car with a white man, the black must always sit in the back.

On public transport, black people had to sit at the back, and were always required to give up their seat to a standing white man. In cafés, bars, cinemas and other recreational venues, a black person was never allowed to sit up the front, and an area was marked off for the black people to sit in. There were often venues strictly denying entry to blacks, such as schools, and there would be inferior alternative facilities that black people could use. Public toilets, water fountains, bus seats and so on were all separated into white and black areas, and any black who disobeyed and ventured into a strictly white area was arrested.

On 1955 December 1st white people in a America were astonished as Rosa Parks a women who had just worked all day did not give up her seat for White women/men was expected to be given. People say Rosa Parks would have given her seat to an elderly person or child, but she had done this on purpose; she had enough of the treatment of black people in America.

When Rosa Parks had been arrested everything had started to make segregation go down the drain. First Martin Luther King had started the bus boycott that lasted 382 days. On December 21 1956 the Supreme Court had got rid of segregation on buses. After this people started having a say and making a stand, by the Early 70’s segregation at schools has stopped and segregation was finally banded not to say it doesn’t happen any more.

__SEGREGATION VIDEO__

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