Jim Crow 1
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Welcome to Political Science Level 1, Lesson 4: Jim Crow 1
In this lesson, you will learn about:
Jim Crow laws and their origins
The US constitution
The US Civil War
Convict leasing and peonage
Objectives
By the end of this lesson you will understand:
The USA’s system of apartheid after slavery
How other methods of enslavement were made legal after the abolition of slavery in the USA
What the US constitution was designed to do
How coded language in law is used for racist means
How the USA’s political climate was affected by its civil war
Similarities before and after abolition
What mechanisms convict leasing used to operate
Jim Crow is the term used to describe the apartheid segregation laws of the USA from the 19th century until 1965. These laws restricted the lives of Black people in America, preventing them from becoming US citizens.
Although Jim Crow laws were enacted after the abolition of US slavery in 1865, their seeds were sown during enslavement. After the American Revolution in the 18th century, the Southern United States agreed to form a union with the Northern States. This was on the condition that the new federal government did not interfere with their right to own slaves. The Northern States agreed as they also wanted their property rights to be respected. This led to the development of the US Constitution.
The constitution was designed to make the federal government as weak as possible, allowing states to conduct their own affairs without interference. The federal government was also made powerless against the laws on private property, and as captives were considered property, this made the government powerless when it came to slavery.
The language of the constitution was deliberately colourblind as the words Negro, Black or slave weren’t used. But the document was written to preserve a racial caste system. There was no contradiction when slaveowner Thomas Jefferson declared “all men are created equal”, as Africans were not seen as people. Federalism – the division of power between the states and the federal government – was used to protect the institution of slavery and the political power of slave holding states.
From the years of 1861-1865, the US engaged in a civil war. The Northern States (known as the Union) and the Southern States (known as the Confederacy) fought over the economics of slavery and the changing nature of capitalism. Previously, slavery in the USA primarily occurred in the Southern States. The slave grown materials would then be sent to the Northern States for the manufacturing of products. However, the Confederacy wanted to develop their own industries as opposed to relying on the North. This led to the American Civil War.
The Union eventually won the civil war, leading to the formal abolition of slavery. After this, the economic and political structure of the American South was a shambles. State governors were shackled with war debt and plantation owners had lost their capital. Real estate had been destroyed in the war and thousands had been killed or injured. Additionally, 4 million Black people were now declared free.
The roaming of large numbers of Black people as they left the plantations caused outrage. Southern States therefore introduced the “Black Codes.” These were laws that controlled every aspect of a Black person’s life. Even though they had been recently “freed”, the Black Codes established peonage and segregation laws, paving the way for Jim Crow. Peonage was a system of debt slavery where plantation owners forced Black people to work in order to pay off phoney debts.
Convict laws were also introduced. 9 of the Southern States adopted vagrancy laws, meaning unemployment was a criminal offence applied specifically to Black people. As Black people had just escaped enslavement, almost none could gain employment, meaning their only options were peonage or prison. Black people had to carry employment cards at the start of each year, an absence of which meant indefinite imprisonment.
8 of these states also introduced convict leasing. This allowed convicts to be hired as slaves for plantation owners and private companies. The Black Codes spoke for themselves, as they became the extension of racist plantation slavery.
This period also saw the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group. The Klan would terrorise Black people primarily throughout the Southern States, murdering politically active Black people and those that were deemed a “threat” to the white race. The KKK claimed they were “purifying America” by committing these acts of racial terrorism.
Ultimately, the Black Codes were overturned due to federal civil rights legislation. This ushered in the “Reconstruction Era.” The legislative achievements of this period include:
the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery except for when made punishment for a crime
the civil rights act of 1866 bestowing full citizenship to Black people
the 14th amendment, prohibiting states from denying citizens due process and equal protection under law
the 15th amendment, allowing voting regardless of colour
the KKK acts, which declared interference with voting and racist violence a federal crime.
This era also brought in the expansion of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the agency charged with the responsibility of providing food, clothing and fuel to former slaves. A public education system emerged in the South for both Black and poor white people, though the two were segregated.
In 1867, at the dawn of the Reconstruction Era, no Black person held political office. However, 3 years later, 15% of all government officials in the South were Black. By contrast, in 1965 only 8% were Black. However, Southern States still got around the legislative changes, using literacy tests, poll taxes, and qualifications to prohibit Black people from gaining voting rights.
Reconstruction led to a severe backlash from white Americans and soon after, the Jim Crow Era was born. Southern politicians vowed to reverse Reconstruction, and their campaign was reinforced by the KKK. These terrorists bombed, lynched and enacted mob violence on huge portions of the Black population. This terrorism proved successful, as the federal government no longer made the effort to enforce civil rights legislation.
A second round of vagrancy laws, as well as acts of “mischief” and “insulting gestures”, were made crimes and enforced against Black people. Tens of thousands of Africans in America were arrested during this period, and many of them were hit with court costs and fines which had to be worked off to secure release. With no means to pay off these debts, convicts were sold as forced labourers to railroads, lumber camps, farms, plantations and dozens of corporations.
Death rates were shockingly high as private contractors did not care for a convict’s health, and they were regularly whipped and beaten – with some saying this was even more harsh than US chattel slavery. Black people were once again made slaves, sanctioned by the 13th amendment in the US Constitution.
In the Virginia Supreme Court, the case of Ruffin vs Commonwealth declared there was no distinction between convict labourers and former slaves; “…he [the convict] is for the time being a slave of the state.” During the decade that followed, the prison population grew 10 times faster than the general population throughout America.
