Who or what was Jim Crow, and why is his symbol important? Jim Crow was a white contrivance that originated in the 1830s in Southern minstrel show. White male actors smeared black cork on their faces and lampooned blacks, as stupid, lazy, childlike, docile. This image of the shiftless black male may have been one way whites managed their fear of Nat Turners rising up to slaughter their families. By the 1890's, however, Jim Crow was anything but childlike and docile. This time, the white image of blacks was sinister. What happened in the 1890s to make life for African-Americans in the South more perilous, than in previous decades. And affixed by a law and custom, a fully crystallized system of racial apartheid. What was the legal apparatus for Jim Crow schools? We'll try to answer these questions. The Southern historian, Joel Williamson offers an intriguing thesis, that goes far toward explaining the extremely hostile conditions white Southerners, created for blacks in the period 1890 to 1917. Here's William's thesis in a nutshell. In the late 1880s, the South was in the throes of a serious economic recession. The political activity of Southern farmers' alliances was insufficient to relieve their economic distress. Unable to find relief through economic or political means, white men across the South were unable to fulfill their expected social role, as protectors and providers for white women. Frustration bred aggression, a scapegoat was needed and it was black. >> As rural blacks were also out of work in hard times, frustrated white men conjured a pernicious image of beastly black men abroad in the woods raping white women. The radical white response to this conjured image was the lynching of black men suspected of the crime, an act whose consummation brought psychic relief to whites, through a forceful demonstration of the male protector role. The white fury abated between 1892 and 1897 with the early success of the agrarian-based Populist Party, which needed black votes, in order to become a viable third party in American politics, yet populism failed to gain, more than a temporary toehold in state and national politics. Between 1897 and 1906, frustrated whites unleashed a wave of unprecedented violence against blacks, and mounted legislation across the South, that disfranchised and segregated blacks. Violence now took the form of white-initiated murderous race riots. First, in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. Next, in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1906. Unlike Lynching, which targeted individual blacks. White ra, riots targeted blacks, en masse. Thomas W Dixon's novels, The Leopard's Spots, published in 1902, and the Clansman, published in 1905. Perniciously projected the image of marauding black males savaging white women. It conjured the male protector role. The Klansman was the literary fodder for DW Griffith's notorious film, Birth of a Nation, released in 1915. >> Against, this backdrop of virulent white racism. The US Supreme Court gave its own imprimatur to segregated schools in the South through its momentous decision, the case of Plessy versus Ferguson in 1986. The case before the Supreme Court, was to test the Constitutionality of a Louisiana transportation Law, that segregated coaches by race on Louisiana Trains. If the train coaches were of equal quality, was the separation of blacks from whites constitutionally permissible? Did the principle of quote separate but equal, violate Blacks' Constitutional Rights to equal protection of the laws, as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment? >> [NOISE]. >> Did the Louisiana, Jim Crow Law assign a badge of inferiority to African-Americans? How would the Court's ruling in a transportation case, apply to public schools in the south? >> Writing for the majority, Justice Henry Billings Brown, an exemplar of tortuous reasoning, declaimed first, and nonsensically on the 14th Amendment. Upholding the principle of separate but equal, as standing within the bounds of the US Constitution. Quote, so far then, as a conflict with the 14th Amendment is concerned, the case reduces, itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation. In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order. As for the plaintiff Homer Plessey's objection, that separate but equal imputed the bla, badge of inferiority to blacks, Justice Brown declared, next, illogically, tortuously, outrageously, quote. We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption, that the enforced separation of the two races, stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act,, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. >> Hm, endorsed by the supreme court, the principle of separate but equal would soon be applied to public schools, to justify the separate schooling of blacks, and whites in the South. As we'll see in subsequent modules, the principle of separate but equal was a false coin. Segregated Southern schools were anything, but equal. In our next episode, we look at the treatment of another racial group, Native Americans. Whom whites try to assimilate into the mainstream of American culture by quote, killing the Indian and saving the man.
