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Black History and Blacks in U.S. History

Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow Laws
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 6
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   6.84

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    blacken, equality, infamous, jurisdiction, literacy, lynchings, minstrel, separately, unconstitutional, vigilante, majority, education, slavery, segregation, dating, enforcement
     content words:    Civil War, United States, Black Codes, Jim Crow, Fourteenth Amendment, Ku Klux Klan, Homer Plessey, Supreme Court, United States Congress, Fifteenth Amendment

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Jim Crow Laws
By Jane Runyon 		  
1     Many people believed that the end of the Civil War would bring great changes to the lives of slaves in the South. They were given freedom from slavery by the President of the United States. They were declared to be citizens of the United States. As citizens they were guaranteed certain rights by the Constitution. All should have been well. But it wasn't.
 
2     To be honest, it wasn't just the southern states that had problems with equality. Many northern states had a tradition of segregation. Blacks and whites lived separately, worked separately, and ate separately. It was just their habit and no one thought much about it.
 
3     The southern states believed in segregation through slavery. Blacks often worked closely with whites, but they were the property of the whites. They could be bought and sold. They had no say in who governed them.
 
4     After the Civil War, many whites intended to retain their hold on blacks through the use of laws that became known as Black Codes. These were special rules that black were held to. White people didn't have to follow these same rules. Eventually, these Black Codes became known as Jim Crow laws.
 
5     Jim Crow was the name of a clown character found in minstrel shows. A white actor would blacken his face and perform like a fool. He would sing a song with the words "Wheel about, turn about, dance jest so- Every time I wheel about I shout Jim Crow." Jim Crow came to represent the African-Americans who laughed on the outside, accepting their lot in life. Yet, these same people were hurting on the inside because of the treatment they received.

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