Bury Jim Crow

White background with an illustration of white and brown hands embracing, brown text, and an image of a brown headstone with white text in the image.

"Jim Crow" was the name given to a group of racial segregation laws, primarily enforced in southern and border states of America between approximately 1865 (immediately after the ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery) and 1965. The name is derived from a fictional blackface minstrel character portrayed by Thomas Dartmouth Rice in the early 1830s. Rice mocked a physically disabled African slave and the name came to equate a pejorative for African-Americans. When the strict anti-black laws took the same name, it legally named Black Americans as second-class citizens. Both formal and informal segregation policies were also in place across other areas of the country. 

Black codes were state and local laws that specified how, where, when, and for what compensation formerly enslaved people could work and live. This created a form of indentured servitude for Black citizens. These laws eliminated Black citizens' voting rights, controlled their living and travel parameters, forbade interracial marriage, put many lives in danger, and led to violence and murder. Jim Crow dictated an entire way of life, as the laws mandated segregation in schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, transportation, restaurants, and other public spaces. Many former Confederate soldiers worked as police and judges in Jim Crow areas, which kept Black codes in rigid enforcement. Incarcerated people were treated similarly to enslaved people in labor camps, and Black citizens received longer sentences and had to complete physically demanding work.