ShmoopTube

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sometimes a concept makes us do a double-take

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our minds are programmed to think logically us sane folks anyway so when we [man double-takes and numbers whirl through space]

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come across an oxymoron it makes us skip a beat

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jumbo shrimp yeah those babies are still shrimps we're kind of necessitates that [man holding jumbo shrimp]

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they're small well how about a civil war well let's just shake hands politely

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before we shoot okay sounds a little fishy so how about this idea of separate

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but equal well this was the prevailing legal philosophy in the south after

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reconstruction in Plessy v Ferguson the Supreme Court decided that it was a okay [Supreme Court entrance of building]

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for state governments to keep the races segregated so long as whites and blacks

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got equal services what could possibly go wrong [Judge holding a gavel in court]

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well just you know everything the thing about it was that separate was pretty

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inherently unequal since Jim Crow was running the show the services offered to [Jim Crow in a room as a black man uses a sink]

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blacks were of a far lower caliber than those offered to whites.. the white schools

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were better the white restaurants were nicer even the white toilets were

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cleaner if the US was an apple split in two blacks got the piece that was [US apple split in two]

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smaller and filled with worms. The doctrine of segregation got a federal

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blessing by the Supreme Court in the 1892 case Plessy V Ferguson, Homer Plessy

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a black man who lived in Louisiana had an amazing name refused to sit in a [Homer Plessy sat beside a train]

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segregated train car breaking one of Louisiana's Jim Crow laws well the case

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was taken to the highest levels of the land in an attempt to prove that [Court floating on a cloud]

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segregation was a violation of the protections offered to blacks in the

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13th and 14th amendments. Well the court in all its wisdom ruled that segregation

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did not go against the Thirteenth Amendment because it didn't reinstitute

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slavery the guys in black robes also didn't buy the segregation with against [people with bags on their heads wearing black robes]

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the 14th amendment why? because segregation didn't mean that

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both races weren't still equally protected under the law in fact there [police officers walking down a street]

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was no problem with segregation as long as the facilities were quote separate

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but equal' unquote well having the highest court in the land endorsed

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segregation meant the road to equality was well that much steeper fast forward [two men looking at the road to equality]

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60 years and blacks have been living under the thumb of Jim Crow laws for as

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long as they could remember thankfully there was a shift in American society [Black civillians crushed under Jim Crows thumb]

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after the Second World War we had seen how racism turned to genocide in a

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heartbeat was America finally ready to make some changes at home well the good [People giving thumbs up]

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news was that many Americans were up to the challenge it was a new day in

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America following World War two blacks had proved themselves once again as

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brothers in arms to their white counterparts [Blacks fighting in the World War]

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during the war only to come home to the same old story of racism and segregation

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in the south well the path to greater equality would not be easy

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black organizers and their allies faced steep or even violent resistance to [Man looking at a steep path to equality]

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their efforts but the times they were a-changing thank you Bob Dylan for

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singing it it was time to debunk this myth that separate could ever be equal

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and that unicorns were real though what that wasn't as tough of a myth dispel [Unicorn jumping over a rainbow]

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