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U.S. History 1877-Present 2: Jim Crow Laws and Voting 1747 Views


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Description:

The Jim Crow laws remind us of one of the most shameful periods in our nation's history. At least we changed, and grew, and are no longer racist. (laugh/sob)

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

The very existence of the minstrel character Jim Crow was bad [Jim Crow character appears]

00:08

enough and then he grew up to become namesake for a set of racist laws that

00:13

kept blacks and whites segregated from about 1872 about nineteen sixty the Jim

00:18

Crow laws existed in every southern state plus Indiana Maryland Kansas [US states highlighted with Jim Crow laws]

00:23

Oregon and California black citizens were told where they could eat drink sit

00:28

swim walk work play learn live be hospitalized be buried go to the

00:33

bathroom and yeah we could go on and on but it's just exhausting laws even

00:37

mandated separate seating areas for blacks on public transport in sports [Black man waiting for a bus]

00:42

stadium in restaurant in play houses and in movie theaters some laws barred black

00:47

southerners from certain places altogether such as public swimming pools

00:51

in tennis court and even roller skating rinks and just put the cherry on top [People skating on a roller skating rink]

00:56

housing codes forbade black families from renting purchasing or building

01:01

homes except in neighborhood designated for them and you can bet they weren't

01:06

exactly yes the choice was part of town some places even require different sets

01:12

of items to be touched by black and white citizens because the black people

01:17

cooties or something courtrooms even had separate Bibles for black people and [Black school of children appear]

01:21

white people I mean because that's exactly what Jesus would do right in

01:26

West Virginia in 1890 law said black birth marriage and death records had to

01:32

be stored separately from white people in 1939 Florida jumped on the crazy

01:37

train and put black students folks on different shelves from those of white

01:41

students all that stuff was awful but one of the worst forms of segregation [White and black shelves of books]

01:45

happened in school, schools were supposed to be separate but equal but somehow

01:50

equal meant that black schools got way less funding and government support that

01:55

kind of equal this of course meant that the school didn't work as well and [Black students working in school]

01:59

blacks generally got a subpar education which white supremacist then tried to

02:04

use as proof that blacks were too dumb to learn well the irony is that white

02:08

supremacist were too dumb to see the irony of that hole concept...

02:11

southern white Democrats just weren't satisfied that all this discrimination

02:16

had gone far enough and so the great attack on voting rights began true the

02:21

15th amendment prohibited barring anyone from voting on the basis of race but

02:25

what does that matter in their evil layers the politicians schemed and

02:30

plotted coming up with wicked poll taxes cruel property qualifications and [Cabin appears in the woods]

02:35

nefarious literacy tests this kept many blacks from voting because most of them

02:40

were poor and illiterate some poor illiterate whites also lost the right

02:43

vote but officials often let them skip the tests altogether telling them not to

02:47

worry their little white heads about it african-americans still fought the good

02:51

fight continuing to cast ballots in large numbers until the 1890s some even [People casting ballots]

02:56

kept a few seats in Congress until the turn of the century but at the years

03:00

passed it became even harder to vote by 1940 less than five percent of eligible [Pie chart of eligible black southerners appears]

03:06

black southerners were registered at the polls this basically eliminated voting

03:12

suffrage in the South the forces of the dark side were winning and ironically [Darth Vader appears]

03:16

those forces were all white

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