Who was Jim Crow?
and other things we should know but don’t...
A fledgling democracy had a problem. Race was not the creator of slavery but it certainly was the consequence. You might be surprised to learn that race was not always a box to be checked. It was invented.
We had the need for more land and oh the Indians were not fond of having their land stolen. There were Native American slaves but this was problematic. The fury of tribes in retaliation for stolen people and land was fiercely making the homeland advantage less desirable for exploitation.
Next we tried indentured servitude but after Bacon’s rebellion and similar uprisings it was discovered that only seeded animosity would do the trick.
The humanity of blacks would have to be put into question. Demoralization and characterization of their personhood as only 3/5ths of the rest of the populace seemed to generate enough blind eyes to do the trick.
Jim Crow the Minstrel Show
A white actor, Thomas Dartmouth Rice, had an affinity for minstrel show performances while performing as Jim Crow—a character based on the lyrics of Jump Jim Crow. I am astounded how many people think Jim Crow was an actual person instead of a derogatory slur against blacks.
I would like to think he died along with “the father of minstrelsy” but no such luck.
His gravestone in Brooklyn, NY reads:
Thomas Dartmouth Rice, the father of minstrelsy (performances by white performers of “blackness” in exaggerated costumes and blackface make-up, supposedly for comedic effect, but relying on racist derision and stereotyping at its core, from the mid-19th century well into the 20th century), died on this date in 1860.
No mention of the legacy of a system of oppression and racial segregation inherited by the character he created. Although no longer a stage character, the phrase was reborn in the wake of anti-Black laws conjured up after reconstruction.
Another term with a vague understanding, reconstruction was an era between 1865-1877, following the Civil War in an attempt to bring the confederate Southern states and newly freed slaves into what was now in name only, The United States.
It was during this time that Black Codes were adopted by many states. Plantation owning elites were keen to recuperate the labor lost by an emancipated people. The United States excelled at maintaining involuntary servitude regardless of emancipation.
Mississippi (from wikipedia)
Mississippi was the first state to pass Black Codes. Its laws served as a model for those passed by other states, beginning with South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana in 1865, and continuing with Florida, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and Arkansas at the beginning of 1866.[44]
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Mississippi was the first state to legislate a new Black Code after the war, beginning with "An Act to confer Civil Rights on Freedmen".
This law allowed Blacks to rent land only within cities—effectively preventing them from earning money through independent farming. It required Blacks to present, each January, written proof of employment.
The law defined violation of this requirement as vagrancy, punishable by arrest—for which the arresting officer would be paid $5, to be taken from the arrestee's wages.
Provisions akin to fugitive slave laws mandated the return of runaway workers, who would lose their wages for the year. An amended version of the vagrancy law included punishments for sympathetic whites.
Mississippi rejected the Thirteenth Amendment on December 5, 1865.
General Oliver O. Howard, national head of the Freedmen's Bureau, declared in November 1865 that most of the Mississippi Black Code was invalid
What you might observe from the timeline below is the delay from Emancipation Proclamation (freedom was not immediate) and the ratification of the14th and 15th amendments, needed for formerly enslaved people to be granted their inalienable rights.
On April 20, 1871 the House of Representatives approved “Act to enforce the Provisions of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes.” I am going to guess that you might be surprised to learn it is also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The Ku Klux Klan had been formed in 1865 as a “private club for Confederate veterans”.
The Ku Klux Klan Act, the third of a series of increasingly stringent Enforcement Acts, was designed to eliminate extralegal violence and protect the civil and political rights of four million freed slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, defined citizenship and guaranteed due process and equal protection of the law to all. Vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan, however, freely threatened African Americans and their white allies in the South and undermined the Republican Party’s plan for Reconstruction. The bill authorized the President to intervene in the former rebel states that attempted to deny “any person or any class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges or immunities under the laws.” To take action against this newly defined federal crime, the President could suspend habeas corpus, deploy the U.S. military, or use “other means, as he may deem necessary.”
Interesting facts about the history of voting in the US
In 1776 only white men 21 years of age and older—that also own land—can vote
1870, although we have the 15th amendment, many states continue practicing voter discrimination. Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud, and intimidation still prevent many from voting. We needed the 24th amendment in 1964 to eliminate poll taxes nationwide. Native Americans are still denied the right to vote until 1924.
1965 Voting Rights Act finally suspends literacy tests at the polls and enforces voting rights federal level—it is renewed in 1975 to make suspension of literacy tests permanent.
Supreme Court eviscerates Voting Rights Act in 2013
The electoral process (electoral college does not appear in constitution) was an attempt to balance potential dissolute tendencies of a president with the will of the popular vote.
“Fearful that the president might fall victim to a host of civic vices—that he could become susceptible to corruption or cronyism, sow disunity, or exercise overreach—the men sought to constrain executive power consistent with constitutional principles such as federalism and checks and balances.”—Wilfred Codrington III
None other than James Madison weighed in on the plight of the Northern vs. Southern States if a popular vote was mandated:
“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”
Fewer legal voters in the South would be problematic for true democracy. Equal populations but unequal numbers of legal voters would be a regional disadvantage in a popular vote. Why not embolden the congressional seating of the three-fifths compromise?
The three-fifths compromise was the agreement between delegates from the Northern and the Southern states at the United States Constitutional Convention (1787) that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted for determining direct taxation and representation in the House of Representatives. Changed by the 14th amendment but still allows disenfranchisement by a submerged and majority black population in the south.
Approximately 90 percent of the slaves worked in only 5 states!
The mathematics of the electoral votes undercounting non-voting slaves is responsible for modern day under-representation resulting in red state dominance in the South. In fact, it was the election of Republican Rutherford B Hayes despite Democrat Samuel Tilden winning the popular vote that led to the Compromise of 1877.
Democrats agreed to accept a Hayes victory on the condition that Republicans withdraw all federal troops from the South, resulting in Democratic control in the region, but the absence of promised protections lead to widespread disenfranchisement of Black voters.
The Compromise of 1876 effectively ended the Reconstruction era and protection of black voters, signaling an end to reconstruction and the birth of Jim Crow lawlessness in the South.