Forgotten Majority

Advocating for the just and humane treatment of those who are incarcerated.

THE RESURRECTION OF JIM CROW


Contributing Editor
Richard P. Burton, Sr., Director
October 2011

                         PROJECT R.E.A.C.H., INC. 

 In the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court legitimized the “Jim Crow” system of segregation that had been imposed on Blacks in the decades following the Civil War. Despite the fact that  segregation laws violated the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution, the court circumvented these “Equal Protection” clauses with the fictitious doctrine of “Separate But Equal.”

Amendment 14: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html 
Amendment 15: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Jim Crow laws were enacted in the United States for almost 100 years, from 1876 to 1965. The laws were respon­si­ble for what was called, “Sep­a­rate but Equal,” a doc­trine that demanded sep­a­rate facil­i­ties for blacks and whites, from restau­rants to restrooms to drink­ing foun­tains to schools and other pub­lic places. Jim Crow laws also carried stiff fines and fees, designed to keep blacks from voting.  Starting in the 1930s, the NAACP began assembling data to prove that ‘Separate’ is not and never can be ‘Equal’.  And the dilapidated buildings and tattered, out-dated textbooks of the under-funded Black schools testified to that inequality. But before NAACP lawyers could challenge segregation in the courts, there had to be courageous Black citizens willing to defy segregation customs and laws in order to create the cases for attorneys to argue. To violate the Jim Crow rules meant risking verbal abuse, being fired from your job, evicted from your home, the destruction of your business, brutal beatings, jail, and lynching. The Jim Crow laws of the early 1900’s have been resurrected in the form of the war on drugs, mandatory minimums, three strikes, and zero tolerance laws. Thirteen states, under Republican governance, have changed their voter reg­is­tra­tion laws, includ­ing Wis­con­sin, Ohio, Florida and Texas, mak­ing vot­ing and the restoration of civil rights more dif­fi­cult. Thousands of African Americans, Hispanic and the poor within these  states are banned from voting for life and denied other rights under our modern day system of Jim Crow. It’s critical that we challenge laws like life without parole,  which continue to disenfranchise millions of Americans in this day and time.  
                                    “At no time do we condone wrongness on either side of the wall”. 

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