“It shall be unlawful for a Negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards.” This law by the state of Alabama was just one of the many ridiculous laws of the early 1900‘s These particular laws, separating races and discriminating against blacks, became known as “Jim Crow laws,” Jim Crow laws were a large part of the dark history of unrighteous governments and cold realities for colored people, many examples of which can he found in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird So where exactly does the name “Jim Crow” come from? The unofficial name comes from an 1828 show tune called “Jump Jim Crow” Ironically, the song was performed by white performers wearing black face paint, basically making fun of the typical uneducated black man (Friedman, 1). But how could such laws have existed constitutionally? Michael Jay Friedman writes, “The judicial branch instead seized upon technicalities and loopholes to avoid striking down segregationist laws.”
These segregationist laws in fact were what made up one of the cruelest periods of the century, The cold reality that many blacks faced everyday was centered on the idea of whites being superior, and blacks being essentially worthless. For example, a simple task of walking down the sidewalk would be a shaming chore for a colored person, being that every time a white person walked near, the black would be expected to step off the sidewalk and wait for them to pass (Carney, 1) If they chose otherwise, their consequences could be anything from a cuss and dirty look, to a full on beating. Steve Carney says, “It was a time of continual stress waiting for the next daily indignity or injustice, when not adding a ‘sir‘ to your ‘thank you’ would warrant a slap across the face from an insulted pharmacist” (Carney, 1).
Death itself was also a common punishment given to black people, often times for no other reason than simply being black. More than 3,000 colored people were lynched between 1880 and 1930 (Hudson, 1} It wasn’t until later in the century that people started truly understanding the inhumanity they had been treating their neighbors with Many examples of Jim Crow laws can be found in the award winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The plot surrounds around a trial in which a black man, Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white woman Defense attorney Atticus Finch guarded the jail cell of Tom Robinson out of fear that he would be harmed before the trial, Sure enough, a gang of white men appeared that night in hopes of killing Tomi Had they been successful, punishment for the gang of men would be highly unlikely, on account of the tolerance for violence against black people.
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In chapter 23, Atticus says, “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins” (Lee, 220) This way of thinking throughout society was brought on by the Jim Crow laws, which endorsed a lifestyle of white on top, black on bottom Harper Lee does an excellent job of realistically displaying this in her novel. The period between the late 1800’s and the 1930’s was a time in which few people knew the difference between right and wrong. There was little to no respect for colored people This level of disrespect, however, could have been prevented to an extent if it wasn’t for the Jim Crow laws, which contributed to the American outlook on segregationi They shamed black people for no reason other than their being black It was the brave people like Atticus Finch who weren’t afraid to stand up against injustice, and put an end to discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow.
