During the period of Jim Crow Laws, it was not just tough for the victims of the violence, poverty, and segregation but also for the people who challenged the discrimination and segregation in the south as well. The Jim Crow Laws were handcrafted and created by white men, based on the theories of white supremacy as a reaction to reconstruction and to the civil war. In the Late 1890s and the early 1900s, racism appealed to the whites who feared to lose their jobs, property, and power to African Americans. Jim Crow Laws had dominated basically every aspect of their lives, hoping to keep African Americans inferior and as far away from freedom as possible.
In 1890, Louisiana passed laws that prevented blacks and whites from riding together on public transportation. Shortly after, Plessy v. Ferguson, a case that challenged the laws, reached the United States Supreme Court in 1896. The law was upheld with the court stating that government-provided public services for blacks could be “separate but equal.” In 1892, the courts basically sealed the fate of black American men when they upheld a Mississippi law that was created to deny African American men voting rights. Given the go-ahead from the court, southern states began to limit the voting rights to only people who owned property, could read English well, those whose grandparents had been able to vote, those with a “good character”, and to people who paid in the poll taxes. In 1896, Louisiana had over 130,000 registered black voters. After only eight years the original amount dropped to 1,300, 1 percent of the original amount that could pass the new voting rules.
Over 300,000 African American men had served in World War I, and our country had welcomed them home with Twenty-Five major race riots. In Chicago, white mobs lynched war veterans in their uniforms. Black Americans started fighting back founding The National Association for the ADvancement of Colored People in 1909. The Urban League publicized abuses and worked for redress as well. Even though the groups had some support from both races, the groups barely seemed to stem the tide of segregation. By 1944, a Swedish author visiting in the south stated that segregation was so complete that whites did not see any blacks except when being served by them.
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However, in 1948, President Harry Truman’s administration took action to promote racial equality for all, he asked Congress to abolish poll taxes, enforce fair voting and hiring practices, and abolish the Jim Crow transportation laws between states. Almost immediately four southern states abandoned President Truman’s Democratic Party in protest. President Truman as the commander in chief ordered the integration of the entire armed forces. Soon after when the Eisenhower administration downplayed civil rights, the federal courts took the lead to end segregation. In 1950 The Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People challenged the concepts of “separate but equal.”
In Virginia and South Carolina, black parents upset with poor and overcrowded schools sued the district to get their children placed into white schools. Both times, the federal courts upheld segregation and both times the parents appealed the decision of the court. In a very similar case, Delaware’s Supreme Court ordered school districts to admit the black students into white schools until proper classrooms could be provided for the students, this time the district appealed the case.
