Think about having to go to a different school because of the color of your skin or being treated differently because of their race. For most people of color in the 1800s had to deal with problems dealing with this every single day. People in the 1840’s-1850 had to deal with a lot of problems dealing with discrimination and segregation. Segregation had started even before laws were made to enforce it. In 1896, legal segregation had began, simply because the Supreme Court passed laws for segregated schools. It ended in 1964 because America outlawed segregation. Segregation and discrimination have impacted history by the Jim Crow Laws, the Plessy v. Ferguson case, and segregation in educational facilities.
One major thing that dramatically changed segregation was the Jim Crow laws. These laws were made to put limitations on African American people’s rights and freedoms all over the world. An online book states, “Racial stereotypes became a common fixture in popular images in American media. Minstrel shows, comics, cartoons, newspaper stories, and movies reinforced two divergent images of African Americans, both of which underscored the need for white supremacy and the need for Jim Crow laws to control blacks. One image was of African Americans as simple, happygolucky, and often childlike.
The other image was the black beast, the wild emotional creature of hellish lusts, always ready to rape the virtuous white woman, or expressed in the black woman as a wanton woman always ready to seduce a healthy but naive young white man.” During segregation, racial stereotypes had a huge impact on the way things were and how others viewed themselves and others. The same book states, “Jim Crow dominated almost all aspects of black life in the South, from subjecting blacks to substandard health care and education, to daily humiliations of being served last in stores and having to make way for whites on public sidewalks. Regardless of income level or intellectual achievement, African Americans were instilled with the understanding that they challenged their low status at the peril of their lives. Black landownership remained low compared to whites, as did education levels.”
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The laws had changed African American lives. Whites were considered superior to African Americans. Not everyone loved these laws. An American History textbook states, “Some African Americans responded to Jim Crow by advocating their complete separation from U.S. society. Such individuals and groups proposed a spectrum of radical solutions to Jim Crow, ranging from the complete economic and social removal of African Americans from U.S. society, to the establishment of a separate black nation on the American continent or to their ancestral homelands in Africa.” People thought that African Americans should be completely separated from everyone else. Overall the Jim Crow Laws have impacted history in an extraordinary way .
Another major thing that happened was the Plessy v. Ferguson case. An online database says, “In an act of civil disobedience carefully orchestrated by a group of black Republicans, Plessy, then 30, bought a first-class ticket for a two-hour train trip from New Orleans to Covington, La., on June 7, 1892 — and deliberately sat in a coach reserved for whites.” During this time Plessy showed how brave he was. The same online source says, “The retreat from the Brown decision’s vision of integrated education is happening despite evidence that racially mixed classrooms have benefited both whites and blacks, and polls showing that public support for school desegregation is growing…” People were eventually finding out that having mixed classrooms were better and the support for desegregation in educational facilities grew rapidly. The online database says, “In the milestone case of Brown vs. Board of Education, the court declared: ‘Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.’ Potent civil rights laws were enacted a decade later.” This was another case that in which the court said things about how educational places are unequal. The start of segregation started because of the Plessy v. Ferguson case.
Another major thing was the segregation in schools. Most schools would spend more money for white students and not African Americans. A history learning site says, “South Carolina spent 3 times more on white-only schools than black-only schools. It also spent 100 times more on transporting white school children than African American children. Therefore, the white children could go to the best schools as they were bussed there with the cost met by the state, but African American children were limited to schools within their area which were under-funded – simply because the state refused to finance their transport to other schools.” Overall the “…schools provided for negroes in segregated systems are unequal in facilities…”
While segregation was going on the places for African Americans to gain their education were worse than the schools for White children. W.E.B. DuBois said, “‘Negro children need neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What they need is education.”’ He strongly believed that African American children didn’t need to be in a mixed or segregated educational facilities but they they needed to be learning something. A book on racial discrimination says, “Realistic rather than symbolic relief for segregated schools will require a specific, judicially monitored plan designed primarily to promote educational equality.” When and if something was to be done to get educational facilities to be equal then it should be monitored by the court. Overall, educational facilities should be equal for White and African American children.
All in all African Americans have gone through many hardships. One being the Plessy v Ferguson case which started segregation. Another one being the Jim Crow Laws that continued to restrict Blacks from having the same rights as Whites. The last one being segregation in schools which only caused Blacks to not gain a proper education that they needed. African Americans had to deal with segregation and discrimination for a very long time. Ruth Bader Ginsburg says, “We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.” Since all of these issues have happened in history we now do not have to deal with segregation. The Plessy v Ferguson case, the Jim Crow Laws, and segregation in schools have impacted history.
