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Unlock This CourseSlavery ended in the USA in 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1868) promised every citizen the 'equal protection of the laws'. Yet in the early 1950s black Americans in the South still lived as second-class citizens.
Southern states and towns had passed hundreds of laws to keep black and white people apart. They were known as Jim Crow laws, after a character in old stage shows that mocked black people. In 17 states and in Washington DC, the law made black and white children go to separate schools. There were also separate railway carriages, waiting rooms, parks, hospitals, cinema seats and drinking fountains. Black passengers had to sit at the back of the bus.
The facilities were never equal. Southern states spent far less on each black pupil than on each white pupil, so black schools were often overcrowded and short of books. Segregation was also backed by fear. Police, judges and juries were almost all white, so a black person who broke the rules, or who was attacked by white people, could expect little protection from the law.
Key terms:
The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) said that no citizen could be refused the vote because of race. Southern states found ways round it.
Several Southern states made people pay a tax before they could vote. Most black Southerners were poor, so many could not afford it.
People who wanted to register had to pass a test, such as explaining part of the state constitution. White officials marked it and could fail any black person they chose.
Black people who tried to register could lose their jobs or their homes, or be beaten. Many decided it was too dangerous to try.
The results were clear. In 1940 only about 3 per cent of black adults in the South were registered to vote. By 1952 the figure had risen to about 20 per cent, but in Mississippi it was still only around 5 per cent. This mattered because politicians had no need to win black votes, so they had no reason to change the laws. Juries were usually picked from lists of voters, so juries stayed all white as well.
Millions of black Americans had moved to Northern cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New York to find work and escape Jim Crow. Northern states had almost no segregation laws, and black people could vote there. But they still faced discrimination.
In the South, segregation was de jure, meaning 'by law'. In the North it was de facto, meaning 'in fact', even though no law demanded it. Estate agents and banks kept black families out of white areas, so most lived in crowded, run-down districts called ghettos, such as Harlem in New York. Children went to their nearest school, so schools in the ghettos were almost entirely black. Black workers were often given the lowest-paid jobs and were the first to be sacked in hard times.
The Supreme Court is the highest court in the USA. It decides what the Constitution means, and its rulings apply in every state. For over 50 years its influence protected segregation.
In 1892 Homer Plessy was arrested in Louisiana for sitting in a railway carriage kept for white passengers. His case reached the Supreme Court as Plessy v Ferguson. In 1896 the Court ruled, by seven votes to one, that segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities were equal. This idea of 'separate but equal' gave Jim Crow laws the backing of the Constitution.
From the 1930s the NAACP (a civil rights organisation founded in 1909) decided to fight segregation in the courts. Its lawyers, led by Thurgood Marshall, set out to prove that separate was never really equal. They began to win.
These rulings showed that the Court could act when politicians would not. Its judges are appointed for life, so they do not need to win elections. But its influence had limits. The Court had no power to enforce its own decisions, and Southern bus companies largely ignored the Morgan ruling. Most of all, 'separate but equal' itself was still the law. The challenge to that is covered in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, 1954.
Only Congress could pass civil rights laws for the whole country. In the early 1950s it passed none, because Southern politicians were able to block them.
In the Senate, a group of senators could keep talking for days so that no vote was ever held. This is called a filibuster. Stopping one needed the votes of two-thirds of senators. The House of Representatives passed laws against lynching (murder by a mob) in 1922, 1937 and 1940. Each time, Southern senators killed the bill by using or threatening a filibuster.
Nearly all Southern politicians were Democrats, and with so few black voters they were re-elected again and again. The longest-serving members of Congress became chairmen of its committees. A chairman could simply refuse to let a civil rights bill be discussed.
President Truman found this out. In 1947 his Committee on Civil Rights produced a report, To Secure These Rights, which condemned segregation. In 1948 he asked Congress for a law against lynching and an end to the poll tax. Congress passed neither. Truman could only act where he did not need Congress: in July 1948 he ordered an end to segregation in the armed forces. Angry Southern Democrats, nicknamed 'Dixiecrats', put up their own candidate for president in 1948, Strom Thurmond, who won four Southern states. They argued for 'states' rights', the idea that each state, not the national government, should decide matters such as segregation.
Don't write that segregation only existed in the South. The laws were Southern, but black people in the North also lived in separate areas and faced unfair treatment over housing and jobs. Don't say Plessy v Ferguson created segregation either. The Jim Crow laws came from the states. The Supreme Court's ruling made them legal.
Explain two effects of the Jim Crow laws on the lives of black Americans in the South in the early 1950s. [8 marks]
One effect was that black children received a worse education. In 17 states and Washington DC the law made black and white children attend separate schools. The Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v Ferguson (1896) said facilities should be 'separate but equal', but Southern states spent far less on each black pupil. This led to overcrowded black schools that were short of books. As a result, black children left school with fewer chances of a well-paid job, so the laws helped to keep black families poor.
A second effect was that black Southerners were treated as second-class citizens every day. Jim Crow laws gave them separate waiting rooms, parks, hospitals and drinking fountains, and they had to sit at the back of the bus. Because police, judges and juries were almost all white, people who broke these rules could expect no protection from the law. This meant that black Americans lived with daily humiliation and fear, and it pushed millions to move to Northern cities such as Chicago and Detroit.
What lifts this to the top level: each paragraph names one effect, backs it with precise facts, and then uses linking phrases ('this led to', 'as a result', 'this meant that') to show how the laws produced that effect.
This question asks for two effects, and one effect alone cannot score more than half marks. Here, choose two clearly different effects, such as education and daily treatment, and give each its own paragraph. Describing the laws is not enough: say what they did to people's lives.