How effective were Jim Crow Laws Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

How effective were Jim Crow Laws - Assignment Example In fact, freedom that the black population had once obtained meant practically nothing with such a system in law. Jim Crow laws were elaborated as a system of segregation and discrimination of African Americas, practiced in the southern states and some of the border states. These were laws which separated people of color from the white population and restricted contacts between them in various public places, schools, jobs, and housing. They were totally based on the supremacy of whites. If to talk about the origin of the name of the laws, it comes from a minstrel character Jim Crow, popular in the early 1800s. This is still unclear how, but the characters name Jim Crow became widely associated with the laws, customs and etiquette, which promoted segregation of African Americans from the 1870s to the 1960s (Pilgrim, 2012). Jim Crow laws turned to be especially effective if to take electoral system into consideration. The key idea was to decrease the number of black voters. First of all, it is worthy to mention poll taxes, which required people to pay a fee to register for voting. A lot of poor people could not afford this, which is why most African Americans  and  Native Americans  had no opportunity to vote, as well as poor whites. Blacks were also denied the right to vote on the basis of grandfather clauses. This right was restricted only to those blacks whose ancestors had voted before the Civil War (Pilgrim, 2012). One more device for restricting voting rights was literacy tests. For instance, such a task: ‘Name all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout America’s history’ (Pilgrim, 2012). Not so many people could cope with it. Finally, white primaries, established by the Democratic Party in the southern states. According to them, only white voters were permitted to participate in elections. This is true that such a strategy turned to be really effective. In Mississippi, for instance, fewer