Did it ever really exist? That sounds crazy to say, I know that. But what I mean is ow misleading the term is. There is no federal “Jim Crow” book of laws. There are only specific laws. In 1896 the State of South Carolina passed a law stating that is was unlawful for pupils of one race to attend school of children with another race. The year before in the new 1895 Constitution it was stated that "shall ever be permitted to attend a school provided for children of the other race." In other words first a principle was establish in the state constitution violating the equality of the Declaration state principle of equality for all and then the white legislature made a law based on that principle.
Why did they need it? Because they were making a statement: ‘The previous Constitution imposed on us by Congress in 1868 against our white ideals, that included equality and justice for all is over, over, and we have fought against that junk and it is dead, dead. Now after over thirty years of violently fighting against it and the “Negro rule” forced on us, we have defeated those damn Yankee principles you forced us to take and we claim victory.’ That constitution immediately disenfranchised tens and tens of thousands of registered black American voters. These MAGA white conservatives declared victory: We rule, we whites, and that’s it. The state then voted MAGA Blue as a near one party state for the next 60 years.
Remember that before 1865, South Carolina never had a constitution modeled on those sacred principles of natural inalienable rights. They rejected it and made state constitutions that got stricter and stricter, like the 1778 one that stripped even marginally rich whites of their vote, assuring complete oligarchic control. Those who won the elections were all of the same belief, and they directly appointed senators and the governor. There was never democracy there, like the 1780 constitution passed in Massachusetts that reflected the principles in the declaration, a contract that the state representatives signed and honored by instantiating those principles into a state constitution they then based their state laws on.
For good measure, in 1932 the state of SC made a new statue that required racially segregated schools. They loved passing this stuff. Statement after statement of their white power expressed to say whenever they felt threatened: ‘See, We the White People are in power.’ Meanwhile in the Massachusetts, state laws made it illegal to segregate schools, and in my mothers yearbook from the 40s I was looking at from Staten Island, NYC I pulled up on line on Ancestry and showed in her visit on Thanksgiving, I saw her standing next to a black student in the Marshalls club (basically volunteer Crossing Guards). There were more black students peppering that yearbook—not fifty/fifty, but still 5 or 10 percent.
The point is that I now consider Jim Crow and others like it to be misleading, a garbage term imposed by white historians to give the illusion that the nation was unified after the Civil War. It wasn’t. Think of this term: Jim Crow. Would you or any black historian today sit around and think: ‘I need a phrase to describe the time period after the Civil War when Massachusetts had laws that forbid school segregation but South Carolina violently overthrew the constitution imposed on them after the war based on three decades of bloodshed where white in one party killed registered black Republicans in the other to pass a new constitution to disenfranchise all black American registered voters. Let’s see, it says here that ex-Congressman Small, a former slave who got elected in 1870 as one of the states first black federal politicians, stood up at the 1895 constitutional convention and said, Please don’t do this, you all killed 53,000 negroes in South on this issue [his number not mine], don’t disenfranchise the rest in this state. So I need to term that will balance these two systems. I know, I’ll make up a term based on a white minstrel comedian in black face who mocked and ridiculed black Americans and debased them even further, that then became a successful franchise: Jim Crow. That’s the perfect balance between states that had made school segregation equality illegal for at least 7 decades and ones that made it legal. It’s the perfect phrase that shows it lightly disrespects blacks but not so heavily that is violently kills them and overthrows democracy like in South Carolina. It doesn’t represent the law and that state constitution like in South Carolina where a violent political insurrection overthrew an American style state constitution to impose one party rule. Yes, that’s the perfect balance between democracy and white depravity. Then I can say he was pushed off the stage in 1954 with Brown and if he pops back up I can ask him to leave and stop ridiculing my people.’
OK, no. I firmly believe no black American with decent morals, starting from scratch to rename historical terms so it represents the real struggle black Americans had would use such an anodyne insulting figure to show the horror they had to struggle against in South Carolina. There is no term really that can bind these two separate systems together to show how states like Massachusetts stopped fighting for black American rights while South Carolina was eclipsing them, and how white presidents stood by watching this disenfranchisement in South Carolina failed to correct it after 1895. White Leadership Complicity? Not great, but it’s got to be better than Jim Crow.
Sincerely, your crazy white supporter and person glad to see you raising the voice of the suffered for the sake of democracy. Thanks again for endless struggle.
