¶ … Analogy of Racial Segregation
The consequences of past events can teach us lessons, shaping the way we think today. For instance, racial segregation, which was established by the Jim Crow laws of the Civil War period and ended in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act, saw the public separation of blacks and whites. Lessons were learned in that the unethical condition of segregation was recognized, but nearly a century in waiting. Thus, the Jim Crow laws of the late nineteenth century, along with the reversal of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, were reexamined for their constitutionality, and the Civil Rights Act of 1965 ended the institution of racial segregation. Two cases to directly compare are Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the legal mode of "separate but equal," and Brown v. Board of Education that ended racial segregation. The historical analogy of these two events demonstrates that history helps to define our actions, allowing us to learn from past mistakes and generate new and better ideas for the future.
The historical timeline leading up to the Civil War saw many stereotypical images of blacks portrayed as being inferior to whites. At the time, a minstrel show promoting a black character named "Jim Crow" was introduced, which became synonymous with other racial slurs used by whites to demonstrate black inferiority. By the end of the 1800s, the discriminatory legal practices became known as the Jim Crow laws, with the southern states writing constitutional provisions to declare the subordinate state of blacks. The majority of the Jim Crow laws were directed at segregating blacks in public areas, such as restaurants, schools, and buses, as well as preventing black males from voting. The Supreme Court further impacted the segregation laws by ruling the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, which had previously given freedom of "full and equal enjoyment" to "all persons." The opinion stated that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to blacks, making segregation legal and coining the phrase, "separate but equal." Thus followed segregation...
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