United States 1880-1964

Synopsis

After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, southern states and local communities began to enact laws known as segregation or "Jim Crow" laws. These measures separated the races in public accommodations. Rather than passing one sweeping law, local and state legislators in the South passed a series of laws between 1881 and 1910 that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites in public spaces. These laws were indicative of the hardening of the philosophy of white supremacy throughout the South during this time.

C. Vann Woodward, a scholar of the New South, recognized that after slavery former slaves voluntarily chose to separate themselves from white southern society. This practice became de facto segregation, or segregation by custom. By the 1880s, however, the first generation of African Americans born outside of slavery entered adulthood, and they were the first of...