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Jim Crow in America

This second blog is about the Reconstruction Era. My focus is on protesters during this time period and what ways they helped fight the battle of inequality.

**The court case I want to discuss is Bailey v. Alabama because it highlights two main focuses during the Reconstruction Era. The first is not only how white citizens continued to push for a racial hierarchy after slaves were freed, but how states did as well. The second focus is on how African Americans and the country fought against this hierarchy. According to Kennedy, “Bailey was an important decision that lessened the power of businesses in the South to exploit black labor by deploying the criminal law” (Kennedy, 94). It all started in 1907 when Alonzo Bailey quit his contract one month into a year long contract. As punishment he was sentenced to 136 days of hard labor to pay off his fees. Because of Alabama’s peonage laws, the state Supreme Court found Alonzo guilty due to a breach of contract. Bailey appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama violated the 13th Amendment against involuntary servitude. Let it be known that there was another underlying issue in all of this. The state Court was attempting to use criminal law to continue black labor. Racial discrimination was still blatantly being implemented, even though they were careful in avoiding the subject. Although there was an internal war going on between races during Reconstruction and whites always had the upper hand, it did not stop abolitionists from fighting and making their standpoint known. Once a voice was known, there was and is no stopping blacks and black supporters from always taking a step forward.  

**There are a countless number of poems written to portray the struggles suffered by blacks, that date all the way back to the slave era. However, I’m going to talk about Langston Hughes and one of his poems. Hughes wrote poetry between the early and mid 1900’s. His poems mostly reflected life of a black person in America during Jim Crow. Some of his poems highlighted the struggles in the black community, but I am going to focus on a poem he wrote about his vision of America. “Let America be America Again” is a plea to make America the home of the free again. The poet argues that America should not be the home to a king because no one should be above anyone else. The speaker begs to rid America of its false patriotism because there is no freedom like the dream it was supposed to be. Hughes plays with the poem by including two speakers. The first one is begging for America and the second one is a whisper between the pleas of the first speaker. Speaker one confronts the whisper and speaker two surfaces. Speaker two represents all persons burdened by the false hope and failed dreams of a great America. The speaker represents every person impacted by inequality whether it be a rich man or a poor black boy, and every person who has believed in America the free. The poem transitions back into a plea to make America the dream it never was. Poor men, Indians, Negroes and immigrants came to America and fought and bled for America. And for what? Where is freedom?

I chose this poem because it is clear Langston Hughes poured his heart into this poem. He poured his heart into the dream that every American was burdened with. We fight for our rights but where are they? We work for our money but where is it? We came here to be free but what is freedom when there is constantly a tyrannical human trying to dominate another all because of a skin tone. This poem was Hughes’ cry for change. I can only imagine how many hearts were filled when this poem was first published. It is poems like this that make people think twice about their actions. It is poems like this that make people feel for one another and it is poems like this that make people want to change.

**The Reconstruction era was a period where the government attempted to implement more freedom and protection to the black community. White resistance, however, proved to be more powerful. Clearly, race was still an issue. Resistance included an “unwillingness to recognize blacks’ rights to protection against violence” (Kennedy, 39) and attempting to prohibit blacks from testifying in federal courts under the belief that “blacks are mendacious and that it would therefore be unjust to use their racially tainted testimony in circumstances that put at risk the property or liberty of whites” (Kennedy, 37). Another area of resistance included the violence inflicted upon blacks for minor acts like attempting to vote, speaking to whites the wrong way or merely failing to step off the sidewalks for whites (Kennedy, 39). Even groups like the Ku Klux Klan resurfaced in attempt to keep blacks in their place. Lynching was a result of black crime. Between 1882 and 1968, nearly 4,800 people were lynched in the United States (Kennedy, 42). Lynching was a direct response deemed necessary because of the threat of rape and the belief that black men lusted over white women. Punishment was inflicted on blacks through the legal system. Black Codes regulated blacks more harshly than whites, voting rolls were prohibited due to the conviction of certain crimes and convict leasing gave the approval of prisons to rent prisoners as workers.

**For all the readers interested in other ways African Americans fought for their freedom during Jim Crow, there are plenty of resources to look to. There were these meetings called Negro conventions which were created to influence black communities to protest against slavery, segregation and inequality. You can read more about these conventions by clicking the link (http://search.ebscohost.com.libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,uid,cookie&db=ers&AN=96397536).

“Schooling Jim Crow”, by Jay Winston Driskell Jr., may also be a considerable piece of work to read if you’re looking for a more personal effect of protesters against Jim Crow. With the votes of black residents of Atlanta, the NAACP was able to coerce the city to fund 1.5 million dollars for local schools for poor black kids. The book discusses the challenges, the residents went through and how NAACP was able to make it all happen.

Another important and well known case the helped minimize the divide between blacks and whites was Brown v. Board of Education which found that segregation in public schools violated the 4th Amendment and therefore was unconstitutional. If you don’t know the case, you need to. It was the turning point for desegregation.