While chatting with a student, he commented on a reference I'd made in class to Justice Stanley Reed, quoted in Richard Kluger's Simple Justice (Vintage/Random House, 1975), which is about Brown v. Board (1954), and its context, to the effect that voting to integrate restaurants in Washington, D.C., would mean that "a nigra could sit next to Mrs. Reed" when they dined out, which they often did. That didn't sit at all well with Justice Reed, the last holdout in Brown. Chief Justice Earl Warren told Reed that he could dissent alone, or he could do the right thing and be on the right side of history. The rest IS history, as Reed made it unanimous for the Court, to his credit.
The student's comment was that he was amazed that such attitudes existed in this country. I guess we've come a fair piece if students today are amazed at such comments, considering what else went on.
Today we have the report of a student in Minnesota who murdered some nine people including his father (whose police cruiser he took) and fellow students, and teachers, at school, before shooting himself to death. He was, according to reports, a member of a Hitler-focused hate group which he nourished on-line.
Here's a site from a Jackson, Tennessee, newspaper, describing some of the things that went on during Jim Crow and the slow changes. I suggest that you poke around that interesting site to get a picture of what I guess for the younger folk is the olden days.
Jim Crow refers to an era in U.S. history, and a section of the country, in which there were actual laws, based on race, governing behavior down to the most personal and intimate level. Blacks and whites were forbidden to marry each other. Water fountains, buses and trains, parks and beaches, hospitals, schools were all segregated by race, and that's the short list. Racially restrictive covenants to deeds, voting restrictions, military service, baseball, all were segregated and compromised by race.
When did things begin to change?
That's hard to say, because there have been protests against Jim Crow since before the term was applied. It comes from a minstrel show character. Crow was black, as the feathers of the raven. Alexander Hamilton grew up on the British slave island of St.Croix (sugar plantations). Having seen what slavery did to blacks and to whites, he was opposed to slavery.
Thomas Jefferson spoke out against slavery until he lost the battle and went on to other issues.
Washington tried to recover his twenty slaves seized by the British during the Revolution, without success.
The British abolition of slave trade (and slavery) movement began with a meeting of Quakers in 1787 in London.
Frederick Douglass, a freed slave, spoke out forcefully against slavery in the U.S. before the Civil War.
The Republican Party of Lincoln was formed to oppose slavery.
Abraham Lincoln, more political genius than moral purist, negotiated the shoals of white opinion to guide the nation through its first civil war to union and freedom for first southern slaves, and then border-state slaves.
Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War, which ended in 1865, was a tumultuous time. The Civil War Amendments aka the Reconstruction Amendments (13, 14 & 15, ending slavery, equal protection, and voting) produced a new Constitution, far different from the first, which recognized slavery. Federal troops in the South protected the newly freed slaves to some degree.
But in 1876 there was a contested presidential election, a la Bush v. Gore, only this time called Hayes v. Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote, but Hayes won in the House, after considerable chicanery and deal making. The deal Hayes made to gain the presidency was to withdraw federal troops from the South. This cut the African-Americans loose to fend for themselves without federal bayonets. African-Americans were no match for the Ku Klux Klan once federal troops withdrew.
Black codes all but re-enslaved African-Americans and instituted a regime of apartheid that the Union of South Africa in the days of Verwoerd would have envied, and probably did.
Jim Crow was legalized. Race laws were the order of the day in the South, and where laws were lacking, attitudes filled in the gaps.
"Separate but equal," was held constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
So when did Jim Crow start to die?
In more modern times, the debate between Washington Carver and W.E.B. DuBois set the stage for heightened consciousness of human rights, with little gain on the ground.
However, in 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, riding a wave of resentment of the harsh terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty that ended WWI, 1918. Hitler's racial attitude, Aryan Supremacy, and death to Jews, resonated with Germans everywhere, to mass acclaim.
During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, American sprinter Jesse Owens won a number of gold medals against the best white runners in the world. Hitler stalked out of the stadium. The 1936 Berlin Olympics was supposed to be a showcase of white supremacy, but Jesse Owens shattered Hitler's dream Jesse Owens returned to the United States an American hero and "a credit to his race." Not the human race, the African-American race. That's how we thought some time ago..
American prize-fighter Joe Louis, meanwhile, fought the German heavyweight champion Max Schmeling before WWII, and beat him, with the world, and Hitler tuned in.
Contralto Marion Anderson was refused permission to sing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., which was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the D.A.R.
Eleanor Roosevelt, the president's (FDR) wife, arranged for her to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, instead.
World War II broke out with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the president took the opportunity to go to war against Japan's ally, Germany, as well.
As G.I.s went off to war, defense industry boomed, building ships, tanks, guns, ammunition and the like. The work was going to whites. Blacks were being aced out. Black union leaders threatened the first march on Washington. FDR, another political genius who lacked moral purity, as we all do, decided that rather than have a million blacks descend on Washington, he'd open the doors to defense jobs to blacks.
Returning black servicemen, such as the Tuskegee Airmen, found themselves, after having defeated Hitler's racism, reliving it here at home. President Truman, under pressure, ordered the integration of the U.S. Army, in 1948. Since the Army is a command based institution, it is considered, now, the most thoroughly integrated institution in the U.S. It didn't come easy.
In 1947, baseball sensation Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball, against considerable opposition and some heart-warming support.
Jessie Owens, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (the only blacks who had steady jobs that permitted them to see and travel the country, organize, and support the civil rights movement, the NAACP, etc.) had more to do with breaking down racial barriers in the U.S. than anything else you can name.
Why?
Because whites took pride in their accomplishments and rooted for them. Sports reduced barriers. Sports commanded attention, and respect. It was inconsistent to root for a black running or fighting for your country or your team, and then disrespect him later. It took a long time, but between shame and hope a slow change occurred.
The change was manifested in decisions like Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) outlawing racially restrictive deed covenants, Brown v. Board (1954), outlawing segregation in public school education at the grade and high school levels (but not in professional schools). Equal protection was suddenly becoming real. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) went the way of the dodo in Brown (1954). That was the big turning point, legally, although not on the ground. That has taken another fifty years, with another few hundred to go.
In 1957, the first civil rights act, toothless, was pushed through by the southerner Lyndon Baines Johnson. He wanted to be president and needed northern liberal support.
After John F. Kenned was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, when I was in law school, LBJ pushed through the first civil rights bill (1964) since Reconstruction, and the next year, the Voting Rights Bill. The country has been trying to sweep away the debris of racial segregation and discrimination ever since, very slowly, to be sure, but nevertheless in the direction of greater equality among races, and not without resistance, as racial attitudes die hard, and not only white attitudes. Relations among races have never been simple, but always complex.
I thought you might like to know this. I hope it helps understand the cases a bit better. And if it doesn't, there's plenty of reading for you to do, or talk to a friend.