A LEgAcY IN STONE

Thehistory of Jim Crow Laws in America is like an etching in stone of the violent legacy of slavery. The effects of Jim Crow laws were detrimental to Black populations in America, exacerbating violence and upholding a divisive racial hierarchy as the conditions for Black American’s freedom. Legalized segregation by race did not only separate Black from white but marginalized and disenfranchised Black people. This not only mirrored the terror of American chattel slavery, but left its own legacy within the prison walls of America.

Jim Crow Laws legalized segregation in America from 1868 to 1968, limiting Black people’s access to work, healthcare, education, housing, and in its early forms, legalized indentured servitude for Black Americans by seizing their newfound rights if the laws were broken. These crimes often held harsh punishments for Black people, including forced labor and imprisonment. Many would work until they died. As carceral punishment became more popular, the populations of prisons quickly shifted after 1860. Prior to 1860, prisons were two-thirds white, as most Black inmates were not held long and rather bought by slaveowners. (5) After the abolition of slavery, prison populations became two-thirds Black. The uptick in Black, long-term inmates was directly correlated to the imposition of Jim Crow Laws and the presence of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK). While the KKK is often positioned as an outsider white supremacist group that arose to spread terror against Black Americans in the South, the US Justice System is more deeply connected than we think. After slavery was made illegal, the learned men became lawyers, policemen, judges. These men, who viewed Black people as non-human and a natural inferior, now became our Justices of Peace. Jim Crow laws were proof that one drop of poison infects the whole of the wine. The belief and order of the KKK was to suppress Black people’s freedoms and intimidate/remove them with violence. Their tactics included torture, lynching, arson, murder, intimidation, and relied on the foundation of white supremacy to inspire its members. The summer of 1919 was named the “Red Summer,” as twenty-five lynchings in the South inspired race riots and planted the seeds for The Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and West to escape persecution and seek opportunity and safety.

Years later, we are still experiencing the aftermath of the Jim Crow Era. Still, a racially biased prison system incarcerates Black men at ten times the rate of white men. Currently, 1 in 15 incarcerated people are Black, and the US is in another decade of racial tension following the senseless lynchings of Black people by police, made accessible to the public through social media.

When does it end?