About a hundred years after the Civil War, almost all American lived under the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow Laws actually legalized segregation. These racially enforced rules dominated almost every aspect of life, not to mention directed the punishments for any infraction. The key reason for the Jim Crow Laws was to keep African Americans as close to their former status as slaves as was possible. The following paper will show you the trials and tribulations of African Americans from the beginning through to the 1940’s where segregation was at its peak.
Terrified by the changing of the Black’s status, before the Civil War had even finished, Southerners started a huge counterattack aimed at overpowering their former slaves. In 1896 their …show more content…

This small harmless gesture could be seen as intimacy. Blacks were also forbidden from displaying affection towards each other in public because it offended Whites. It was also considered etiquette to introduce Black to Whites but, never Whites to Blacks .
Whites called Blacks by their first names. The Blacks had to use courtesy titles when talking to Whites. If a Black person rode in a car where the driver was White then they sat in the very back. White drivers had the right of way at all times. These are only a few of the restrictions placed on Blacks. The passing of the 13th and 14th amendments granted Blacks the same protection as Whites. In 1877, the election of Rutherford B. Hayes started the restricting of the liberties of the Blacks. Most legal protections were upheld by the “Separate but Equal” laws; however, segregation was still very dominant in the South. In the 1940s the African Americans dealt with a huge amount of turbulence due to the new statutes that would severely limit the interactions between races. There were signs placed everywhere announcing whose facilities were whose . The Black facilities were almost always inferior to that of the Whites. The facilities of the Blacks were generally very old and not well kept at all. In some cases there were no Black facilities. For instance, there would be know public restrooms, no public beaches and no public place to sit. However,