Buried Black History When Jim Crow killed the Black Ballot

Black People had Three Rights

A Minstrel danced and Jim crow was born.

Thomas Dartmouth Rice a white entertainer became the face of Black ‘idiocy.’

He painted his face black and became an inerudite slave. Dancing idiotically, and acting like a buffoon, he spoke an exaggerated distortion of Black American English, and sang;

“Negro ditties — Jump Jim Crow.”

Come, listen all you gals and boys, Ise just from Tuckahoe; I’m goin’ to sing a little song, My name’s Jim Crow. CHORUS [after every verse]

Weel about and turn about and do jis so, Eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow….

His White audience was enthralled.

As the minstrel swept across the states, thrilled White fans loved ‘Jim Crow’ and what he came to symbolize.

It was the era of ‘Redemption.’ The birth of ‘Black Codes.’

As Black people spoke at the ballot. Republicans made hasty retreat from racial egalitarianism and embraced conservatism.

Increased violence, instability, in Southern states slowed economic prosperity. An economic depression spiraled many states into poverty.

Democrats sensing blood won the House of Representatives, for the first time after the Civil War. Republicans were angry. They argued southern instability had stemmed from the exclusion of the region’s “best men”- from power.

White plantation owners stood no chance of winning elections against numerically superior Blacks. Something had to be done and done urgently.

Supreme Court decisions were passed. Their aim was to limit Reconstruction laws and constitutional amendments — ‘Reconstruction’ was a bad idea. A very bad idea.

Thomas Rice now a celebrity went on a tour across the states –

White audiences roared with laughter at stereotyped racial jokes — ‘Jim Crow’ was the official symbol of racial hatred.

Southern states and, border states passed laws denying Black people access to basic rights. ‘Jim Crow’ stamped his authority — segregation and racial stigma were the new norms.

South Carolina the first state run by a majority-black legislature was fertile ground. Newspapers had new jollity.

Images and caricatures of illiterate, ignorant, and ragged Black men, poor, paying no taxes, holding state offices, and empowered to tax white people circulated.

The message was delivered. White tax-paying citizens reacted. A storm of State-sanctioned terror descended on descendants of slaves.

A private club for Confederate veterans in Pulaski Tennessee morphed into a terror group. The Ku Klux Klan ogre roiled to life.

Bloodthirsty and fed by White Supremacist ideology — it burgeoned into a powerful trusted vigilante group, raining terror on helpless Black families and their white sympathizers.

Vandalism, property destruction, physical attacks, lynching, and assassinations, were the Klan’s hallmarks.

It was the era of ‘Redemption.’ an organized effort by white merchants of death, planters, businessmen, and politicians to undo reconstruction. “Redeemers” were focused on preventing Black people from enjoying the benefits of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

Jim Crow made it all possible.

The new order promised a black child four things — work as indentured servant, life if he kept away from the vote, happiness if he kept to his own kind, and prison if he showed any inclination to act to the contrary.

Former Confederate soldiers working as police officers and judges ensured the law was selectively applied to deliver on these promises.

Weighed by white oppression, scared of white terror, denied from accessing white privilege — Black people surrendered to a new form of slavery.

Toil, drudgery, devastation, and deprivation became once more a Black family’s bedfellow thanks to Jim Crow.

Denied the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education, or access financial upward mobility, their lot was cast.

America assured a Black person three alienable rights — The Right to Poverty, the Right to Prison, and the Right to Die.

Restaurants, Water fountains, Schools, and buses became visual reminders of the hopelessness of a Black person’s life. Anyone attempting to defy Jim Crow faced arrest, fines, jail, violence, and death.

In death, Jim Crow still danced gleefully over a Black person’s grave. Thanks to Segregated cemeteries …