Fighting "Jim Crow": The Battle for Racial Equality

Segregation.

During the 1910s African Americans suffered under a system of legalized race control that sought to deny them equal political, social, educational, and economic opportunity. Invidious methods of racial oppression were in place across the nation but especially in the South. During the 1910s more than 85 percent of African Americans lived in southern states, which had adopted what were known as "Jim Crow" laws in the 1890s and 1900s. While many of their white fellow Americans enjoyed the fruits of the nation's wealth, freedom, and opportunity, blacks were systematically denied civil and political rights, and their labor was exploited. The basis for legalized social segregation of the races was the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which declared the legality of separate facilities for black Americans. Following this ruling, southern states passed laws forcing black Americans to sit in...

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