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The very existence of the minstrel character Jim Crow was bad [Jim Crow character appears]

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enough and then he grew up to become namesake for a set of racist laws that

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kept blacks and whites segregated from about 1872 about nineteen sixty the Jim

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Crow laws existed in every southern state plus Indiana Maryland Kansas [US states highlighted with Jim Crow laws]

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Oregon and California black citizens were told where they could eat drink sit

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swim walk work play learn live be hospitalized be buried go to the

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bathroom and yeah we could go on and on but it's just exhausting laws even

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mandated separate seating areas for blacks on public transport in sports [Black man waiting for a bus]

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stadium in restaurant in play houses and in movie theaters some laws barred black

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southerners from certain places altogether such as public swimming pools

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in tennis court and even roller skating rinks and just put the cherry on top [People skating on a roller skating rink]

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housing codes forbade black families from renting purchasing or building

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homes except in neighborhood designated for them and you can bet they weren't

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exactly yes the choice was part of town some places even require different sets

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of items to be touched by black and white citizens because the black people

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cooties or something courtrooms even had separate Bibles for black people and [Black school of children appear]

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white people I mean because that's exactly what Jesus would do right in

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West Virginia in 1890 law said black birth marriage and death records had to

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be stored separately from white people in 1939 Florida jumped on the crazy

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train and put black students folks on different shelves from those of white

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students all that stuff was awful but one of the worst forms of segregation [White and black shelves of books]

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happened in school, schools were supposed to be separate but equal but somehow

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equal meant that black schools got way less funding and government support that

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kind of equal this of course meant that the school didn't work as well and [Black students working in school]

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blacks generally got a subpar education which white supremacist then tried to

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use as proof that blacks were too dumb to learn well the irony is that white

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supremacist were too dumb to see the irony of that hole concept...

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southern white Democrats just weren't satisfied that all this discrimination

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had gone far enough and so the great attack on voting rights began true the

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15th amendment prohibited barring anyone from voting on the basis of race but

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what does that matter in their evil layers the politicians schemed and

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plotted coming up with wicked poll taxes cruel property qualifications and [Cabin appears in the woods]

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nefarious literacy tests this kept many blacks from voting because most of them

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were poor and illiterate some poor illiterate whites also lost the right

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vote but officials often let them skip the tests altogether telling them not to

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worry their little white heads about it african-americans still fought the good

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fight continuing to cast ballots in large numbers until the 1890s some even [People casting ballots]

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kept a few seats in Congress until the turn of the century but at the years

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passed it became even harder to vote by 1940 less than five percent of eligible [Pie chart of eligible black southerners appears]

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black southerners were registered at the polls this basically eliminated voting

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suffrage in the South the forces of the dark side were winning and ironically [Darth Vader appears]

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those forces were all white

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