Article on The News & Advance website by Cal Thomas
At a news conference recently, President Biden said of Georgia’s new voting law, “It makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”
Not only President biden has used the term, but last July, former President Barack Obama used it in his call to end the Senate filibuster in July when he advocated for federal voting rights legislation during his eulogy at the funeral of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.
“Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for. And by the way, naming it the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, that is a fine tribute,” Obama said, going on to list ways voting rights could be protected.
“And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do,” he said.
Obama’s phrase, “Jim Crow relic,” has been adopted by activists and elected Democrats all the way up to President Biden.
So now a little history.
The name came from a song written by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice.
“Rice, a struggling ‘actor’ (he did short solo skits between play scenes) at the Park Theater in New York, happened upon a black person singing (a song titled ‘Jim Crow’) — some accounts say it was an old black slave who walked with difficulty, others say it was a ragged black stable boy.
Whether modeled on an old man or a young boy we will never know, but we know in 1828 Rice appeared on stage as ‘Jim Crow’ — an exaggerated, highly stereotypical black character.
“Rice, a white man, was one of the first performers to wear blackface makeup … His Jim Crow song-and-dance routine was an astounding success that took him from Louisville to Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and finally to New York in 1832.
He also performed to great acclaim in London and Dublin. By then ‘Jim Crow’ was a stock character in minstrel shows, along with counterparts Jim Dandy and Zip Coon.
Rice’s subsequent blackface characters were Sambos, Coons, and Dandies. White audiences were receptive to the portrayals of blacks as singing, dancing, grinning fools.”
President Biden and other Democrats apparently want us to believe there has been no racial progress since then.
Democrats should remember their history when it comes to African-Americans and voting, since it was members of their party who opposed civil rights legislation, defended slavery in the 19th century and promoted “black codes” in Southern state legislatures that denied many rights to former slaves.
Those were elected Democrats who stood in schoolhouse doors, denying access to black children. Democrat sheriffs clubbed people in the streets during demonstrations and sicked dogs on them, among other indignities. It also was the party that required “poll taxes” and “literacy tests” for blacks, violating their right to vote.
The Georgia law leaves in place many voting options, in addition to showing up on Election Day. It eliminates signature matching, which should appeal to both parties. Vote tabulators no longer will have to subjectively decide the authenticity of two signatures.
Instead, voters will receive an ID number with their mail-in ballots or applications. Those numbers must match. In person voters who do not have an ID can easily obtain one.
How is doing a better job of ensuring ballot integrity and boosting confidence in election outcomes racist? Critics claim the new law negatively affects African American voters. Do they think Blacks are so incompetent they can’t do the minimum required in order to vote?
For years, Democrats have expanded voting laws to include registration at the DMV, early voting, and absentee voting with no excuses (still allowed under the new law).
The Georgia law, which is being duplicated in other states with Republican majority legislatures, seeks to prevent vote harvesting and voting by people who don’t exist, or who have moved out of state.
Today’s Democrats like to claim “voter suppression” when Republicans attempt to make sure every ballot is legitimate.
Most people are willing to accept the defeat of candidates for whom they voted if they believe the system was fair and the tabulations accurate. Achieving that end is the purpose of the new Georgia law. It’s not about Jim Crow, or for that matter, “Jim Eagle.”
So what are these Jim Crow Laws the Democrats have been referring to?
Article from the editors at History.com
Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation.
Named after the Black minstrel show character I just referred to, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities.
Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and death.
The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.
Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation.
The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.
The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.
These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people.
Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.
During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.
So, do you not find it ironic that our president is using the term Jim Crow, when it is his party that created it?
Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured, and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.
The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.
The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.
At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.
This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.
Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.
Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.
Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails, and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.
Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.
It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there.
As the 20th century progressed, Jim Crow laws flourished within an oppressive society marked by violence.
Following World War I, the NAACP noted that lynchings had become so prevalent that it sent investigator Walter White to the South. White had lighter skin and could infiltrate white hate groups.
As lynchings increased, so did race riots, with at least 25 across the United States over several months in 1919, a period sometimes referred to as “Red Summer.” In retaliation, white authorities charged Black communities with conspiring to conquer white America.
With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South, spurred on by publications like The Chicago Defender, which encouraged Black Americans to move north.
Read by millions of Southern Black people, white people attempted to ban the newspaper and threatened violence against any caught reading or distributing it.
The poverty of the Great Depression only deepened resentment, with a rise in lynchings, and after World War II, even Black veterans returning home met with segregation and violence.
The North was not immune to Jim Crow-like laws. Some states required Black people to own property before they could vote, schools and neighborhoods were segregated, and businesses displayed “Whites Only” signs.
In Ohio, segregationist Allen Granbery Thurman ran for governor in 1867 promising to bar Black citizens from voting. After he narrowly lost that political race, Thurman was appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he fought to dissolve Reconstruction-era reforms benefiting African Americans.
After World War II, suburban developments in the North and South were created with legal covenants that did not allow Black families, and Black people often found it difficult or impossible to obtain mortgages for homes in certain “red-lined” neighborhoods.
The post-World War II era saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote. This ushered in the civil rights movement, resulting in the removal of Jim Crow laws.
In 1948 President Harry Truman ordered integration in the military, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of “separate-but-equal” education.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.
And in 1965, the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.
With the passage of all these acts, along with the Supreme court decisions, Jim Crow laws officially came to an end.
So, with what you now know. Is asking for a voter ID or ending the filibuster equivalent to a Jim Crow law? Callers?