Jim Crow on Steroids? Come on, Man!
It also diminishes and cheapens the shameful awfulness of the un-American, unconstitutional and dehumanizing reality of the “Old Jim Crow.”
The original Jim Crow - in case you’ve forgotten or were never taught - was America’s 70-year regional “experiment” in apartheid.
From about 1890 to 1965, the Democrats controlling 17 one-party states below the Mason-Dixon Line created and perpetuated a separate, unequal and parallel black society.
They used the force of local and state law to oppress and humiliate blacks every day and prevent them from interacting with whites in public and private spaces - in schools, buses and even elevators.
When it came to elections, the white supremacists who ruled the Jim Crow South didn’t mess around.
They openly used violence, intimidation and any devious government means necessary to systematically prevent millions of blacks in the South from voting or even registering.
The web site of the American Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee has a shocking list of the brutal tactics regularly used by the white people in charge of the “Old Jim Crow” to preserve their power and keep blacks (and poor whites) from voting.
Violence was common. Blacks who tried to vote or even register were threatened, beaten, and killed. Their families were also harmed and sometimes their homes were burned.
There were literacy tests, property tests, poll taxes and frequent purges of the voting rolls. Former prisoners - who were disproportionately black - were not allowed to vote.
Most important, blacks who were brave enough to risk voting couldn’t vote in all-white Democrat primaries - the only elections that really mattered in the South when there were so few Republican voters.
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Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
