Jim Crow Laws: New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and North Carolina

Jim Crow Laws: New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and North Carolina [The editors of Americans All ] (c.1877 - c.1967) Code, Colored, Constitution, Descendant, Felony, Intermarriage, Legislature, Mulatto, Negro, Nurse, Ordinance, Penal Code, Public Transportation, Railroads, Schools, Segregation, Separate But Equal, Slavery, Statute, Supreme Court, Voting, Waiting Rooms

NEW JERSEY

Background information is provided to put the Jim Crow laws in context and explain how minorities were treated prior to the Civil War. In a few cases, the dates of specific information also have been provided. In 1786, the state had prohibited blacks from entering because "sound public policy requires that importation be prohibited in order that white labor may be protected." Source In 1844, it also restricted access to the ballot box by denying the vote to people with criminal convictions the same year it restricted voting to white men, the first Northern state to do so. While many Northern states abolished slavery following the Civil War, New Jersey opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and was the last Northern state to abolish slavery. Following the Civil War, it refused to ratify the Reconstruction Amendments. Source

Between 1913 and 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced anti-miscegenation laws, but not New Jersey. The state is today among the most diverse, urbanized, and densely populated in the Union. It is also now one of the five most racially segregated states in America . . . A slave society from its inception, it was the last state in the north to initiate gradual emancipation in 1804. Source is: Black New Jersey by Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Rutgers University Press, 2018, ISBN:0813595185.

The Jersey Shore was an economic and social laboratory for civil rights after slavery ended. Blacks working in hotels and restaurants frequented by whites were denied access to those same restaurants and hotels. Under the notion of separate but equal,Blackshad their own beaches and their own segregated neighborhoods in Atlantic City (the Northside) and Asbury Park (the West End). Source is: The Retreats of Reconstruction: Race, Leisure, and the Politics of Segregation at the New Jersey Shore, 1865-1920, David E. Goldberg (Fordham University Press).

The State suffers from racialized voter disenfranchisement, denying the vote to over 100,000 people in prison, on parole, or on probation, according to data in 2019. Almost half are Black, though Black people comprise just 15 percent of the State’s population. The racism of the criminal justice system is directly imported into the franchise. Source Generations of Black kids have experienced racism in the youth justice system. Source

Housing and the Racial Wealth Gap: The State also experienced racially restrictive covenants that prohibited Black people from buying, leasing, or occupying property based on race, and redlining, which targeted Black people who were refused housing loans. The geographic patterns of disparity between white and Black homeownership rates are not an accident; they are the artifact of a history of racial discrimination and segregation that the State needs to confront. Source

Racial Segregation: Racial segregation itself, born from the vestiges of slavery, pervades New Jersey. Its racial diversity and racial segregation, combined with its extreme wealth and punishing poverty, has created in its public classrooms some of the fiercest segregation by race, ethnicity, and income in this country. Nearly half of New Jersey’s Black and Latino students attend schools that are more than 90 percent nonwhite. Almost two-thirds go to schools that are more than 75 percent nonwhite. Source

NEW MEXICO

1915: Silver City opened its first segregated school in Chihuahua Hill. The mines of Grant County were also segregated, with Hispanics generally shut out of jobs above the level of laborers. They were also paid less than Anglos for the same jobs. Source

1920s: Separate rooms [shall] be provided for the teaching of pupils of African descent, and [when] said rooms are so provided, such pupils may not be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent. Source

1921: Passed a constitutional amendment “alien land law” to bar Asian immigrants from owning property. Source

1923: State law passed in 1923 and amended in 1925 allowed municipal or county boards of education to establish segregated schools when it was “for the best advantage and interest of the school.” It stipulated that classrooms and instruction for black and white students had to be equivalent. Source

1925: White residents of Southern states—especially Texas—began moving to New Mexico, which subsequently adopted Jim Crow laws in 1925, nearly 50 years after they were established to segregate all public facilities in former Confederate states. Source

1925: In Dona Ana County, racism was most visible in the school segregation that was imposed by Anglos of southern descent after the New Mexico Legislature gave local governments the option to separate the races in the classroom beginning this year. Source

1940s: The typical New Mexico city and town was segregated by law or by an accepted social contract. "The racial pecking order in Tucumcari," recalls a black resident in the 1940s, "included whites at the top, the Spanish people next (because they were able to go to school with whites) and then, at the bottom, were the "colored" people." Source

1949: A three-member team from Peabody College in Nashville described the state’s segregated schools as “forgotten and substandard” and largely in a “shameful condition.” Source

1950s: A restaurant in Silver City had a sign: “No Mexicans or Dogs Allowed.” A popular after-school hangout admitted no Mexican students. At the Hurley company store, Hispanics waited at the back of the line until all the Anglos were served first. At the Silco movie theater, Hispanics sat upstairs on hard wooden seats while Anglos sat downstairs on comfortable padded chairs. Source

NEW YORK

Background information is provided to put the Jim Crow laws in context and explain how minorities were treated prior to the Civil War. In a few cases, the dates of specific information also have been provided. In the 1890s, Back people suffered from written and unwritten rules against racial mixing in marriage, public accommodations and housing. In 1821, the new State constitution effectively disenfranchised almost every black voter requiring that they prove that they owned at least two hundred fifty dollars' worth of property, a restriction not imposed on whites. Source Jim Crow segregation and racism had a strange and robust career outside of the South, especially in this supposed bastion of liberalism.. Citizens at every level of society gave it life: journalists at national newspapers, wealthy suburban homeowners, working-class renters, university bureaucrats, police commissioners, mayors, union leaders and criminal court judges. Source Between 1913 and 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced anti-miscegenation laws. New York never enacted them.

1911: It enacted the Sullivan Law, which was to become the model for restricting the ownership and carrying of handguns. The Law introduced two criteria that were to become widely adopted, with some variation, in most states throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Hand-guns could not be acquired without a permit issued only to persons who had both "good moral character" and "good cause" to carry a handgun. Source

1940s: The F.H.A. helped support the construction of Levittown, a suburb near New York City on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Every home also had to have a clause in its deed prohibiting resale to black people. Source

1947: Stuyvesant Town (New York City) opened completely racially segregated. When black people sued, the N.Y. Supreme Court protected segregation and sided with the developer’s claim that the development was private—despite all the public money used to make it possible — and therefore entitled to discriminate as it sees fit. Source

1958: The local NAACP conducted an experiment and found that one popular Bronx steakhouse claimed to be fully booked and declined to accept reservations from Blacks, but whites were welcome to make reservations. Source

NORTH CAROLINA

Background information is provided to put the Jim Crow laws in context and explain how minorities were treated prior to the Civil War. In a few cases, the dates of specific information also have been provided. No anti-segregation laws were passed until 1963. Suggesting the difficulty in determining a person's race, a school segregation law passed in 1903 declared that no child no matter how "remote the strain" of Negro blood could be considered a white child and attend a school for white children. The state continued to pass non-compulsory attendance requirements after the Brown decision in 1956 and 1957 to avoid desegregation.

Many of these entries came from an inactive website—www.jimcrowhistory.org—though much of the data previously posted on that website has been reproduced on other websites. To avoid repeating the source of information for these entries, we have added the symbol “#” at the end of each of them. Capitalization of words follows the original usage, and many of the entries have been edited for clarity.

1868: The Constitution had provisions which mandated that white and black children be taught in separate schools. Source

1870s: The State moved seamlessly from being a slave society, which it had been for two and a half centuries, into being a racially segregated society. The reason for this is that the color line was rooted in slavery, and slavery, as it developed in British North Carolina, was based on race. It was racial slavery, so that ideology stayed there, even when the peculiar institution of slavery was formally abolished. Source

1873: A miscegenation Statute prohibited marriages between whites and Negroes or Indians or persons of Negro or Indian descent to third generation. #

1875: The Constitution declared white and black children shall be taught in separate public schools, "but there shall be no discrimination made in favor of, or to the prejudice of, either race." It also prohibited forever all marriages between a white person and a Negro or between a white person and a person of Negro descent to third generation inclusive. In 1901, 1903, and 1931, the state legislature will create laws to enforce this constitutional mandate. Source

1889: Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. Source

1899: A Statute declared that railroad and steamboat companies to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and black passengers. Did not apply to streetcars. Penalty: A company that failed to enforce this act fined $100 per day, each day, to be recovered in action brought by any passenger on any train or steamboat who has been provided accommodations with a person of a different race. #

1900: A literacy requirement for voting was added. Section 4 of Article VI of the Constitution states, "Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language. A poll tax was also included. Source

1901: An education Statute clarified how children would be separated in public schools. The education policies followed the code regulating marriages from the 1875 Constitution, which stated that persons of Negro descent to the third generation inclusive were considered "colored." #

1903: An education Statute declared that no child with "Negro blood in its veins, however remote the strain, shall attend a school for the white race, and no such child shall be considered a white child." #

1907: A Statute required all streetcars to set aside a portion of the front of each car as necessary for white passengers, and a rear portion of the car for black passengers. Noted that "no contiguous seats on the same bench shall be occupied by the white and colored passengers at the same time unless or until all other seats are occupied." Penalty: Misdemeanor for officer who violates this act and may be fined or imprisoned. Passengers who violated the law could be fined up to $50 or imprisoned up to 30 days. Companies were not liable for a mistake in the designation of any passenger to a seat set apart for the other race. #

1908: An education Statute prohibited black and white children from attending the same schools. Descendants of the Croatan Indians to have separate schools also. #

1912: The all-white Winston Board of Aldermen (Winston-Salem) approved an ordinance that mandated segregated neighborhoods in which blacks and whites were prohibited from living on the same streets. Source

1919: A Statute mandated that public or private hospitals, sanatoriums, or institutions which admitted colored patients to employ colored nurses to care for inmates of their own race. The Law was repealed in 1925. #

1921: A Statute declared miscegenation a felony. #

1925: A Statute required seats on all buses to be segregated by race. #

1929: A Statute required all mental hospitals to be segregated by race. #

1931: An education State Code Authorized separate education facilities for the "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County" and the "Indians of Person County," formerly known as "Croatans." Denied the privilege of such schools to all persons of Negro blood to the fourth generation inclusive. #

1931: A State Code directed state libraries to maintain a separate place to accommodate colored patrons. #

1933: A Statute ordered prisons to be segregated by race. #

1933: An ordinance in Ashville barred persons of different races from residing in the same neighborhood. It was repealed in 1963.

1943: A Statute declared it to be a felony for a white person to marry a Negro or Indian, or person of such descent to the third generation, or a Cherokee Indian or Robeson County and a Negro, or any persons of such descents to the third generation. Source is: N.C. CONST., Art. 14, & 8; STAT., whites& 51-3

1947: A Statute called for racial restrictions for the burial of the dead at cemeteries. #

1950: A Statute required public carriers to be segregated. #

1952: A National Guard Statute specified that no black troops to be permitted where white troops available; colored troops to be under control of white officers. #

1953: A miscegenation Statute declared that marriage between white and Negroes or Indians are void. Penalty: Infamous crime, four months to ten years imprisonment and a fine at the discretion of the court. #

1956: An education Statute gives local school boards given the option to suspend school operations. #

1956: A Statute required all plants and other businesses to maintain separate toilet facilities. Penalty: Misdemeanor. #

1957: An education Statute stipulated no child forced to attend school with children of a different race. #

1957: A Statute required all hospitals for the insane to be segregated. #

1963: A City Ordinance in Raleigh repealed a portion of the city code which required racial segregation in public cemeteries. #

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