Proof That Jim Crow Era Was Not That Long Ago And Why This is Important to Know

Barack Obama was just a toddler when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.

Let that sink in. The nation’s first Black president, still handsome, young and energetic, was born into a country where segregation was still legal. Michelle Obama was born the same year the Civil Rights Act went into effect, and the Obamas were both young children when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

Even people born in 1950 were only 14 or 15 when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, and spent their entire childhood under the Jim Crow system that served as America’s own system of apartheid.

Black history is often framed in black-and-white photos and grainy video clips, giving it the feel of a distant era. Some of the darkest chapters in Black history aren’t ancient history at all. For more than 6 million Black Americans, these are actual lived experiences.

To understand just how recent this history is, consider the impact of these laws, institutions and communities.

Segregated Schools After Brown

Brown v. Board of Education ended legal segregation in public schools in 1954, but change did not happen right away. In many areas, especially in the South, desegregation was slow and often faced strong resistance and violence. For example, by 1964, only two percent of Black children in the South attended school with white children, according to Reading Partners.

And while legal segregation ended, separation did not. Today, even schools with diverse student populations remain segregated by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic differences, according to NPR.

Representation on the Supreme Court

In 1967, just two years after the Voting Rights Act became law, Thurgood Marshall became the first Black justice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It would take another 55 years before the Court saw its first Black woman justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed in 2022.

Discriminatory Language After Loving v. Virginia

In 1967, the Supreme Court struck down interracial marriage bans in Loving v. Virginia. Yet, in 2000, Alabama voters went to the voting booth to remove language opposing interracial marriage that was still in Alabama’s state constitution, more than three years after the Court’s ruling.

Voter Suppression

In 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer was badly beaten in Mississippi for trying to register to vote. She suffered kidney damage, a blood clot in her eye, and her limp from childhood polio became worse. This happened only two years before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned voting discrimination.

For people born around 1950, this was adolescence, not history in a textbook.

Housing Discrimination After Shelley

Redlining was used in the early 1900s to keep Black and white communities separate, and its impact on wealth and opportunity is still felt today. The Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer made racially restrictive covenants unenforceable in 1948, but these discriminatory clauses were still added to property deeds for many years after. Today’s wealth gap and neighborhood segregation have their roots in these policies.

The Gullah Geechee Legacy

Along the lower Atlantic coast, the Gullah Geechee people have preserved a distinct culture formed through geographic isolation and deep African roots. For these descendants of enslaved Africans, the Gullah language is central to their heritage. A unique Creole language that blends West and Central African traditions with English, it is a living record of survival that carries history and identity that crosses generations.

In 2006, Congress established the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor to help protect that legacy. Today, the community continues to fight to safeguard its land, language and culture from development and displacement.

Sharecropping in Cotton Fields After Mechanization

In some areas of Mississippi, sharecropping forced poor Black families to pick cotton by hand even into the 1970s. Even as machines became more common, many Black families stayed stuck in debt cycles that were much like those from the time of slavery.

Plantation Labor After Abolition

Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, is located on land that was once the Angola Plantation. After slavery ended, the site became known for convict leasing, a system that mostly targeted Black men. Today, the prison still runs as a working farm and depends heavily on the labor of people who are incarcerated.