Jim Crow Era

13th Amendment (1865)

Officially abolished the institution of slavery nationwide except as a punishment for crime fundamentally changing the economic and social positions of former enslaved people.

14th Amendment (1868)

Defined citizenship and guaranteed equal protection under the law applying Bill of Rights.

15th Amendment (1870)

Prohibited federal and state governments from denying or abridging voting rights to citizens based on race color or previous condition of servitude.

US v. Cruikshank (1876)

A Supreme Court ruling that dismantled federal attempts to prosecute white supremacist violence and voter suppression severely weakening legal protections for freedmen in the South.

Compromise of 1877

An informal political deal that pulled federal troops out of the South ending the Reconstruction era and allowing Southern Democrats to retake control of state governments.

1883 Civil Rights Cases

The Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional ruling that the federal government could not prevent private individuals or businesses from racially discriminating.

Florida Railroad Law (1887)

A pivotal early Jim Crow statute requiring separate but equal railroad cars marking the rapid extension of legal segregation from transit to other public facilities.

Black Farm Ownership Backlash (1880–1900)

Southern Black farm ownership successfully grew from 3.8% to 25% sparking a violent white supremacist backlash and new restrictive laws to force economic subservience.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A landmark Supreme Court ruling that constitutionalized state-sponsored segregation by establishing the infamous "separate but equal" doctrine.

Williams v. Mississippi (1898)

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld state voting restrictions like literacy tests and poll taxes causing Mississippi's registered Black voters to plummet from 190000 down to 8000.

Louisiana Grandfather Clause (1898)

A discriminatory voting law designed to exempt poor whites from literacy tests while eliminating Black political power causing Louisiana's Black voter registry to drop from 130000 down to just 730 by 1910.

Cumming v. Richmond County (1899)

A Supreme Court decision that extended the "separate but equal" doctrine to public education locking in institutional underfunding for Black school children.

Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. DuBois (1895–1905)

Washington advocated for economic self-reliance and temporary accommodation of social segregation while DuBois founded the Niagara Movement to demand immediate civil and political integration.

The First Great Migration (1916–1940)

Driven by violent Jim Crow terror and economic disenfranchisement roughly 1.6 million Black Americans relocated from the rural South to Northern and Midwestern cities.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

A Supreme Court ruling that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson in public education by declaring that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.