Jumpin Jim Crow and His Role with Women

Jumpin Jim Crow and his Role with Women

WHO CAN STILL REMEMBER THE EXPERIENCES WITH THE U.S. APARTHEID OF JIM CROW LAWS?

I was born during the reign of Ol’ Jim Crow. By 1965, Jim Crow laws were at the apex of their effect on Afrikan Americans and this society. The US instituted Jim Crow Laws for almost 100 years after, the reconstruction period, that occurred after the Civil War. Many Caucasians practiced Jim Crow anti-social and terrorist behavior, after their beliefs, that the remaining people of African descent, who survived the Civil War, were advancing economically, in spite of the many hundreds of years of US imprisonment and forced labor, of peoples of African descent. Jim Crow was branded after a man of African Descent, who suffered with physical and mental disabilities. Jim Crow became a fictitious characterization of African American Men, to debase and dehumanize men of African descent, to be thought of as undeserving of equal human rights and economic empowerment.  

Racism is just and an artificial political construct. The coining of the word and description of "white" to describe people of Aryan, Caucasians, was contrived around the latter 1700's in the United States. 

 As you believe in this artificial world, you become controlled by it's psychopathy and often crippled into PTSD (Post Traumatic Slavery Disorders) and Cognitive Dissonance.

From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows).

Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. The name Jim Crow is often used to describe the segregation laws, rules, and customs which arose after Reconstruction ended in 1877. Reference: Ferris State Univ.

I remember as a young girl how my Mom enjoyed shopping “downtown.” I can still recall having to ride in the back of the bus, with her. Before boarding, mom would enter the front of the bus to pay, then we would run to the back entrance of the bus, and wait for the driver to open the back door--- so that we could finally board- (hoping that the bus driver wouldn’t just drive off!) As I look back now, I reflect on how dehumanizing and humiliating this experience must have been to my Mother and anyone else who had to endure this treatment. We could only go to “certain” stores… that would allow “Negros” to patronize. There, clerks would watch us like hawks! So as a little girl, I was made to feel that -they (store managers or owners) assumed we were thieves. We could never try on the clothing in the dressing rooms or even try on new shoes. Once we purchased "their" clothing, we would never be permitted to exchange or return an item. Mom would always pack a nice boxed lunch like cold fried chicken and potato salad, or pimento cheese sandwiches with fresh fruit and, a thermos of milk, lemonade or cool aid to have on the journey. So, when our stomachs grumbled as we passed by a lunch counter or café and restaurant to smell the food on the grill, Mom would take us to a park, (often times we were not permitted to enter there either,) or find a bench, where she would spread out a blanket so that we would have an outing together for lunch. I can recall the humiliating experience of having to squat in the bushes to relive myself sometimes, -because "the colored" could not use public restrooms! Often, they did not provide a “separate and unequal” toilet facility.

My Mom and Dad never tried to explain Jim Crow laws to us. So, when we asked if we could go swimming, or even play at a public playground, or go to a carnival, or an amusement park, they would quietly say “no we can't” (or just didn't say anything.)

My great grandmother was employed as a maid and had to travel day after day –in the back of several buses to arrive at her destination- to clean floors, cook and nanny, only to be able to pass on their employer's leftover food and hand-me-downs, to my mother and her siblings. Maids, cooks, Nanny, Housekeeper, Laundress, Dishwasher, Sharecropper, were the examples of the most common, limited and lowly positions that African women were allowed to employ. So, even employment opportunities were segregated.

So, as “negro” women and their children bore the burden of ol’ Jim Crow, caucasian women supported Jim Crow Laws with their actions, voices and votes! Jim Crow laws were enforced by race privileged women who, as teachers, refused to teach the Ruby Bridges', all across the U.S. or, after schools were forced to be integrated, would marked down the final assessments of Afrikan children's IQ tests by 20 points or more!

“Jim Crow was jumpin,” in the skin game- when “race privileged” waitresses refused to serve Black people at lunch counters. Then, when Ol' Jim Crow, finally flew away, over turned by civil rights, these same waitresses would put their blond, brunette, or red hair- along with their hock of spit, in the food they served us... 

 It was Race privileged women who often falsely claimed the cry of rape to incite lynchings, and the enslavement/imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of innocent Black Men. The 3K terrorist attacks and death/slaughter of entire Afrikan towns and communities were incited in many cases by false charges of caucasian women that caused the destruction of Black Wallstreet towns.

Yep, Ol’ Jim Crow was finally kicked down a back alley, unable to hold down his position front and center stage, as such a popular reign in the minstrel show circuit… From the end of the reconstruction period, it took almost 100 years of U.S. apartheid before Afrikan people were permitted to move from the back of the bus to the front of the bus, and then finally become the bus drivers and bus company owners!

I am aware that Afrikan people at that time wanted to feel that we belonged to the US experience, yet, as we called for this assimilation as- “progress” ---so that we could have "legal/equal rights", in public venues. In my humble opinion, we gave up so much more economically  to support and reinforce the status quos of Corporatocracy and imperialism! We continue to give our Black dollars over to the prosperity of race privileged businesses and corporations, Then work in race privileged owned factories for the prosperity of  their stock market shareholders… in effect, to run down and neglect our own Black Banks, lunch counters, restaurants, dry cleaners, cultural arts, manufacturing businesses. Our Afrikan American doctors, lawyers and other professionals would follow this dead end path, to then leave our communities to blighted and predatory exploitation. So, eventually, we were subject to the health-care that is really death-care, and dumbed down education, for the manufacture/production and profit of our alien oppressors! So Integration and assimilation only open the gateway for more people to be marginalized and disenfranchised- blurring the middle classes and increasing the wealth for the elite.

Even now, we encourage our children to attend public schools, where the majority of the teachers are caucasian women who reinforce their race privileged, middle class value system into our children. Then upon graduation from high schools, we encourage our youth to go to a college or university, with the hopes that they will find a “good job” in a corporation to “make that good money.” In effect, we have encouraged a generation of our youth, to leave our communities and live in their “suburban” death-style” as assimilated. Our Afrikan American communities are now blighted with fast GMO foods, off label groceries stores and "dollar" stores filled with imported items, illegal drug dealers, liquor stores, gas/convenience stores- all owned by outsiders who don't live within our communities and don't invest in the people that they serve.

Even the "Mega Churches" hire contractors from outside of the community to build quick structures. Our dollars bleed and leach out of our communities faster than we can make the money. There is no recirculation of money. If Money were symbolic of blood and water- the two vital resources for a living body, that would mean sure and eminent death! Even the money spent on drugs, and liquor are brought in by race privileged, and that corrupt money goes to the economic construct of race imperialist and not serve the interests of Black people.

Black People don't police our own communities. The police harass, Brutalize, and terrorize. Whenever they are involved, there is racial profiling and abuse of authority that only leads to support the prison industrial complex of neo-slavery.

The Civil Rights legislation only applied to public Housing and public Businesses- So the racist’s imperialist privilege response, at that time was to immediately go private! Even today, race privileged women/mothers were able to excel and ascend to lofty status in business and within their personal life, as they once again, went along with the racist status quot of privatization; to raise their children in “gated” private neighborhoods and communities, far away from public housing, people of color and Afrikan descendants! 

For instance, Hillary Clinton is the first lady to the highest office of the US. She grew up to enjoy an elite, privileged “Beaver Cleaver” life. She lived her life aloof, of the same racist system that enabled her to launch a political career, from of all places- with The Children's Defense Fund! 

Yet, even though the Clinton's were hounded with the "White Water Affair" during their presidential career, they remain to, assert US imperialism, then to inherit the land and resources of Haiti after the HAARP destruction!