The "Jim Crow" figure was afixture of the minstrel shows thattoured the South; a white manmade up as a black man sangand mimicked stereotypicalbehavior in the name of comedy.

Sheet music cover illustrationwith caricatures ofragged African-American musiciansand dancers. pub. C1847

1866: One of a number of highly racist posters issued aspart of a smear campaign against PA Repubican gubernatorialnominee John White Geary by supporters of Democratic candidateHiester Clymer. Indicative of Clymer's white-supremacy platform, theposters attack postwar Republican efforts to pass a constitutionalamendment enfranchising blacks. Artist: Reynolds NY

Another in a series of racist posters attacking Radical Republicanexponents of black suffrage, issued during the 1866 PA gubernatorial race

Philadelphia, 1844: Mrs. Juliann Jane Tillman, preacher of the A.M.E. Church.The African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in the 1790s and hadover 20,000 members in the nothern states on the eve of the Civil War.It launched a major missionary effort to southern blacks after the war andwas a leading source of resistence to Jim Crow. Many of the first blackpoliticos and teachers from the North were ministers of the AME church.Illustration by Alfred M. Hoffy.

November 1867: "The First Vote"--African American men, in dressindicative of their professions, in a queue waiting for their turn to vote Illustration by Harper's Weekly artist Alfred R. Waud 1828-1891

1876: Negro Congregation in Washington D.C. Illustration from the London News

1873: Negroes hiding in the swamps of Louisiana.Illustration by Harper's Weekly artist William Ludwell Sheppard

A well-dressed African-Americanman, perhaps "parroting“the dress of the white middle class,converses with an actual--and chained-parrot in this 19th-century lithograph.

Philadelphia, 1889: Removingan African Americanfrom a Philadelphia Railway car-after the implementation ofJim Crow, the integrationimposed by Reconstructionwas stripped away by new laws.

Two pioneers of Nicodemus, Kansas-famous town settled by African Americans in 1870s.

Nicodemus, Kansas, 1870s: Middle class settler's homestead.

Sign in Virginia, posted in the 1920s. Note that the term "Lynch law" beganduring the American Revolution and that it described punishment forsomewhat political offenses even then.

"The Agony of Lynching" by Laurence Foy.Block print originally published in the 1920s.

Rocky Ford, Mississippi:September 1925—Arrow (in red) points to victimJP Ivy, Negro timber cutter wasBurned to death by a mob ofUnion and Lee Counties.Ivy denied having anythingto do with theassault on a white girl.

1899: Accounts of nine lynchings asrecorded in two major Georgianewspapers as a commentaryon southern white racism, togetherwith results of a private investigationof the incidents to ascertain the facts.Wells-Barnett hoped to use thisinformation in an appeal to stopsuch lawlessness.

New York City, 1936: From their headquarters at 69 5th Avenue,the NAACP flew a flag to report lynchings until 1938, when thethreat of losing its lease forced the association to discontinue the practice.

Illustration (1891) by I. Garland Penn. Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was born aslave in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She raised her four orphaned brothers and then became a schoolteacher inMemphis, Tennessee, where she purchased and edited a newspaper, theMemphis Free Speech. Wells was an outspoken and courageous opponent of lynching

Booker T. Washington between 1890-1900.Photograph by Schumacher.

Tuskegee, Alabama, 1902: History class at the Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama.Mississippi passed its White Primary law the same year, ending black participation in theDemocratic Party in that state. Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer

Tuskegee Institute, 1913: "A Corner in the Electrical Division."

Atlanta, Georgia, 1900: African-American man, half-length portrait, seated, facing front. From the W.E.B. Du Bois photograph collection of African Americans, exhibited at theParis Exposition Universelle in 1900.]

Howard University, Washington, D.C, 1900: Class picture.[From the W.E.B. Du Bois photographcollection of African Americans, exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.]

Georgia, 1899: AfricanAmericans and horse-drawnwagon in front of country store,two women stand on balcony.

Aiken, South Carolina, 1900: Public baptism.Published in The African-American Mosaic,a Library of Congress resource guide forthe study of black history and culture.

Georgia, 1900: Nine African-American women,full-length portrait, seated on steps.[From the W.E.B. Du Bois photographcollection of African Americans, exhibitedat the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.]

Buffalo, N.Y., 1899: Interior of African-American store. Caption card tracings:[African Americans--In business; Stores...] [From the W.E.B. Du Boisphotograph collection of African Americans, exhibited at the ParisExposition Universelle in 1900.]

Atlanta, Georgia, 1899: The home of Rev. Wesley J. Gaines,an African Methodist Bishopwho was later involved in the Atlanta riots of 1906, in which25 African Americans were killed and hundreds hurt.[From the W.E.B. Du Bois photograph collection of AfricanAmericans, exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.]

Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898: Cover imageof Collier's Weekly November 26, 1898.In one of the first riots after thedisfranchisement legilation,400 whites burned and pillaged ablack section of town after the editorof a black newspaper wrote that arecently lynched black man had notraped a white woman, but that shehad consented to the affair.Hundred of blacks left North Carolinain the wake of the riot for places north.Illustration by H. Ditzler.

Watertown, N.Y, 1870: Ku Klux Klan, WatertownDivision 289. Ten men posedseated and standing, wearing hats with"KKK" in large letters, and with a skull andbones arranged on the floor in front of them.Hart, Photographer.

Mississippi 1870s: Artist unknown. Caption:"Mississippi Ku-Klux in the disguises in which they were captured."

The Rex Theater for Colored People, Leland, Misssissippi, 1939:Although many motion picture houses admitted both blackand white patrons, they did so by segregating the audience.In such movie houses the blacks were seated upstairs in the balcony.A few theaters, like the Rex, completely separated the races,however, playing to all black audiences. The Rex was probably a black-owned theater.

"Every Saturday morning there was a matinee at these movies, and wewould pay 15 cents ... but we were separated; we went upstairs, the whitekids went downstairs."--Willie Wallace, Eyewitness Narrative, Natchez, MS

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 1939: "Colored" water fountains werefixtures throughout the South during the Jim Crow era. Photo by Russell Lee

Newport News, Virginia, 1901: This prison chain gang of street repairmenwas a common way of working prisoners.The chains shackled to their legs created sores and even "shackle poison.“Work gangs such as the one depicted here were often leased out to privatecontractors from 1875 through the late 1930s. The gruesome nature of thechain gang was captured in Robert Burn's film I Am A Fugitive From A ChainGang released in 1932

The African-American prisoners in this work detail are breaking rocks, probably for roadconstruction. Unlike in previous years, these workers are not chained together withiron shackles in "chain gangs," a practice that had died out in much of the South by1940. This photo was taken sometime in the 1930s or 1940s by an unknown photographer

November 1918: African-American troops on the march northwest of Verdun, France.For many African-Americans, military experience in World War I introduced them toEuropean cultures in which racism was not as overt or as institutionalized as it wasin America. Their return to the United States of the Jim Crow era was not often ahappy experience.

Detroit 1944: Pallbearers with casket walking in front of sign reading "here lies Jim Crow“during the NAACP Detroit branch "Parade for Victory."

Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921: Smoke billowing over Tulsa, Oklahoma during 1921 race riots.Photo by Alvin C. Krupnick Co.

1898 Russell Morgan Print for Al W. Martin's mammoth production of Uncle Tom's cabin.Caption: [Our colored "exclusives" in a fashionable cake walk : the most sumptuousoccurrence that is likely to happen.] Printed by the U.S. Printing Company

The most recognizable trademark inthe world by 1900, Bull Durham tobaccoads and trading cards typically depictedcaricatures of foolish looking or sillyacting blacks to draw attention to its product.Each ad has a green bull somewhere in the image.

Two silly looking black hunters have all the equipment for the hunt, but no match with which to light their cigarettes. The hunters are exaggerated images of blacks trying to immitate white people at sport. Notice the trademark green bull in the background. The Bull Durham bull together with the stereotypical images of blacks were a standard part of America's popular culture at the turn of the century.