the new jim crow essay topics

The New Jim Crow

64 pages • 2 hours read

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

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Summary and Study Guide

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a nonfiction book published in 2010 by American author and legal scholar Michelle Alexander . The book argues that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration operate as tools of racialized social control and oppression, not unlike the system in place during the Jim Crow era in the American South. The winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction, The New Jim Crow continues to appear on countless racial justice reading lists and was named one of the most influential books of the past 20 years by the Chronicle of Higher Education . This study guide refers to the 10th anniversary edition published in 2020 by the New Press.

Between the 1870s and 1960s, legal segregation, racially targeted voting laws, and a host of other political, legal, and cultural forces effectively transformed Black men and women living in the American South into second-class citizens—or, as Alexander puts it, members of a “racial undercaste” (129). This period of American history is known as the Jim Crow era. While civil rights legislation in the 1960s eliminated this specific form of oppression and disenfranchisement, a new form of racialized social control emerged in the 1980s: mass incarceration. With the launch of the War on Drugs and a series of draconian crime bills, the number of incarcerated Americans skyrocketed in less than three decades from 300,000 to over 2 million, most of them for drug convictions and most of them Black men. This transpired even though white and Black Americans sell and use drugs at roughly the same rates. Far from being an effective system of crime deterrence, Alexander argues that mass incarceration increases violent crime. Given that the United States declared the War on Drugs before Americans even perceived drug use to be a serious problem, this leads Alexander to conclude that mass incarceration was designed as a system of racial control rather than an effort to combat violent crime.

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In Chapter 1 Alexander details the history of “racialized social control” (20). From slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration, she identifies a persistent pattern by which systems of racial subjugation are built, maintained, dismantled, and finally transformed to fit the circumstances of a given era. In the case of mass incarceration, politicians like Ronald Reagan built the system to fit into a new post-Civil Rights Movement paradigm that prohibited politicians from making overtly racist appeals to American voters. In this new era of supposed colorblindness, Reagan—and later George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton—utilized “law and order” (50) rhetoric that implicitly demonized Black men as predators. In the middle of Reagan’s presidency, crack cocaine swept through urban communities of color, giving “tough on crime” advocates the perfect pretext to launch an aggressive drug enforcement campaign against Black American males.

In Chapter 2 Alexander explains exactly how the new racial caste system works, beginning with its point of entry: the police. Empowered by Supreme Court decisions that effectively gutted the Fourth Amendment, police officers may stop and search individuals under the faintest pretexts of probable cause. Yet just because police departments can target millions of Americans suspected of possessing small amounts of drugs, the question remains of why they choose to divert time and resources away from addressing more serious crimes like murders and rapes. Alexander points to huge financial incentives offered by the federal government to encourage widespread enforcement of minor drug infractions. Massive federal cash grants and changes to civil asset forfeiture laws have made participation in the drug war extraordinarily lucrative for state and local police departments.

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In the following chapter Alexander explores why, in many states, Black Americans make up as much as 80% to 90% of individuals who serve time in prison on drug charges, even though the system is formally colorblind and whites use and sell drugs at similar rates. Unlike in the case of robberies or assaults, where clear victims exist, those involved with drug transactions are unlikely to report them to the police because doing so would implicate themselves in a crime. As a result, police must be proactive in addressing drug crime and are therefore afforded an enormous amount of discretion concerning whom to target. As for why police departments choose to disproportionately target people of color, Alexander blames both implicit biases and pervasive media and political campaigns that frame Black men as criminals in the American imagination. Prosecutors are also granted an outsized amount of discretion thanks to the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences for drug criminals. With such harsh sentences hanging over the heads of those charged with drug crimes, prosecutors are better empowered to extract plea deals. While these plea deals may keep an individual out of jail, they also frequently result in a felony record, saddling that person for life with what Alexander calls “the prison label” (189).

The consequences of this prison label are the focus of Chapter 4. When an individual leaves prison or accepts a felony plea deal, they face legal discrimination in employment, housing, welfare benefits, and often voting rights. It is here that Alexander observes the strongest similarities between mass incarceration and the Jim Crow era, given that Black Americans faced these same forms of discrimination during the first half of the 20th century in the South. She also addresses the stigma felt by everyone touched by the criminal justice system, which includes the formerly incarcerated, their families, and any individual who can expect daily harassment from police officers.

The following chapter outlines the specific similarities and differences between Jim Crow and mass incarceration. Aside from the legal discrimination in both systems, Jim Crow and mass incarceration have similar political roots. Both systems gained political support from elites who sought to exploit the economic and cultural fears of poor and working-class whites. Both operate by defining what it means to be Black in America in the cultural imagination—in the case of mass incarceration, that means defining Black men as criminals. Perhaps the most significant and frightening difference is that while both slavery and Jim Crow were systems of labor exploitation, mass incarceration involves marginalization and removal from society. Alexander points out that similar racially based marginalization efforts were precursors to genocides in the 20th century.

The final chapter attempts to chart a way forward for civil rights lawyers, activists, and community members. Alexander maintains that it is crucial for any reform movement to acknowledge the role played by race in mass incarceration. Otherwise, she argues, another racial caste system will emerge to replace it, just as mass incarceration replaced Jim Crow, and Jim Crow replaced slavery.

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The New Jim Crow

Michelle alexander, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The book begins with a Foreword by Cornel West, who argues that it will prove indispensable to the fight against racial justice in the contemporary moment and that it embodies “the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. ” West critiques the political climate that has flourished under President Barack Obama , arguing that despite the apparent signs of racial progress, the United States is still a deeply divided, unequal, and unjust society. He urges the reader to reject the language of “colorblindness” and instead embrace the fight for justice. In the Preface, Michelle Alexander notes that the book was not “written for everyone,” but hopes that it will inform and inspire those who are not yet fully aware of the problem of mass incarceration, as well as provide solace to those who are currently incarcerated.

The Introduction begins with Alexander’s comparison between an incarcerated African-American man today and the man’s ancestors who, like him, were denied basic rights as a result of slavery and Jim Crow, respectively. Alexander explains that ten years ago, she was suspicious of the claim that mass incarceration was a “new Jim Crow,” but that while working on racial justice advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union she came to change her mind. Rather than a neutral system suffering from a problem of racial bias, mass incarceration is inherently a system of “racialized social control” distinctly similar to Jim Crow.

Although it might seem alarming to claim that the War on Drugs is a racist conspiracy, there are certainly many conspiratorial aspects to its history—including the fact that it was started during a period in which drug crime was actually on the decline. Alexander criticizes the lack of action against mass incarceration, which she suspects was partially facilitated by the election of Barack Obama. According to Alexander, Obama’s victory distracted people from the fact that “a human rights nightmare is taking place on our watch.”

In Chapter One, Alexander examines the history of racial caste systems in America, arguing that the cycle of different systems of racist control prove that racism is “adaptable” and will change to suit a particular era. During the colonial period, black people were brought to America as cheap labor and placed at the bottom of the racial caste system created by slavery. This system was eventually replaced by Jim Crow, which, although it looked different from slavery, operated according to the same principles of monitoring, regulating, and suppressing black people. When the civil rights movement tore down Jim Crow, it seemed sadly inevitable that another racist system of control would emerge in its place. This system took the form of the War on Drugs, which used the crack epidemic as an excuse to aggressively police and incarcerate an enormous number of poor people of color. Although the War on Drugs gained much of its momentum under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, it survived beyond Reagan’s presidency and was further escalated by Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Chapter Two describes the criminal justice system through a step-by-step analysis of the process of being arrested, charged, and incarcerated for a drug offense. Alexander argues that a key part of the War on Drugs has been allowing the police to operate with very little oversight. A series of major court cases have given the police free reign to stop people at random, and it is now all but impossible for civil rights litigators to challenge discriminatory police practices such as “stop and frisk.” Meanwhile, the police have been made even more powerful by the federal government’s decision to outfit drug units in full military gear, to deploy SWAT teams on drug busts, and to allow police departments to seize the assets of anyone who is merely suspected of being involved in drug crime. This last policy has served as a massive incentive for police aggression in the War on Drugs, and many police departments across the country are now primarily funded by assets seized during drug investigations.

Alexander moves on to describe the many injustices that have plagued courtrooms since the War on Drugs began, including the fact that many people never meet their lawyers and are pressured into accepting plea bargains, often without fully understanding their rights or the consequences of this decision. She adds that mandatory minimum sentences have led to people being locked away for years and even decades for minor infractions, including first time offenses.

In Chapter Three Alexander examines the racial discrimination embedded within the criminal justice system. She points out that in some states, 80-90% of those sent to prison on drug charges are African American. This enormous discrepancy cannot be blamed either on black culture or “old-fashioned,” deliberate racism. Rather, much of the racial injustice of mass incarceration can in fact be attributed to unconscious bias. This is made worse by laws that may appear to be race-neutral on the surface, but in fact operate in deeply racist ways; this includes the one hundred-to-one ratio in sentencing recommendations for crack versus powder cocaine. Whereas there is little substantial difference between the two forms of cocaine, crack is more closely associated with black people—and carries sentences a hundred times longer than powder cocaine, which is generally associated with wealthy whites. Meanwhile, black people are often barred from serving on juries as a result of bizarre (yet ostensibly race-neutral) rules, meaning that many African Americans are tried by all-white juries.

In Chapter Four, Alexander considers the stigma associated with being a convicted felon in today’s world. She argues that when defendants are offered plea deals that do not include prison time, they will likely not be aware of how much their lives will be affected by being classed as criminals and relegated to the “undercaste” of American society. Felons are constantly given the impression that they are not wanted within mainstream society, and must navigate an impossible maze of rules, restrictions, fines, and fees in order to avoid being sent immediately back to jail. In many states, convicted felons are denied the right to receive public assistance and vote. Many jobs require applicants to state whether or not they have a criminal record, which makes it all-but-impossible for many felons to find legal employment. Even if they are able to secure a job, many of the recently incarcerated owe the state so much in fees that their entire paycheck is seized in order to pay these debts. As a result, many end up homeless and driven to crime once again.

Alexander argues that, contrary to the views of many people, poor people of color simply want to live ordinary, safe, and healthy lives, but do not have the opportunities or resources to make this happen for themselves. While some people blame gangsta rap culture on the high rates of violence and drug use in African-American communities, research has shown that it is in fact poverty and lack of job opportunities that drives people to crime.

In Chapter Five, Alexander examines moments in which prominent figures in the media, politics, and popular culture have asked the question: “Where have all the black men gone?”. She finds it odd that, despite the ubiquity of this question, nobody gives the honest answer that a large percentage of them are in prison. Alexander argues that in order to address the problem of mass incarceration, we must become more honest about the fact that it is taking place.

Alexander reviews the many similarities between Jim Crow and mass incarceration. Both were created in order to redirect the anger of working-class whites away from economic issues and toward the scapegoat of people of color. Both systems racially segregate people to the point of creating two separate worlds, and both depend on legal and political disenfranchisement in order to survive. Crucially, both systems also heavily depend on the association between black people and criminality. Having reviewed these similarities, Alexander moves on to note some major differences between Jim Crow and mass incarceration. The most important of these is the fact that where Jim Crow was overtly racist, mass incarceration is—on the surface—race-neutral. As a result, there has not been an inter-class solidarity movement among African Americans working to end mass incarceration in the same way there was in the case of Jim Crow. In fact, some African-American leaders have in fact voiced support for the “tough on crime” approach that has created and sustained mass incarceration. This has created divisions in the African-American community as well as among racial justice advocates in general, which Alexander urges must be solved in order for there to be any hope of achieving justice.

In the sixth and final chapter, Alexander argues that people have been living in a state of “collective denial” over the issue of mass incarceration. She is particularly critical of the silence on the issue among civil rights lawyers, who we would expect to have more awareness about it than the general public. Alexander points out that mass incarceration is a notably different problem than the racial justice issues over which civil rights lawyers have successfully taken action in the past. Whereas in the 1950s litigators were keen to use “respectable” figures such as Rosa Parks as the face of their campaigns, it is difficult of find convicted felons who will be deemed “respectable” among the general public. Because of this dilemma, civil rights lawyers have tended to focus on issues such as affirmative action, which affect middle-class, wealthy, “innocent” black people rather than the poor and incarcerated.

Alexander admits that she does not have a concrete vision for addressing mass incarceration, but that she hopes she will inspire others to develop detailed plans. She argues that it is vital not to get caught up in small, individual instances of reform but rather to focus on dismantling the entire system. She stresses the importance of attacking private investment in prisons, ending racial profiling, demilitarizing the police force, legalizing marijuana and perhaps other drugs, eradicating drug forfeiture laws, and—perhaps most important of all—winning in “the court of public opinion.”

Alexander suggests that, in contrast to the dominant view of the civil rights community, it might be necessary to end affirmative action in order to achieve true racial justice. she explains that Americans have been placated by the presence of “cosmetic racial diversity,” which has distracted from the reality of stark racial injustice. She invokes the revolutionary vision of Martin Luther King, who stressed that America will never be a fair or equal country until poor people of all races are no longer oppressed. Alexander then includes a quotation from James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew published in The Fire Next Time . In the letter, Baldwin urges his nephew to remain strong and promises that the fight for justice can be won. The book ends with Baldwin’s statement: “We cannot be free until they are free.”

Introductory Essay: The Lost Promise of Reconstruction and Rise of Jim Crow, 1860-1896

To what extent did Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for African Americans from Reconstruction to the end of the nineteenth century?

• I can explain how the Reconstruction Amendments and federal laws sought to protect the rights of African Americans after the Civil War.
• I can identify examples of Jim Crow laws and explain how these laws undermined the rights of African Americans.
• I can explain how violence and intimidation were used to threaten African Americans from exercising their political and civil rights.
• I can analyze Reconstruction’s effectiveness in ensuring the faithful application of Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice to African Americans.
• I can explain the various ways that African American leaders and intellectuals supported their communities and worked to end segregation and racism.

Essential Vocabulary

The lost promise of reconstruction and rise of jim crow, 1860-1896.

After more than two centuries, race-based chattel slavery was abolished during the Civil War. The long struggle for emancipation finally ended thanks to constitutional reform and the joint efforts of Black and white Americans fighting for Black freedom. The next 30 years, however, were a constant struggle to preserve the freedom achieved through emancipation and to ensure for Blacks the equality and justice of U.S. citizens in the face of opposition, violence, and various forms of discrimination.

The Civil War created conditions for the demise of slavery. Early in the war, Congress passed two Confiscation Acts that allowed the federal government to seize and later free enslaved persons in conquered Confederate territory. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln used his wartime executive powers to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Enslaved persons ran away from their owners and joined free Blacks enlisting in the Union Army to fight for freedom and human equality. The 54th Massachusetts Regiment was the most famous Black unit to fight in the war, but almost 200,000 Black soldiers fought for the Union. Black abolitionists joined the cause, with Harriet Tubman joining Union raids that helped liberate enslaved persons and Frederick Douglass recruiting Black troops. By the end of 1865, the requisite number of states had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to confirm the end of slavery.

Slavery may have been banned, but Black Americans faced an uncertain future during the process of restoring the Union, called Reconstruction . The Civil Rights Act of 1866 protected basic rights of citizenship, and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) provided for Black U.S. citizenship and equal protection under the law. Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau as a federal agency in order to give practical help to freed people in the form of immediate aid and economic and educational opportunities. The efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau to grant Blacks confiscated land and open Black schools in the South were frustrated by President Andrew Johnson’s vetoes of the Bureau bill and by the opposition of white supremacists.

Storming Fort Wagner by Kurz & Allison, 1890

This print shows soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment attacking the walls of Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina. The Massachusetts 54th was one of the first African American Union regiments formed in the Civil War. The regiment fought valiantly during the attack on Fort Wagner while suffering nearly 40 percent casualties. The bravery and sacrifice of the 54th became one of the most famous and inspirational parts of the Civil War.

Johnson succeeded Lincoln, and while he supported the restoration of the national union, he impeded the protection of equal rights for Black Americans. He vetoed numerous laws intended to promote Black equality, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the Reconstruction Acts, and the Tenure of Office Act, among several others. While Congress overrode most of his vetoes, Johnson proved himself a consistent opponent of Black rights. In his third annual message in December 1867, he asserted, “Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands.” When he fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton for resisting his policies, Congress impeached President Johnson, but the vote to remove him from office failed by one vote.

Initial protections for Blacks were also weakened by restrictions and opposition to equal civil rights. The new constitutions of former Confederate states did not protect Black citizenship or suffrage. Indeed, the states passed Black Codes that severely curtailed the legal and economic rights of Black citizens. Moreover, the codes penalized Blacks unfairly for committing the same crimes as whites.

The Union As It Was by Thomas Nast, 1874

Klan violence was documented in the press. “The Union as It Was,” an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast, shows a Klan member and a White League member shaking hands over an African American family huddled together in fear. A schoolhouse burns and a man is lynched in the background.

Black Americans were also the victims of horrific violence perpetrated by white mobs and local authorities. White supremacists killed thousands of Blacks to intimidate them, prevent them from voting, and stop them from exercising their rights. The Ku Klux Klan and other groups such as the White League were organized to terrorize Blacks and keep them in a constant state of fear. The Colfax Massacre of 1873 and mass killings in places like Memphis and New Orleans were only a few examples of the wave of violence Black Americans suffered. Black and white leaders wrote to state and national officials about the violence in their communities. Congress, with the support of President Ulysses S. Grant, passed several acts aimed at protecting freed people from politically motivated violence. Such enforcement legislation was quickly challenged in the courts, and the withdrawal of all federal troops from the South in 1876 effectively ended federal intervention on behalf of the rights of freed people.

The first Black senator and representatives – in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States by Currier and Ives, 1872

This 1872 lithograph by Currier and Ives depicts several of the African American men who served in Congress.

Left to right: Senator Hiram Revels (MS), Representatives Benjamin Turner (AL), Robert DeLarge (SC), Josiah Walls (FL), Jefferson Long (GA), Joseph Rainey (SC), and Robert Elliott (SC).

In 1870, the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment protected the right of Black male suffrage when it banned states from denying voting rights on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Despite violence and intimidation, Blacks exercised their right to vote and served in local offices, state legislatures, and Congress. During Reconstruction, 14 African Americans served in the House of Representatives and 2 in the Senate. Nine of these leaders had been born enslaved. Local governments, however, increasingly found ways to subvert the exercise of the constitutional right to vote. Grandfather clauses , poll taxes , and literacy tests were applied to prevent Blacks from voting.

Many southern Blacks were farmers who lived under the crushing economic burdens of the sharecropping system, which forced them into a state of peonage in which they had little control over their economic destinies. In this system, white landowners rented land, tools, seed, livestock, and housing to laborers in exchange for a significant portion of the crop. As a result, Blacks barely earned a living and suffered perpetual debt that limited their economic prospects for the future.

In the later decades of the nineteenth century, Blacks also lived under confining social constraints that effectively made them second-class citizens. Segregation laws legally separated the races in public facilities, including trains, schools, churches, and hotels. These “ Jim Crow ” laws humiliated Blacks with a public badge of inferiority. Black members of Congress Robert B. Elliott and James T. Rapier made eloquent speeches in support of legislation to protect African Americans’ civil rights. Congress passed a Civil Rights Act in 1875 that protected equal access to public facilities, but the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), arguing that while states could not engage in discriminatory actions, the law incorrectly tried to regulate private acts. Frederick Douglass called the decision an “utter and flagrant disregard of the objects and intentions of the National legislature by which it was enacted, and of the rights plainly secured by the Constitution.” In 1896, however, the Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation laws were constitutional if local and state governments provided Blacks with “separate but equal” facilities. Separate was never equal, particularly in the eyes of Black Americans.

Watch this BRI Homework Help video for a review of the Plessy v. Ferguson case.

Blacks endured escalating violence in the Jim Crow era of the 1890s. White mobs of the time lynched more than 100 Blacks a year. Lynching was summary execution by angry mobs in which the victim was tortured and killed and the body mutilated. Ida B. Wells was a courageous Black journalist who cataloged the horrors of almost 250 lynchings in two pamphlets, A Red Record: Lynchings in the United States and Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases . Despite her efforts, lynching of Black Americans continued into the twentieth century.

The shackle broken by the genius of freedom by E. Sachse & Co., 1874

This 1874 lithograph, “The shackle broken by the genius of freedom,” memorialized Congressional representative Robert B. Elliott’s famous speech in favor of the 1875 Civil Rights Act. Elliott is shown in the center of the image, while the banner at the top contains a quotation from his speech: “What you give to one class you must give to all. What you deny to one you deny to all.”

Black leaders and intellectuals like Wells, Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois advocated for education as the means to achieve advancement and equality. Black newspapers and citizens’ groups supported their communities and fought back against segregation and racism. Though their strategies differed, their goal was the same: a fuller realization of the Founding principles of equality and justice for all.

W. E. B. Du Bois summed up the Black experience after the Civil War when he stated, “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun; and then moved back again toward slavery.” Du Bois points to the fact that whatever constitutional amendments were intended to protect the natural and civil rights of Blacks, and however determined Blacks were to fight to preserve those rights, they struggled to overcome the numerous legal, political, economic, and social obstacles that white supremacists erected to keep them in a subordinate position. Slavery had distorted republicanism and American ideals before the Civil War, and segregation continued to undermine republican government and equal rights after the conflict had ended.

Black leaders such as Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois worked for Black rights in a variety of ways.

Reading Comprehension Questions

• How did the Reconstruction Amendments and federal laws protect the natural and civil rights of African Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction?
• Despite constitutional and legal protections, how were Blacks’ constitutional rights restricted during Reconstruction?
• Reflecting on Reconstruction, W. E. B. Du Bois stated: “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun; and then moved back again toward slavery.” In what ways do you think this conclusion was accurate? In what ways might have Du Bois been wrong?

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Racism — Jim Crow Laws

Essays on Jim Crow Laws

What makes a good jim crow laws essay topics.

When it comes to writing an essay on Jim Crow Laws, choosing the right topic is crucial. A good essay topic should be thought-provoking, relevant, and engaging. To brainstorm and choose an essay topic, consider the historical significance of the Jim Crow Laws, the impact on society, and the relevance to current events. Additionally, think about the specific aspect of the Jim Crow Laws that you find interesting and want to explore further. A good essay topic should also be specific enough to allow for in-depth analysis and research, but broad enough to provide room for discussion and interpretation. Ultimately, a good essay topic should spark interest and curiosity in the reader, and offer a fresh perspective on the subject matter.

Best Jim Crow Laws Essay Topics

• The role of music in the fight against Jim Crow Laws
• The impact of the Jim Crow Laws on education
• The portrayal of Jim Crow Laws in literature and media
• The intersection of gender and race under Jim Crow Laws
• The influence of the Jim Crow Laws on the civil rights movement
• The economic implications of the Jim Crow Laws
• The legacy of the Jim Crow Laws in today's society
• The psychological effects of living under Jim Crow Laws
• The resistance and resilience of individuals under Jim Crow Laws
• The role of religion in justifying the Jim Crow Laws
• The global impact of the Jim Crow Laws
• The parallels between the Jim Crow Laws and modern-day discrimination
• The role of the Supreme Court in challenging the Jim Crow Laws
• The impact of Jim Crow Laws on healthcare and public health
• The representation of Jim Crow Laws in visual arts
• The cultural impact of Jim Crow Laws on African American communities
• The role of grassroots activism in challenging the Jim Crow Laws
• The intersection of class and race under Jim Crow Laws
• The influence of Jim Crow Laws on voting rights and political participation
• The role of white allies in the fight against Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow Laws essay topics Prompts

• Imagine you are a musician during the Jim Crow era. How would you use your platform to challenge the racial segregation and discrimination imposed by the Jim Crow Laws?
• Write a letter to a young student living under the Jim Crow Laws, offering advice and guidance on navigating the challenges and injustices they face.
• Create a visual art piece that captures the essence of resistance and resilience in the face of the Jim Crow Laws.
• Imagine you are a journalist reporting on the impact of the Jim Crow Laws. What stories would you tell and how would you use your platform to advocate for change?
• Write a short story from the perspective of an individual living under the Jim Crow Laws, highlighting the everyday struggles and moments of defiance in the face of oppression.

Jim Crow Laws

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The History and Development of Jim Crow Laws in America

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Analysis of "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander

Segregation in schools: crumbling jim crow law, jim crow - a symbol for racial oppression of african americans, race issue in the united states from civil rights movement, relevant topics.

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51 Jim Crow Laws Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best jim crow laws topic ideas & essay examples, 🔍 good essay topics on jim crow laws, 💡 interesting topics to write about jim crow laws.

• Alexander’s Overall Thesis From the New Jim Crow The goal is to ensure that they do not participate in determining the political leadership of the country. As members of the jury, they can help to explain events that led to the suspect acting […]
• The New Jim Crow System Related to the Black Population As a matter of fact, Jim Crow, or the Jim Crow system, may be defined as a particular racial caste system that existed in the United States between the 1870s and the middle of the […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Law History From Jim Crow to Civil Rights Movement It was not until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.that the problems of law enforcement in the South was truly recognized and reforms started designed to reduce the influence of political agendas on the […]
• Jim Crow Policy and Black Power Movement Cole and Ring claim that “the story of race as it was lived in the Jim Crow era was in part a matter of place and of time and the United States was not all […]
• Jim Crow Laws for African Americans in the South Monroe remembered the time when a famous black musician was unable to sleep in one of the hotels in downtown Alabama because colored people were not allowed to avail of the said accommodation.
• Jim Crow Laws in the Reconstruction Era However, there is consensus among many of them that the genesis of Jim Crow laws was during the reconstruction period and they formally ended in the 1965 with the Supreme Court declarations that segregation was […]
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness According to Alexander, most of the individuals in the United States of America who are colored are devastated and targeted by the system of justice of the United States of America.
• Institutionalized Racism From John Brown Raid to Jim Crow Laws This paper provides a historical account of institutionalized racism in the United States from the 1850s through the civil war up to the repeal of Jim Crow laws.
• Lynching, Segregation, and Jim Crow Laws It is defined as “any act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person which results in the death of the person”.
• Jim Crow Laws and Their Effect on the Black American Community The aftermath of the Civil War was characterized by many white southern inhabitants quickly moving in to try and eliminate the new found freedom of the African American community.
• Black Codes, Jim Crow, and Segregation Impact on African Americans in the US Slavery had various social, economic cultural and political implications for both the African Americans and the Whites after the civil war and in as much as it was officially abolished by the Lincoln administration, the […]
• Jim Crow Laws: The Rules of a New System
• Impact of the Jim Crow Laws on Today’s America
• Jim Crow Laws Contribution to the African Americans Alienation and Isolation
• Linking Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws
• Comparison of the South African Apartheid System and America’s Jim Crow Laws
• The Parallels Between the Holocaust and Jim Crow Laws
• How Jim Crow Laws Became Something Controversial
• The Relations Between African American and Jim Crow Laws
• How Jim Crow Laws Increased the Power of White Americans
• Institutionalized Racism: From John Brown Raid to Jim Crow Laws
• Jim Crow Laws Effect on the Lives of Black Americans
• How Supreme Court and Jim Crow Laws Affected Black Americans Life
• The Problem of Jim Crow Laws and Discrimination Against Blacks
• The Link Between Jim Crow Laws and Racial Segregation
• How the Jim Crow Laws Hindered the Education of African-American Students
• Jim Crow Laws: Main Problems for Black Americans in the 1920-1930s
• Racial Segregation During the Era of Jim Crow Laws
• Reasons Why the Jim Crow Laws Should Not Have Been Passed
• Linking Reconstruction and the Jim Crow Laws
• The Relationships Between Slavery and Jim Crow Laws
• The Denomination of the Jim Crow Laws
• The Great Migration, Jim Crow Laws and Discrimination Against African Americans
• The History and Development of Jim Crow Laws in America
• The Role of Jim Crow Laws in Segregation in Schools
• The Correlation Between the Jim Crow Laws and the Civil War
• The Jim Crow Laws Changed American Society
• The Life of African Americans Under the Jim Crow Laws
• The Jim Crow Laws Has a Serious Influence on the United States
• The Link Between White Supremacy and the Jim Crow Laws
• The Jim Crow Laws Enhanced the Institution of Racism
• Why the Jim Crow Laws Existed
• The Jim Crow Laws Have Negatively Affected the African American
• Why the Jim Crow Laws Came About
• The Jim Crow Laws: Legalizing Discrimination
• Brief History of Jim Crow Laws
• The Jim Crow Laws: Separation Can Be Harmful
• The Segregation in Jim Crow Laws
• The Problem of Racism in Jim Crow Laws
• The Meaning and Peculiarities of Jim Crow Laws
• Jim Crow Laws: Why Reconstruction Was a Failure or Not a Failure
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 28). 51 Jim Crow Laws Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/jim-crow-laws-essay-topics/

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "51 Jim Crow Laws Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/jim-crow-laws-essay-topics/.

• Jim Crow Titles
• Mass Incarceration Essay Topics
• Segregation Research Topics
• African American History Essay Ideas
• Slaves Paper Topics
• African Americans Paper Topics
• US History Topics
• African Diaspora Ideas
• Racial Profiling Essay Topics
• Slavery Ideas
• Abraham Lincoln Topics
• Black Lives Matter Topics
• Discrimination Essay Titles
• Harlem Renaissance Essay Titles
• White Privilege Essay Topics

The New Jim Crow

By michelle alexander, the new jim crow literary elements.

Nonfiction; Political Science; Criminal Justice

Setting and Context

Present-Day United States

Narrator and Point of View

Third-person point of view

Tone and Mood

Straightforward, indignant, didactic, and outraged, yet also cautiously optimistic

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist: African Americans unfairly treated by the criminal justice system; Antagonist: People who are indifferent to the suffering of the incarcerated and the injustice of the system

Major Conflict

The major conflict lies in whether the American people and politicians will frankly consider what the system of mass incarceration is doing to communities of color and move to correct the abuses of the New Jim Crow.

Foreshadowing

Alexander lays out how Jim Crow laws foreshadowed those of the New Jim Crow, and how slavery foreshadowed Jim Crow. She alludes to other possible futures of racial stratification and progress.

Understatement

- "The New Jim Crow was born" (58). - "Mass incarceration has been normalized" (181).

Alexander alludes to many black intellectuals and Civil Rights figures and their ideas: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois. She also mentions Law and Order (59), a TV show many people think shows the reality of the criminal justice system but absolutely does not.

See "Imagery"

"We know that people released from prison face a lifetime of discrimination, scorn, and exclusion, and yet we claim not to know that an undercaste exists. We know and we don't know at the same time" (182).

Parallelism

Metonymy and synecdoche, personification.

- "[The criminal justice system] was not just another institution infected with racial bias but rather a different beast entirely" (4). - "[Justice Douglas's] voice was a lonely one" (63). - "Descriptions of the silence that hovers over mass incarceration are rare" (169).

The New Jim Crow Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The New Jim Crow is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Find two examples where Alexander introduces the views of others.

Alexander introduces the views of other by including examples of African Americans who were refused the right to vote, or in turn, were faced with barriers to voting such as “poll taxes” or “literacy tests."

2. Explain the closed door metaphor.

Alexander often says things like, "It closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias in sentencing" (111). The metaphor of closed doors is apt because while doors may literally be closed in terms of suits not able to proceed, the image of a...

What central research question does Alexander ask that politicians and scholars have not been able to answer

The main theme of Alexander's work is that the current American system of mass incarceration, created in response to the rise in drug arrests, is a systematic attempt to marginalize people of color much in the same way that the Jim Crow laws...

Study Guide for The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow study guide contains a biography of Michelle Alexander, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The New Jim Crow
• The New Jim Crow Summary
• Character List

Essays for The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

• Structure and Rhetorical Strategy in "The New Jim Crow"
• Rigorous Reasoning
• Mandated Failures
• What Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" Adds to “If Beale Street Could Talk”
• Mass Incarceration Parallels with Jim Crow

Lesson Plan for The New Jim Crow

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The New Jim Crow
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The New Jim Crow Bibliography