Traditional Amazigh Carpet

White Supremacy

            African Americans enjoyed a period of relative respite during the years 1863- 1877 after the Civil War as a result of the passage of the 14^th and 15^th amendment which gave African Americans the right to vote. However, that did not mean the end of the suffering for African Americans, because the theory of white supremacy emerged to make the suffering of the black population in the United States continue.

White Supremacy

            After the end of the Civil War in the United States, the white population reacted to the reconstruction of the South as well as the 14^{th and} 15^th amendments to the United States constitution. These made America’s Supreme Court create rules that separated blacks and whites under the rules of the Jim Crow Laws, with the slogan “Separate but Equal’’.

            The term “Jim Crow” originally referred to a black character in an old song. It was also the name of a popular dance in the 1820’s. The term also first appeared in the Dictionary of American English in 1904. Jim Crow Laws were a series of rules which separated black and white people, a theory based on “White Supremacy’’ and "Separate but Equal’’. This theory was based on a belief that white people were superior and they should dominate society. White people in America believed that they had been responsible for most of the good things.

            Moreover, Jim Crow Laws touched every aspect of everyday life that made the black population face many types of discrimination and segregation. Even their children suffered segregation in schools. Under the Jim Crow Laws, the black people were unable to participate in any political processes or get high jobs. They were also vulnerable to attack of the lynching because under Jim Crow Laws, black people did not have right to keep arms although white people had the right to keep them.

White Supremacy

            White Supremacy emerged in American society and touched all domains that made the African Americans continue to live in a state of terror under discrimination and segregation. Here are some examples:

·        A black man could not offer to shake hands with a white male.

·        Sexual relations between black men and white women were illegal.

·        In the rural south, blacks were denied the right to vote.

·        In public schools, for instance, it was outlawed for a black child to attend a white school. The schools of white people were nice and big unlike schools of blacks.

·        The United States military was segregated.

·        White motorists always had the right of way at all intersections.

·        Blacks were not supposed to eat with white people in the same place.

·        Black were not able to express public emotions toward one another in public, for example, kissing because it offended whites.

·        Black people rode in the back seat.

·        It was outlawed for blacks to comment upon the appearance of white females.

·        Blacks never suggested that a white person was from an inferior class.

Jim Crow Laws were the cruelest rules that the African Americans faced by white supremacy. Because Jim Crow Laws touched all aspects of African American lives, those laws made their lives limited. Jim Crow Laws continued to be enforced until 1965. The Supreme Court invalidated the Majority of Jim Crow Laws.