The New Jim Crow

... is beginning to look an awful lot like the old one.

Nobody really knows who Jim Crow was or whether he even existed. But his name and legacy are currently making a comeback.

Crow first gained public attention in the 1830s, when a white minstrel-show actor named Thomas Dartmouth Rice toured the U.S. in blackface performing a crude dance routine while singing a ditty titled “Jumping Jim Crow.” Rice was said to have met a crippled Black stable hand of that name during his travels, but there’s no proof he ever did. In any event, Jim Crow soon became a term of derision for Black people generally.

It gained more fame in the 1870s, when the South was still recovering from the Civil War. Northern troops and bureaucrats occupied the region, enforcing the Constitution’s new 13^th Amendment (ending slavery), as well as the 14^th (guaranteeing equal protection under the law) and the 15^th (the right to vote). But when the northerners left a few years later, state legislatures, town councils and white mobs began to limit those freedoms and restore racial disparities – through poll taxes, segregated public facilities and, of course, lynchings.

The new measures – enforced by local officials and violent mobs – soon became known as Jim Crow laws. They limited the ability of blacks to vote, travel, work, own property or otherwise enjoy the blessings of liberty. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively upheld many of those measures in its shameful Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

Before I sermonize any further, let me note that Jim Crow laws did not originate in the South, but in the upright, pro-abolition paradise of Massachusetts., where I have a home. In 1838, well before the Civil War, the state permitted its railways to make Black passengers ride in separate, usually inferior carriages. Newspaper accounts of the era referred, without explanation, to the “Jim Crow car.” Everybody knew what that was.

Everybody received a reminder of it late last month, when the Supreme Court sided with a complaint about Louisiana’s electoral map. The ruling eliminated one of the state’s two Black-majority, mostly Democratic districts and left Republicans with five mostly white ones – even though more than one-third of Louisiana’s population is Black. Legal experts say the ruling will make challenges to racially discriminatory voting maps more difficult.

The Louisiana decision is one of several recent setbacks for minority rights. Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and South Carolina have introduced – or soon will – new electoral maps that disadvantage Democratic candidates, whom Black and other minority voters across the U.S. tend to favor. In Viginia, which is more than 20% Black, the state Supreme Court this month blocked a bill that would create a district favoring Democrats, and thus people of color. The measure had been approved by Virginia voters in a referendum only weeks earlier.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has been working to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) – a movement to end chronic under-representation of minorities in the upper ranks of education, business, government and the military. Republicans say such efforts are unfair to whites. The Administration has also been removing statues, portraits and other references to Black Americans from museums and public monuments. In addition, the Justice Department last year put a freeze on civil rights litigation.

All those moves have prompted commentators and public officials to warn of a “new Jim Crow,” a coordinated attempt to return the U.S. to that benighted era when creative politics made Black Americans second-class citizens.

Many of those citizens are probably not surprised. In a 2024 Pew poll, two-thirds of Black adults found the U.S. political system to be “rigged against them.” Nearly 90% said they experienced discrimination regularly or occasionally. More than 80% of those with college degrees agreed that they must “work harder than everyone else to achieve success.”

Those are not just opinions. A 2020 report by the consulting firm McKinsey found that roughly half of private-sector Black workers were concentrated in low-paid ranks of the healthcare, food service and accommodation industries. Only 2% of those workers were managers, compared to 25% of white employees. In a 2021 AFL-CIO report, a mere 10% of slots in the professions were held by blacks, vs. 70% by whites. Author Michelle Alexander, in her 2010 best-seller “The New Jim Crow,” reports that blacks of working age are far more likely to be incarcerated than whites.

It may be difficult to send the new Jim Crow back into the mists of history while Republicans employ gerrymandering, anti-DEI campaigns and other tools to disadvantage minorities. That project will likely continue until Democrats gain more seats in legislatures and on courts. Which won’t happen until fairness returns to the redistricting process.

That poses a dilemma for Democrats. Do they imitate the Republicans and do their own gerrymandering in states they control? That response might be effective in the short run, but it could tarnish the party’s image, alienate principled voters and plunge the U.S. into a permanent state of redistricting warfare.

An alternative for the Dems would be to go full Cassandra, denounce the Republicans forcefully for trying to drag our country back into the post-Civil War, pre-Civil Rights era swamp. Such an appeal to conscience could, if handled right, restore integrity to U.S. politics. It’s worth a try.

Americans may not know who Jim Crow was or how his name came to stand for so many historic wrongs. But we in Massachusetts sure do know what he looks like: our own worst selves.

Donald Morrison is an Eagle columnist and co-chair of the advisory board. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of The Berkshire Eagle.