Read “The Origin of Jim Crow” (http://afroamhistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.toptags.com%2Faama%2Fdocs%2Fjcrow.htm).

1		How does this author explain the beginnings of the Jim Crow laws in the post Civil-War South? Does this argument support the theories of either W.J. Cash or C. Vann Woodward as explained in Where Historians Disagree?

Now read “Creation of the Jim Crow South” (http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa010201a.htm).

2		Does this essay ascribe the rise of Jim Crow to the same causes as those provided in the previous piece? How are the two arguments similar and different? Which do you find more compelling and why?

The Louisiana Black Codes (http://afroamhistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/bcodesla.htm) and the Plessy v. Ferguson case (http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/blplessy_v_ferguson.htm)

3		efforts by the same state a generation apart to impose legalized racial segregation. How do the approaches in these documents differ? How are they the same? What kind of argument can you make about the development of Jim Crow in Louisiana over the last third of the nineteenth century based on these two documents?
4		Do the different arguments you have read about the origins of segregation in the New South represent simply subtle shifts of emphasis or do they instead indicate a fundamental disagreement about the nature of, and responsibility for Jim Crow laws? If the latter, what is the center of the dispute over responsibility for segregation laws and what impact might it have on our understanding of our own society?

Other sites with primary and secondary sources relating to Jim Crow laws include:

5		Introduction to the Jim Crow South (http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~aas405/intro.html) – focuses on the rise of Jim Crow in Charlottesville, VA “Jim Crow America” (http://www.ushmm.org/olympics/zcc036a.htm) – collection of pictures from Jim Crow South “Jim Crow Laws” (http://www.sju.edu/brokes/jimcrow.htm) – samples of Jim Crow laws from various states (not all of them southern).