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In the American South, “Jim Crow” laws separated Black and white people in schools, buses and restaurants and kept many Black citizens from voting. From the 1950s the civil rights movement fought them with lawsuits, boycotts and marches, winning the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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The laws took their name from “Jim Crow”, a racist stage character of the 1830s. In 1896 the Supreme Court had allowed segregation as long as facilities were “separate but equal”; in Brown v. Board of Education, on 17 May 1954, it ruled unanimously that separate schools were unequal by their nature. In December 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, and the bus boycott that followed, lasting more than a year, made Martin Luther King Jr. a national figure. At the March on Washington in August 1963 he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. After state troopers attacked peaceful marchers at Selma, Alabama, in March 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. The laws ended legal segregation, though discrimination in daily life did not disappear with them.

Türkçe oku
ABD'nin güney eyaletlerinde “Jim Crow” yasaları siyahileri ve beyazları okulda, otobüste, lokantada ayırıyor, pek çok siyahinin oy kullanmasını engelliyordu. 1950'lerden itibaren sivil haklar hareketi davalar, boykotlar ve yürüyüşlerle bu yasalara karşı çıktı; 1964'te Sivil Haklar Yasası, 1965'te Oy Hakkı Yasası çıkarıldı.

Yasalar adını, 1830'larda sahnelerde canlandırılan ırkçı bir karakter olan “Jim Crow”dan alır. ABD Yüksek Mahkemesi 1896'da, olanaklar “ayrı ama eşit” olduğu sürece ırk ayrımına izin vermişti. 17 Mayıs 1954'teki Brown v. Board of Education davasında ise oybirliğiyle, ayrı okulların doğası gereği eşit olamayacağına karar verdi. Aralık 1955'te Alabama'nın Montgomery kentinde Rosa Parks, otobüsteki yerini beyaz bir yolcuya vermediği için tutuklandı. Ardından başlayan ve bir yıldan uzun süren otobüs boykotu, Martin Luther King Jr.'ı ülke çapında tanınan bir lider yaptı. King, Ağustos 1963'teki Washington Yürüyüşü'nde ünlü “Bir hayalim var” konuşmasını yaptı. Mart 1965'te Alabama'nın Selma kentinde eyalet polisi barışçıl yürüyüşçülere saldırınca Kongre Oy Hakkı Yasası'nı çıkardı. Bu yasalar ırk ayrımını hukuken sona erdirdi; ama gündelik hayattaki ayrımcılık onlarla birlikte ortadan kalkmadı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Civil rights movement
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