Last week I was in Memphis, TN for my denomination’s annual General Assembly. One of the options offered was a training on “Planting Multi-Ethnic Churches” that included a lunch and talk at the historic Clayborn Temple and a private tour of the National Civil Rights Museum.

Although a white guy, I’ve long been fascinated by the African-American struggle and that fascination is not without sorrow. Thankfully, I was raised in a home that modeled friendship across racial lines and, like millions, I’ve been impacted by the dream and moral courage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Given that the opportunity to explore the museum attached to the Lorraine Hotel—the place of King’s assassination, I was eager to learn more. And, although the self-guided, walking tour was emotional and filled with more information than I could process, I used this occasion to get a better handle on laws from the Jim Crow era.

The term “Jim Crow” itself “dates to before the Civil War. In the early 1830s, the white actor Thomas Dartmouth ‘Daddy’ Rice was propelled to stardom for performing minstrel routines as the fictional ‘Jim Crow,’ a caricature of a clumsy, dimwitted black slave.”[1]

Jim Crow laws were “state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued to be enforced until 1965. They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in the 1870s and 1880s, and upheld by the United States Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” doctrine for African-Americans.”[2]

In 1896, in Plessy vs. Fergusen, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of separate accommodations for blacks and whites and here are some actual Jim Crow laws from various states:

• The commander-in-chief is hereby authorized to organize four independent companies of infantry, to be composed of colored. Such companies shall not be attached to any existing regiment. – Connecticut, 1879
• No person shall be a juror unless a qualified elector and able to read and write. – Mississippi, 1890
• Books shall not be interchangeable between white and colored schools. – North Carolina
• The board of trustees shall maintain a separate building for the admission, care, and instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race. – Louisiana
• All marriages of white persons with negroes, Mongolians, or mulattoes are illegal and void. – California, 1906
• The sexton (church officer) shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart for or used for the burial of white persons. – Georgia, 1910
• The white and colored militia shall be separately enrolled. Colored troops shall be under the command of white officers. – North Carolina, 1913
• It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with black bands are prohibited from marching with white bands in Oklahoma city parades. – Oklahoma, 1925
• It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game, of cards or dice, dominoes, or checkers. – Alabama, 1930
• Any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or any place of public entertainment or public assemblage which is attended by both white and colored persons, shall separate the white race and the colored – Virginia
• It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the negro – Georgia, 1932
• All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively. – Georgia, 1942
• All persons are prohibited from contests and other such activities personal and social contacts of the white and negro races. – Louisiana, 1956

Again, as a white guy born a year after the ugliness above was torn down, I know little of the hundred years after slavery when segregation thrived—that time of open and veiled discrimination that lives on in some individuals, areas, and institutions today. Despite healing that’s still desperately needed, I’m grateful to live in a time where the best among us are zealous to learn, grow in empathy, and celebrate racial and ethnic differences. Further, many of our Millenials are leading the way as we continue to work for justice for our most vulnerable and even try new foods!

I’m also grateful for the Triune God who alone can save us from our ignorance, hate, illusions of superiority, and disinterest in the history and plight of others. What’s more, I’m honored to number myself among the unholy montage below—brothers and sisters who celebrate the generous mercy of the Father, worship the Lamb, and follow the healing voice of the Spirit:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,

“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying,

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen”…

For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

(Rev. 7:9-12, 17, ESV)

Next week, we’ll look at The Legacy of Jim Crow, Part 2: Leading in Ways that Heal.

[1] https://www.history.com/news/was-jim-crow-a-real-person

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws