Jim Crow Images
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The original "Jim Crow" figure was a white minstrel actor who exaggerated Black behavior to entertain audiences.
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A dart game featuring a caricature of a Black child (c. 1900).
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Convict laborers working on the construction of the Texas State Capitol (c. 1885).
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In Newport News, Virginia, a prison chain gang repairs city streets (c. 1901).
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The Rex Theater, a movie house in Leland, Mississippi (c. 1939).
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Inside Clune's Broadway Theater in Los Angeles, a 775-seat movie house and the site of the premiere screening of The Birth of a Nation.
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A headline from the Cleveland Advocate, September 25th, 1915.
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Booker T. Washington standing speaking before a Black audience in Lakeland, Florida (c. 1900).
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Historian, writer, and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois.
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A family of Southern migrants headed north to Chicago (c. 1919).
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Jack Johnson, the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World.