Jim Crow Laws

Imagine a big, invisible wall on the playground. A wall that says one friend can’t play on the swings, and another friend can’t go on the slide. Imagine a water fountain that says only some children can have a drink when they are thirsty. It feels yucky and sad, doesn’t it. That’s what I was like. I was not a wall you could see, but I was a set of rules that kept people apart. My name is the Jim Crow Laws, and I was a very sad and unfair idea that made many people feel left out.

I was made a long, long time ago, after a big, sad fight called the Civil War ended in 1865. In the southern part of a country called the United States, some grown-ups decided to make me. Starting in the late 1870s, they wrote me down as rules to keep people with dark skin and people with light skin away from each other. They called this segregation. Because of me, there were separate schools for children, separate parks to play in, and even separate seats on the bus. It was not kind, and it was not fair at all. Everyone should be able to play and learn together.

But many brave friends knew that I was wrong. They knew everyone is special and should be treated with kindness. For many years, they worked together to get rid of me. A very kind leader named Martin Luther King Jr. helped show everyone how to be fair. He talked about loving each other and holding hands as friends. Because of him and many other brave people, a new, happy rule was made. It was called the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it erased me forever. Now, we remember to be good friends to everyone, because being fair is the best rule of all.