QUIT PLAYIN: Jim Crow, Please!

By Vincent L. Hall

Misconceptions About the Black Family

On June 13, 2024, Austin Statesman reported the following under the headline, “Fact-Checking Byron Donald’s on Black Families Conservatism.”

“At a June 4 event in Philadelphia, (Florida U.S. Rep) Byron Donalds compared today’s Black culture with that of the Jim Crow era when Black people in the South were subject to multiple forms of state-sponsored discrimination. Jim Crow laws were enacted over several decades after the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction in the late 19th century and formally ended with passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s.

“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together,” Donalds said.

After hearing Donald’s misguided comment, Richard Pryor’s 1974 breakout joke album, “That Nigger’s Crazy” came to mind. But rather than go forward with a litany of expletives and attacks on this itinerant self-loathing “handkerchief head” Negro, I thought I would just offer some state(d) facts.

Nurses: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed. Alabama

Intermarriage: The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void. Arizona

Cohabitation: Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars. Florida

Burial: The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons. Georgia

Parks: It shall be unlawful for colored people to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the benefit, use, and enjoyment of white persons… and unlawful for any white per- son to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the use and benefit of colored persons. Georgia

The Blind: The board of trustees shall…maintain a separate building…on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race. Louisiana

Promotion of Equality: Any person…who shall be guilty of printing, publishing or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fine or not exceeding five hundred (500.00) dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six (6) months or both. Mississippi

Textbooks: Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. North Carolina

Education: [The County Board of Education] shall provide schools of two kinds: those for white children and those for colored children. Texas

Theaters: Every person…operating…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 race and shall set apart and designate…certain seats therein to be occupied by white persons and a portion thereof , or certain seats therein, to be occupied by colored persons. Virginia

Intermarriage: All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void. Wyoming

Wyoming? There couldn’t have been ten Negroes in the whole state. And then there were the Black Codes that forbade us property, “Sundown Towns” and “Lady Justice,” who refused to lift her blindfold to weigh in on the thousands of Negro lynchings without due process.

One 1930’s sign in Alix Arkansas, read, “N—-r, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On You In Alix.” Some towns posted signs that read “Whites Only After Dark.” In the 1940s, Edmond, Oklahoma, promoted itself on post- cards with the slogan, “A Good Place to Live…No Negroes.”

Byron Donalds was partially correct. The Black family was together because their existence was forbidden in White America. However, his ill-advised quip was “pretty rich” for a Black man married to a White woman, representing a White district who would have been tarred, feathered, hung, and burned in the Jim Crow South.

I would never say it, but if Richard Pryor was alive, he would have two words for Byron Donalds…”Nigga Please!”

A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.