The Help: Compilation of Jim Crow Laws of the South

In chapter 13 of The Help, Skeeter searches at the library for certain research topics that she can include in her book.  She can't really ask anyone at the library what she is looking for, because people wouldn't approve of her snooping around about African American type documents.  Since buildings were segregated, her sources were limited, only finding Civil War books, maps, and old phone books. Thanks to Skeeter's height, she comes across a booklet titled "Compilation of Jim Crow Laws of the South."

It is simply a list of laws stating what those people can and cannot do in the Southern states:

No person shall require any white female to nurse in wards or rooms in which negro men are placed.
It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person.  Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void.
No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.
The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon ground used for the burial of white persons.
Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

These were just a few of many of the laws listed in the book, which should give readers a sense of exactly how segregated these people truly were. Think about all the conveniences we have today: hospitals, book stores, schools, movie theatres, water fountains, bathrooms... these were all segregated places, and if a black got caught, for example, using the white water fountain, they would be severely punished.

One of the most shocking things in the book that Skeeter pointed out is incredible to even be a law.

 The Board shall maintain a separate building on separate grounds for the instruction of all blind persons of the colored race.

Why would blind people need to be segregated?  They can't even see! I can't possibly imagine what was going through these people's minds while making these laws. I have an advantage of growing up in a completely different time, but I can't understand how Americans didn't see the similarities between blacks and whites. We accepted immigrants into our country and granted many of them citizenship, but why couldn't be accept African Americans? If they're so different, why weren't the other immigrants from other countries different too? Just because of the skin color? I can barely stand to think about this frame of mind where anything slightly different is bad.

 Although our government isn't exactly the in greatest state right now, it is thinking about times like this that we should be grateful for how we think today as a society.  Think about this, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

And it is to rock the soul and lead the person to immorality, corruption - to forget their prayers, to forget their God. And thus the world has partaken of the spirit of the Negro race, accepting their ways.

                                                             -Warren Jeffs