Jim Crow Laws were a racial segregation state and local laws enacted after the Reconstruction Period in Southern United States that continued in force until 1965 mandating dejure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern United States (of the former Confederacy), starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. Mandated these segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, restrooms, and restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks also U.S. military. Jim Crow by 1838 had become a pejorative expressions meaning "Negro". Blacks were still elected to local offices throughout the 1880s. Establishment Democrats were passing laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease.
Public libraries were not introduced for African Americans in the South until the first decade of the twentieth century, only available sporadically(once in a while). During reconstruction, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments gave black Americans freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote. Civil Rights Act made it illegal to segregate schools, places of public accommodation., modes of transportation and juries. In 1800, Strauder V. West Virginia, the court ruled that restriction of juries to white only was unconstitutional and violated the rights of blacks as stipulated by the 14th amendment. The Court argued that the absence of blacks on a jury did not specifically mean that a black defendant/plaintiff's right had been denied. Whites could find legal ways to discriminate without violating federal law. Segregation and discrimination went unpunished by the Court.