After I got done reading the Jim Crow Laws I was in shock that blacks were treated like dirt. The laws against them were crazy and it kind of seemed that white people were scared of the blacks. I found a direct correlation with the text and the Jim Crow Laws on page 171 in our book. When Tea Cake is out burying the dead people from the storm one of the guards actually says, "Don't lemme ketch non uh y'all dumpin' white folks, and don't be wastin' no boxes on colored. Tea Cake says, "Look lak dey think God don't know nothin' 'bout de Jim Crow Laws."

Today there aren't any laws saying it is illegal for a white person to marry a black person but some people still look down on them. I come from an all white neighborhood but more Hispanic people have been moving in and I can see the discrimination against them starting to be similar to the way the blacks were treated then.

I like the cover of this book a lot better than the little animated guy dancing for the Jim Crow Laws. I see the woman on the front of the book either dreaming of just turning a blind eye against all the discrimination. The guy dancing is wearing rags and has a huge smile on this face, which I don't think If I was being discriminated against I would be so happy go lucky.

Today these laws really do seem crazy. However, when they were written, white men were scared of the black race and that is why they were written. Things like this are always written because they are scared that something they have always been told was below them or not as good as they were now going to become equal. Today some of these types of laws still exist, not so much in a racial term but in a sexual orientation. I still feel that these laws are ridiculous and are only in place because people are scared of something that they don’t know and don’t understand.

As horrible and ridiculous as these laws are, they have a strong connection with the text. The laws help establish white dominance over blacks. Within the text, Hurston emphasizes one character, in particular Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner helps with the idea of white superiority. She shows interest in Janie because of her "white" features, particularly her "coffee and cream" complexion and looks down on Janie's husband because of his very dark skin. She made the comment, "We oughta lighten up de race." Mrs. Turner assimilates with the "white" way of thinking during that time. She aids in the idea of white superiority.

I think that some of the mandates are still in effect today. Intermarriage is legal now. There are still people who are opposed to the idea and refuse to accept it. There are other groups targeted today, particularly those of different sexual preferences and those of Mexican-American background. Attitudes are the primary means by which this mandate is still enforced.

Things have changed slightly from Hurston's time. Blacks have gained more opportunities than they had when this text was written. Education and a change in attitudes from previous generations have been essential in helping them with their gains. More changes still need to be made for there to be full equality between blacks and whites.

The image on the cover of Hurston's text differs from that of the picture accompanying the excerpt about the Jim Crow laws. The picture on the front of her text shows a woman who faced a great deal of struggles throughout her life journey. She has her eyes closed, which represents her contemplating or dreaming. She could be thinking about all of the events in her life and how they've shaped who she has become. She could also be dreaming of a life where she could escape all of her troubles. The image above the mandates shows a black man (or a white man dressed up as a black man with his skin painted) dancing in raggedy clothing. The illustration accompanies the advertisement about the minstrel shows, which were written by a white English migrant. I interpreted the illustration as mocking how a rural black lived. (I could be reading too much into the picture or misinterpreting it.) I interpreted two very messages from both illustrations.

I believe that these laws were set up due to an intimidation factor.  If people feel that there is a threat they will do anything in thier power to prevent this feeling.  Also, If we look at our current text, Their Eyes Were Watching God,  we see that society works with White men on top, black men under them, and black women under the black man.  This also creates what is referred to as class.  Society does not function if there is no class.  This was a convenient way for the white men to move up in class.  Now the poor white man was not on the bottom of societal class. Society does not function without people working for minimum wage. 

When looking at this mandates, it seems to me that people during that time were either afraid of the black population or so consumed with power over the blacks that they felt the need to create ridiculous rules. I still feel that there are times when whites think of themselves as different from blacks, when in reality we are all the same. One mandate that rings true to this idea is inter-racial marriage. For example, my grandmother still thinks that marrying someone outside of your race is a sin. However, see thinks that way because of how society was for so long. It is hard to change your views to the times now when for so long you were taught something different. She is learning from my mom, aunts, and her grandchildren.

The picture illustrated on the front of my book is a beautiful black woman who seems sad or emotional about something. The picture above resembles a joker of somekind, jumping around and lauhging. The difference between the two is that the picture on the book is recent and shows the black woman as an actual person. Above, the picture shows that people thought of blacks as a joke.

When looking at the Jim Crow laws it makes me wonder how people even thought that way.  I don't understand how someone could think they are so much better than someone else just because of the color of their skin.  And then to  take it as far as to make up stupid laws about what they can and can't do when they are already supposed to be equal.  Although many of these ideas are still lingering today, most of them have dwindled away.  There are no longer laws with such segregation implanted in them but there is still hatred in the world towards people of different races. 

 I think that in America we have more of a problem with the Mexican population than that of the African American population.  I feel as though the Mexican population is still treated as though they are dirt and they don't and can't amount to anything.  These segregation between the Mexican and the rest of America of course aren't written down, and they aren't near anything that is written in the Jim Crow laws.  But that doesn't mean that they do not exsist.  The idea that we as Americans, black or white, are better than that of the Mexican population is what is plaguing the country and our minds now. 

When looking at the cover of Hurston's book it looks more serious.  In the picture of the woman on the cover, you can almost see her pain.  The picture underneath the blog is more of a mocking sort of picture.

First off, I'd just like to say that I waited until long after I was at the Cactus to write this post. These laws are just obsurd. Even though they may not be still "laws" I think that sometimes society still holds them as what is considered "appropriate. I think that this is most true with the interracial marriages. I have two good friends who are dating and are an interracial couple. They have told me in many instances where they will be together, holding hands, and people will basically gawk at them. I do come from a smaller town in Indiana, but it is no excuse for how people act. I think that the beliefs in society still target black people to some extent.

The cover of the book that we have on our copy of the book reminds me of something that you would see in an art museum, not the goofy picture that is in the blog.

The shadowy period that encompassed the late "Jim Crow" laws is arguably a time empty of compassion and full of ill misunderstandings. The mandates essentially moved to separate people in regards to their skin color while holding back specific groups who were thought to be racially inferior. Specifically, it appears that the loosely termed "white man" had still been fostering a ill hearted disposition towards the "black man" after the emancipation of African Americans from slavery. Predisposed by cultural motives, the "white man" was tied down by ignorance just as the "black man" was tied down by heartless laws of inequality and tribulation. Within the novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" we have several examples of the ridiculous Crow laws which focus our eyes into a culture with little taste for human dignity. For example, when Tea Cake was forced to bury the dead after the hurricane, the white man in charge consciously demanded that no white folks be buried in the pits with the black folks, and no coffins should be waited on any of the blacks (Hurston, 171). Specifically, this shows the "Jim Crow" laws in action as the period of time within the setting is unframed by racial segregation.Although the "Jim Crow" laws are not enforced today, they still carry subtle undertones within our contemporary culture. Many people are still ignorant of diversity and still treat other humans in a dissenting manner. While the law today promotes equality and our country as a "cultural melting pot", other forms of the late Crow laws still exist within sexual preference, marriage, and religious diversity. We all are aware of our current administrations attack on homosexual marraige and with the Medias propaganda some people hold skewed views of religions based in the Middle East.The cover our our book is drastically different than that of the picture above. Hurston's novel gives me the impression of a strong black woman smelling in the air of independence. She is delicately featured, beautiful, and seemingly at peace. The picture above on the other hand seems to portray a black man who is silly, dancing perhaps for someone’s amusement. The ways the two are portrayed are obviously different and I’m not surprised as we have moved steps away from the pasts ignorance.

What was wrong with the people who made these up? i do not seriously see how they can have a problem with playing baseall for instance within 2 blocks of a black playground. haha, i do  fiond it funny however that i happen to be listening to rage against the machine while doing this. although i believe that this speaks to our text in the fact that they obviously catagorize black people as a sub class, not really even bothering with unless you're putting them down or using them as a scape goat, and this happens all the time in the book even to janie just because she is black and a woman. these were the two worst things to be at the time in the sense of equal rights. everyone tried to exercise their right to control janie at some point in the book, just like the Jim Crow laws did to blacks. ido believe that some do still stand out today in our community, for instance the one where there shall be no interracial marriages, b/c that is still frowned upon today. i believe that it can be argued both ways as to whether or not things have changed since then; but i believe that things are just better hidden but just as bad as they were back then. the copy of my text shows what i assume is janie in a serious look whereas the picture above depicts a black person as something along the lines of a clown.

While reading the laws, however absurd they may be, some of them are still "unwritten" laws of today. All my life I have lived in a rural community. I have seen first-hand how rural America lives and I know that these laws still exist today in one way or another. The law about inter-racial marriage and a white woman living with a black man or vise-versa is probably the one mandate that is most relavant to today's society. I believe this is so because just like Mrs. Turner, people of today want to see the social caste system still in place based on race and ethnicity. "Ah hates tuh see folks lak me and you mixed up wid 'em. Us gotta class off." - Miss Turner to Janie. Because of activists and groups pushing for equality, America does not recognize the Jim Crow laws any longer, but society is still holding on to the past.

The cartoon of the black man is a way for the white man to put more distance between himself and the African American. He is portrayed as happy, goofy, free and black-as-night. How can a race portrayed this way have dignity and respect? I believe he is made to wear a smile because the white man may feel some shame for persecuting the blacks.

As disgusting as it is, these laws are very applicable to our text. At first I had a hard time drawing a connection, and then I realized why. Because this book was written from an African American perspective and told of communities prevalently composed of African American people, we lost sight a little bit about the white attitudes toward them. However, the few glimpses we were afforded were enough to make me cringe. As a whole, these laws mean to show that when these laws were posted, whites felt that blacks were worthless. I mean, to let it get to the point where you can't even participate in recreation within three blocks of black people...that is plain ridiculous. When white men let it get to the point where their fun and their lifestyle was limited by the proximity to blacks, it should have been a red flag. Sadly, as we see in the text, it wasn't. Think about the chapter where Tea Cake is forced to dig graves for the hurricane victims. The first blatant tie was when on page 169 Tea Cake is approached by 2 soldiers and they say, "Hello there, Jim. We've been looking for you." Because he was black, he was equated with a shabby rural man who was a character in shows. It goes then to talk about how they would not even give black men coffins. Sadly, although not legally, this stuff still exists today. People frown apon interracial marriages and I have not seen a black president in my time. Those unspoken thoughts are now illegal, but they still play a role in the lifestyle of African Americans. It is almost as if nothing has changed. White people think they are being accepting and generous when not legally discriminating, but one look inside their head might show us otherwise.

I have never read something so vile to my sight. Personally for me, I am very open minded, hate racisim and feel very strongly about equality. It's remarkable to see what really went on "back in the day", and to better understand how these people truely felt. In a way they relate to our text. I feel that our book may have been placed years after these Jim Crow laws. If the intermarriage laws were issued as stated above, then why was Janie allowed to marry a black man?

I'm going to play devils advocate to my own question and say, when Janie left her first husband she didn't have to file for a divorce and was able to go from marriage to marriage...so maybe the state she was in didn't see her marriage as vaild. Just throwing that out there. You can catch it if you want.

Some of these mandates are in effect today. They seem to be most effecting gay, bisexual or lesbian individuals. Most significantly in the intermarriage section. A lot of heterosexual people are not accepting of their chosen life style would, if they could, put into effect almost all of the listed mandates.

I think that since Hurston's time, hate towards the black race has subsided and we are more accepting. However, that doesn't mean that racism isn't prevelant. In fact it's still rediculous, but atleast we don't have "strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees".     

As for the front cover and the Jim Crow picture...I can't quite make out what he's doing. He looks happy, but yet his clothes are raggy and his toes hang out of his shoes. It was said below that he was dacing and comply to whatever he was being told to do. For our text, the lady on the front (who I imagine is used to resemble Janie), has her head cocked like she's trying to put her situation out of her mind. It's like she cant take anymore and refuses to let anything else push her.   

Pretty much all of these so called "laws" blow.  They literally separate the whites and blacks and throw that whole equality thing straight out the window.  They also mostly seem to exclusively target blacks so I'm sure it's in reaction to the Civil War and the slaves being free; except for Wyoming's intermarriage law, which took the extra initiative and added a few other non-white races (kudos to those idiots, by the way).  I'd like to think that a good amount of these mandates have changed thanks to civil rights and all that but I honestly don't really know since I've never spent any large amounts of time in these states.  I can tell you that living as a minority in Indiana I've yet to ever have any feelings of racism or prejudice from someone else.  I'm sure it helps that my skin color isn't too dark either, but I've honestly felt like I've been treated equally around here.  Now, the few times in my life that I've gone down to Tennessee or Kentucky I have had the natives look at me like I was pretty much a fish out of water or something similar.  And even a few other times some of the stares were clearly not friendly.  Tying all this to Hurston's text...umm, I don't really know...

In comparing the cover of Hurston's text to the Jim Crow caricature, the Jim Crow pic is your basic, crappy caricature that was probably drawn to ruin the image of blacks, while the cover of Hurston's text shows a normal looking black woman drawn perfectly well and acting as a complete contrast to the caricature by not just design but also how emotional the woman looks.   I'm not too familiar with the different kinds of visual rhetoric that's out there so I'll just do everyone a favor and finish this long winded post now.

These Jim Crow laws do apply to the text we are reading. For one, the law that states white people can not marry people of Negro decent to the fourth generation plays directly into this text. Although Janie never does marry a white man and she never tries, that doesn't mean the law wasnt present at the time. A big part of this book is based around marriage and the thought of love, and those two things factor into this law. Some of these laws are over the top, like the amateur baseball league law. Things have changed greatly since Hurston's time and that is obvious. None of these laws still apply and they never will again. The cover of the book that we own is much different than the picture shown above for many reasons. Our book has a dark complexion to it in the first place and the woman on the front (Janie) has a look of sadness; not happiness like the picture above.

Some of the mandates listed are almost ridiculous in their nature (for example, the one about baseball fields) but at the time these laws were in effect, white people felt that they had to do something to be in control of black people.  In the book, you really don't see much that shows the Jim Crow laws because for a good part of the book Janie lives in an all black community anyway, and there is no need for the Jim Crow laws there.  However, when Janie gets the white doctor for Tea Cake, it is evident that it is not common, and that the only reason that doctor comes is because he is just like one of them.  ("The white doctor who had been around so long that he was part of the muck.  Who told the workmen stories with brawny sweaty words in them."  p. 175)  Why shouldn't he come?  He was one of them.  You can also see a very small incidence of the Jim Crow laws being applied when they are in the courtroom and the blacks have to be upstairs in the balcony "packed tight like a case of celery", keeping them segregated from the white people in the courtroom.  Other than that, there are not many times when you see the Jim Crow laws in the text.

Today I can see similar mandates in the laws that we have made against gay marriages.  Because these people are different and we are scared of them, we have decided that they shouldn't be allowed to marry and be just like "normal" heterosexual couples.  It would bring shame on the idea of what marriage is supposed to be, so we have developed our own set of mandates to oppress those we are afraid of.  So in essence, things really haven't changed all that much since Hurston's time.  Yes, black people have more rights, but we have still found a minority group to "pick on" in order to make ourselves feel more important. 

As for the pictures, on the front of our novel there is a beautiful woman who appears to be heavy laden.  She looks somewhat at peace, but she also looks like she has had a rough life, while maintaining all that she has previously stood for.  The picture on this website, however, shows a man who has lost all of his dignity, and who is being ridiculed by all who see his picture.  His clothes are threadbare, and he is dancing to entertain whoever is telling him to.  It is sad how this man is depicted.  The visual rhetoric that is being used is pathos because in both pictures it is appealing to the emotions of the viewer to gain a reaction.  I'm sure you can find many other examples of this type of rhetoric online... all you'd have to do is search for pictures of slaves and you'd probably get an emotional reaction, because human suffering tugs on most hearts. 

There's obviously not any laws still out there like the Jim Crow laws because it'd be illegal, but there are definitely still people out there that act as if they still exist.  For instance, a lot of people have trouble accepting the fact that whites and blacks marry and have trouble.  My feelings about that are that people need to get over it.  If people keep judging like that, there will never be equality.  But there's definitely still people out there who act like segregation and these laws still exist.  Just like a few years ago in Mississippi, there were a bunch of people who didn't want to change their state flag.  Whether they said it was for history or not, those people are clearly still hold judgments, otherwise it wouldn't be such a big deal. I think there are also unwritten laws geared towards people who aren't black in a sense. For example, white people can't rap, play basketball, or act a certain ways as blacks might, but i think this is due more towards the blacks having to split apart from whites because of previous discriminations.

My copy of the book is a picture of Janie and she looks sad or peaceful, i'm not sure.  If she is sad, it might be because of how hard her life is but in the same respect, she could be peaceful because of the way her life was.  It took her a while to find out who she was and everything but once she did, she was happy and peaceful with the outcome. In the book, there's some visual rhetoric but honestly, it's not something I probably would've picked up on if we hadn't talked about it in class.  But there's the dog on the cow and John on the mule references.  The ship and horizon symbolism used on the first page and the last page. But when i read, i don't really look for those kind of things so unless we go in a dissect the book, i don't really catch it.