1. The term "Jim Crow" originally referred to:

b. A popular burlesque song and theatrical dance number

White actor, singer, and dancer, Thomas D. Rice, wrote and performed "Jim Crow" (sometimes called "Jump Jim Crow" because of the first line of the chorus) in 1829 or 1830. To perform the song, Rice dressed in tattered rags and frolicked comically to impersonate a very low caricature of a black man. His performances became an overnight sensation among white audiences, and he performed all over the country. He then took his act to Britain and France, where it became an even bigger hit.

One dismayed English drama critic in the London Satirist, however, wrote: "Talent is of no country, neither is folly; and were 'Jim Crow' of English creation, we should have assuredly dealt as severely with it as we have now done with the bantling of the new world--perhaps more so, for we would have strangled it in its birth to prevent it begetting any more of its own species to offend the world's eye with their repulsive deformities. The circumstance of its being an exotic, the production of the pestilential marshes of backwood ignorance, has had no effect with us in giving our opinion. There is no concealing the fact, that Jim Crow owes its temporary triumph in this country to one of those lapses of human nature which sometimes occurs, when the senses run riot, and a sort of mental saturnalia takes place." Quoted in "Jim Crowism," Spirit of the Times (New York), February 4, 1837.

2. "Jim Crow cars" were separate railway passenger cars in which blacks were forced to travel, instead of in the passenger cars in which whites took their seats. The term "Jim Crow cars" first came into use:

a. In the mid-1830s, in Massachusetts and Connecticut

Segregated public transportation began in the North before the Civil War. In many parts of the South, a black could not travel at all, unless he or she was accompanying (or accompanied by) a white, or carrying a pass from a white person.

The inconsistencies themselves bred conflict. One Massachusetts newspaper editor wrote, "South of the Potomac, slaves ride inside of stage-coaches with their masters and mistresses—north of the Potomac they must travel on foot, in their own hired vehicles, or in the 'Jim Crow' car. … What a black man is, depends on where he is. He has no nature of his own; that depends upon his location. Moreover the contradictions that appertain to him, produce corresponding contradictions in the white man. … Seriously, very seriously—do not the incongruities, the strange anomalies, in the condition of the coloured race, clearly show there is terrible wrong somewhere? … The confusion of tongues is terrible; the confusion of ideas is worse." From "Incongruities of Slavery," The Friend, March 26, 1842, quoting the [Worcester] Massachusetts Spy.

3. Among the very first deliberate African American challengers to Jim Crow practices in public transportation was:

b. Frederick Douglass, who refused, in 1841, to give up the first-class seat on the Eastern Railroad he took when he boarded the train at Newburyport, MA, and move to the train's Jim Crow car

Douglass may not have been the very first, but he appears to have been one of the first. African Americans in New England, beginning in late 1839, along with white abolitionists, with some successes, deliberately challenged extra-legal but fairly common Jim Crow accommodations on railroads, on stagecoaches, in churches ("Negro pews"), and in schools. The persistence of Jim Crow practices in the North, however, gave Southern slave-holding whites the opportunity to reproach even abolitionist Northern whites for "not treating their free blacks better."

4. After the Civil War, the practice of formally segregating whites and blacks working in Federal Government offices was instituted during the administration of which U.S. President?

c. Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson, who had been born in Virginia, soon after he took office in 1913, began a government-wide segregation of blacks and whites in Federal workplaces, restrooms, and lunchrooms. The policy appears to have been instituted after Wilson's Georgia-born wife Ellen visited the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington and "saw white and negro women working side by side." Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, William McAdoo (also Georgia-born, and soon to be the Wilsons' son-in-law) took the hint. Shortly thereafter, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John Skelton Williams issued an order segregating the races in the Bureau. A Washington-wide order, covering all Government offices, followed, and soon all Federal offices everywhere in the country were covered by the same order.

1. Runyon v. McCrary, 1976: Private schools may not discriminate on the basis of race.

The Court decided that the 1871 Civil Rights Act gave the federal government power to override private as well as state-supported racial discrimination.

2. Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968: Prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools is unconstitutional.

The Court took on the case despite the fact that the state of Arkansas had never attempted to enforce its statute against teaching evolution.

3. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954: Racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

State laws that had set up "separate but equal" schools for black students and white students were overturned, because such schools were "inherently unequal," and so violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

4. Meyer v. Nebraska, 1923: Prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages in grade schools is unconstitutional.

A Nebraska law had prohibited the teaching (before high school) of any subject to any child in any language other than English. The plaintiff was a parochial school teacher who had taught German to one of his students.

5. Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963: Requiring the reading of Bible verses in public school classrooms is unconstitutional.

A Pennsylvania State law had required public schools to open each day with a reading, without comment, of 10 Bible verses.

6. Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, 1925: Parents may send their children to private schools rather than public schools.

The State of Oregon had been on the verge of forcing all children to attend public schools in order to encourage immigrants' assimilation.

7. Engel v. Vitale, 1962: Requiring the recitation in public schools of an official school prayer is unconstitutional.

A Hyde Park, New York, school had opened each school day with a prayer addressed "Almighty God," which the Court held violated the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment (extended to the individual states by the 14th Amendment).

8. United States v. Virginia, 1996: Excluding either gender from any public school is unconstitutional.

The Court ruled that the Virginia Military Institute had not demonstrated a persuasive reason for excluding women, and so violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

9. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972: Parents may refuse to send their children to school after 8th grade if it violates their religious beliefs.

Amish parents had taken their children out of school after 8th grade, for religious reasons, and state authorities had attempted to force them to attend high school.

10. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969: Student protest is protected by 1st Amendment freedom of speech.

The protest in question was students' wearing of black armbands with peace symbols during the Vietnam War.