CLEP US History II

Answer: B - Jim Crow laws, which established racial segregation in the post-Reconstruction South, were not named for an actual person, but were named after a satirical song written in 1832 called “Jump Jim Crow.” The name became synonymous with “Negro” and was thus attached to the laws, but had no real-life counterpart. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955 when he was murdered by two white men for whistling at a white woman. Ruby Bridges was a six-year-old African-American child who participated in an NAACP-led effort to integrate the New Orleans public school system in 1960. In 1962, James Meredith became the first African-American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. And Medgar Evers was an African-American civil rights activist who worked for the NAACP in his home state of Mississippi, where he was murdered by a white man in a racially motivated act in 1963. The experiences of Till, Bridges, Meredith, and Evers inspired activism, as did opposition to Jim Crow laws.