Education Under Jim Crow

Arlington, like all of Virginia—and the entire South—was a segregated society in the first half of the 20th century. A complex set of laws governed race relations, limiting the access of Black citizens to a variety of social services and businesses.

Together these laws were known as “Jim Crow” laws, a term that can be traced to a song popularized by the blackface entertainer Thomas D. Rice in the 1830s. After the end of Reconstruction, when Federal enforcement of racial equality ended in the South, Southern states began to establish new laws to keep the races separate.