Jim Crow Was Not Born in America – It Came Home
Jim Crow Was Not Born in America
It Came Home
Same blueprint. Different continent.
L
ong before there were “Whites Only” signs in Mississippi, there were “Europeans Only” benches in Nairobi, Dakar, and Jakarta.
Long before a Black child in Alabama was told he could not drink from the same fountain, an Algerian child was told he could not walk on the same sidewalk as a Frenchman — unless he stepped aside and lowered his eyes.
The laws had different names, but they were written from the same instruction manual.
The European Laboratory of Apartheid
Every empire tested its version:
- France – Code de l’indigénat (1887–1946)
African “subjects” (not citizens) could be jailed without trial, forced into unpaid labour, forbidden to travel at night. - Britain – Native Land Act (South Africa, 1913)
87 % of the land reserved for whites. The model for every “reserve” and “homeland” that followed. - Belgium – Congo’s “native status” laws
Black people needed permits to enter cities after 9 p.m. - Portugal, Netherlands, Germany — all had their own versions.
By the time the American South began writing Jim Crow in the 1880s and 1890s, European lawyers and administrators had already spent decades perfecting the legal machinery of racial control overseas.
They brought the blueprints home.
“The segregation of natives in Africa has been so complete and so successful that we have little to learn from America.”
— South African Minister of Native Affairs, 1925
They even said it out loud.
The Same Tricks, Different Accents
| Over There | Over Here |
|---|---|
| French Algeria – could not sit on “European” benches | Mississippi – could not sit at “White” lunch counters |
| British Kenya – pass laws, curfews for “natives” | Alabama – vagrancy laws, Black curfews |
| Dutch East Indies – forced labour for “natives” | Georgia – convict leasing of Black prisoners |
| Belgian Congo – whip as official punishment | Florida – whipping posts for Black “offenders” |
The laws were written in different languages, but the intention was translated perfectly.
The End of One Empire, the Birth of Another
When African and Asian colonies finally forced the European empires to pack up in the 1950s and 1960s, the legal architects did not repent.
Many simply retired to Lisbon, Paris, Brussels — or moved to Johannesburg and Salisbury, where apartheid and Rhodesian rule kept the old codes alive a little longer.
And in the American South, the same spirit found new soil.
Jim Crow was not an American original.
It was colonialism coming home to roost.
Did You Know?
Nearly 40% of African Americans can trace their ancestry to specific ethnic groups in Nigeria, Cameroon, Benin, Togo, and Gabon—regions that were heavily impacted by the transatlantic slave trade.
"The Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria were particularly impacted, with their cultural influences persisting in African American communities today."
