Segregation & Jim Crow Laws

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

"This was the era of Jim Crow – when black people showed up at a white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even if it meant they might die in the parking lot. Even Hopkins, which did treat black patients, segregated them in colored wards, and had colored-only fountains" (Skloot 15). 

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks we see the Segregational and Jim Crow afflicted state of Virginia in the Early 20th Century. Plagued by social inequalities akin to the very cancer that destroyed Henrietta, segregation in Skloot's discourse is self evident in the Waiting Rooms John Hopkins Hospital. 
Below are listed just a few of the other segregational acts of the time:
 
*Institutionalized Racism:
- Jim Crow: Laws mandated the relinquishment of African American Civil Liberties 
  (1876-1960's)
- Marshall's Supreme Court dictates "separate but equal" in Plessey vs Furgeson
- racial caste system operated southern and border states
- African Americans considered 2nd class citizens


*White Southern Mentalities of the time
- Whites were the Chosen people and blacks were cursed to be slave
- Children's games portrayed blacks as inferior beings
- Sexual relations between Blacks and Whites would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America
- If necessary, violence must be used to keep Blacks at the bottom of the racial hierarchy

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