Social and Cultural: In the Jim Crow Era (1877-1960s) there were laws that discriminated against black people and made it hard for them to live freely.

Buses.All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races (Alabama).

Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons (Georgia).

Education. The schools for white children and the schools for negro shall be conducted separately (Florida).

Economic: During the Jim Crow Era, it was harder for black people to get good jobs or get paid fairly, so this made it hard for people to support their families and themselves.

The persistent inequality of educational opportunities, they found, singlehandedly cut earnings of black Southern workers by as much as 50 percent.

Before 1900 whites and African Americans frequently worked side by side in trade as well as in unskilled positions. During this time the South was becoming more industrialized, however, and factory owners were complicit in extending "Jim Crow" into the workplace.

Nationwide, unemployment among black workers is at 16.2 percent, almost double the 9.1 percent for the rest of the population and twice the 8 percent rate for whites.Political

Political: During the Jim Crow era, the court system was racially biased towards whites, which helped them get away with serious crimes like lynching. Blacks were also denied the right to vote by grandfather clause, poll taxes, and literacy tests.

Emmett Louis Till was an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Later the men who lynched him were put on trial and declared innocent after admitting to the murder.

Blacks were denied the right to vote by grandfather clauses (laws that restricted the right to vote to people whose ancestors had voted before the Civil War), poll taxes (fees charged to poor blacks), white primaries (only Democrats could vote, only whites could be Democrats), and literacy tests ("Name all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout America's history").

The criminal justice system was created in such a way to disadvantage, subdue, and control certain minority groups, namely African Americans. Trends in every facet of criminal justice research concerning police, courts and corrections, provide evidence that the criminal justice system is doing exactly what it was designed to do - marginalize and control minority populations. Although African Americans comprise 13% of the U.S. population, they account for 29% of arrests, 38% of prisoners in state and federal facilities, 42% of death penalty cases, and 37% of executions (Snell, 2011).