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According to The New Jim Crow, the racial caste system began before America was even a nation. When the settlers in the colonies began to have a need for cheap and effective labor, Africans were turned into slaves and sold off to white men as property. During this time, whites had to justify what they were doing. They began to claim that blacks were less intelligent and beast-like and that whites were superior. This lead individuals to believe that slavery was good for the slaves, and good for the American people as a whole (Alexander, 26). When the demand for more land for the settlers increased, the urgency to get rid of the Native Americans increased as well. They called them savages and made eliminating them a moral duty, rather than a moral sin (Alexander, 23). .
When the American Revolution ended, the Constitution was drafted. The southern slave owning states made it clear that they did not want the federal government to interfere with their ability to own slaves. Therefore the Constitution was structured to allow the caste system of slavery to not only continue, but also gave the stamp of approval of slavery from the newly formed government (Alexander, 25). This approval provided white slave owners with a lot more power which lead individuals to believe that white supremacy was not only the new belief system but the only system that was right for the American people as a whole. Nearly two and a half centuries after slavery was introduced to the colonists, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that 4 million slaves in America were to be freed. This led the south into an angry frenzy and put the economy in jeopardy. The social status of the blacks was now unknown. White former slave owners still believed that blacks, although free, needed to be controlled. As portrayed by an Alabama farmer, "We have the power to pass stringent police laws to govern the Negroes; this is a blessing- for they must be controlled in some way or white people cannot live among them" (Alexander, 28).
