The Jim Crow laws were a sophisticated, innovative way to suppress the African-Americans upward mobility. Therefore, they provided the legal basis for white supremacy. This white supremacy was also the result of the fear, jealousy and hatred toward anyone that was not white. Originating in the North, the segregation of the races was already the normal state of affairs by the 1850s. On the other hand, due to slavery, the South did not experience this type of segregation. Furthermore, slavery had a symbiotic relationship with both races in the Southern states. As a result, the black and white races were very much intertwined with each other. Therefore, it was not until after the reconstruction era when the Republican Party had lost interest in the South did the Jim Crow laws first appear. The first Southern states to adopt these laws were Mississippi, Florida and Texas. These states were reacting to the wandering freemen that were displaced after the Civil War. The freemen would board railroad cars with white passengers and this interaction was not social acceptable. Therefore, these states enacted laws that separated the passenger cars on the basis of skin tone and color. After the segregation of the railroads, the South continued its course of action by segregating schools, churches, public buildings and restaurants. Consequently, this segregation only supported and escalated the theory of white supremacy. Thus, white supremacy was at its greatest peak in Mississippi during the early twentieth century. Due to the stringent Jim Crow laws, over 3500 blacks were put to death by lynching and midnight torching. It was not until the mid 1950s, when the federal government by force integrated the school systems in the South. As a result, this was the beginning of the end to Jim Crow.
This historiography focuses on three different interpretations of the Jim Crow Laws. The first author, Vann C. Woodward outlines a general description of the segregation laws and the effects of them in the United States. The second author, Neil R. McMillen analyzes how Mississippi became the biggest supporter and enforcer of the Jim Crow Laws. The last author, Mark R. Schneider examines how the upper-class African-American Bostonians fought to change the Jim Crow laws.
Vann Woodward was one of the first pioneers in the field of analyzing the effects of Jim Crow. Woodward’s book The Strange Career of Jim Crow deals only with the challenges of segregation. Therefore, he does not elaborate on the events of abuse and mistreatment of African-Americans. Woodward’s book was analyzed by desegregated black and white students from the University of Virginia during the 1960s. Furthermore, Woodward’s students accepted his interpretations of segregation with tolerance and open-mindedness. Woodward wants to clear up inadequate historical information regarding segregation due to the development of Jim Crowism. In addition, Woodward writes,
“It is my hope in these pages to turn a few beams of light into the twilight zone and if possible to light up a few of its corners. I also make the attempt to relate the origins and development of Jim Crowism to the bewilderingly rapid changes that have occurred in race relations during the past few years.”
Due to the changing times of the civil rights movement, Woodward can take advantage of the new information. As a result, this new information comes from people that would have not otherwise revealed it. The second reason for Woodward revised edition is to add the historical developments that had not happen at that time of the first printing. These events include the desegregation of the schools and public buildings. The last reason Woodward revised his book is to bring in the scholarly accounts from other historians in the intervening years.
Woodward’s first point is that Anglo-Americans in the South already believed that they were the superior and that African-Americans were inferior. Consequently, this belief justified the African-American’s subordination to the Whites. This was a pro-slavery belief and it originated in the seventeenth century during the height of the slave trade. Therefore, both races knew where they stood in the South and they lived a harmonic relationship. Moreover, the whites needed the slaves for house servants and agricultural uses and the blacks were reliant on the whites for food, housing and medical needs. Thus, Woodward concludes that this understanding is why segregation in the South was only an issue after the Civil War.
Another point, Woodward conveys in his book is that the segregation of the two races had no bearing on the Old South. Therefore, the intermingling of blacks and whites continued well after the reconstruction. To substantiate these claims, Woodward uses articles from northern news paper reporters. However, these reporters were not very educated in the social frame work of the South. As a result, the reporters claimed that blacks and whites shared the same quarters in public places. This was very uncommon in the North because of the established black code laws that had been in place since the early 1800s. Woodward implies that in the Southern states, the segregation of the railroad cars was the catalyst of white supremacy and further segregation policies. On the other hand, the failed Civil Rights bill of 1875 and the retreat of the Republican Party could have also perpetuated the South’s segregation laws. Furthermore, Woodward fails to elaborate on these subjects and he only mentions them in a few paragraphs in chapter two.
The most interesting chapter in the book is The Man on the Hill. Woodward makes a comparison of a white man being stranded on a cliff. Consequently, this white man cannot go up the hill without having to compete with blacks and he cannot go down the hill without having to compete with blacks. Furthermore, the white man’s life is stranded in the presents of an inferior race. Thus, Woodward is trying to point out how white extremists felt in the South and how the Klu Klux Klan (K.K.K.) could justify their horrendous acts of lynching and torching of African-Americans.
Another comparison was the written accounts of a traveler from Georgia that moved to South Africa in the late nineteenth century. Woodward uses the traveler’s observations to compare the problems of the Old South to South Africa. The traveler observed the harsh treatment and the strict segregation laws that inflected South Africa. The traveler wrote, if the black man cannot stand up to the whites in his own country, how could the black man ever have equal rights in the Old South? Woodward uses these comparisons to put a passive human touch on a very hot topic during the 1950s. He tends to avoid using aggression or upsetting facts that may disturb his audience. Moreover, Woodward tries to bring his opinions against racism and segregation into a more subjective manor. For this reason, his book was the catalyst that inspired may authors to write more in-depth books on the subject of Jim Crow.
Woodward was the first author to analyze the effects of Jim Crow. His main thesis dealt only with the history of segregation. One of Woodward’s stronger points was that the Southern states had no reason for segregation during the slave years because of the intimacy that both races shared. Furthermore, it was only after the Civil War that the South adopted the ideas of segregation from the Northern states. Another point, Woodward addressed for the cause of segregation and the enactment of the Jim Crow Laws were the South’s fear, jealousy and hatred toward the Afro-American. Segregation started with railroad passenger cars and then escalated to schools, restaurants, movie theaters and churches. Woodward’s arguments are sometimes vague and lack support. Moreover, if he would have researched further into the facts about the effects of Jim Crow on the African-American, his book would have been too controversial for its time.
The second author is Neil R. McMillen. He examines the extreme segregation laws, the raciest mentality and the brutality of discrimination that the African-American in Mississippi dealt with during the Jim Crow era. McMillen’s book, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow is a micro-historical account of these events. His thesis is clearly stated in the preface:
Believing as I do that the oppressed cannot be studied in isolation from the oppressor. I have examined in detail the structure and nature of white supremacy. Yet it has been my persistent wish to keep the Afro-Mississippi at the center of this work.
Unlike Woodward, McMillen confronts the darker side of the Jim Crow. Therefore, he examines all of the ugly and brutal images of the atrocities that the white extremist and the K.K.K. inflected on the Afro-Mississippian. McMillen is able to write his book in this manor because of the callous change in people’s attitude towards criminal violence.
The first point, McMillen wants his audience to read are the unjust laws that were created in Mississippi during the 1890s. As a result, these laws were always in favor of the white population and not the Afro-Mississippian. As an example, he uses Plessly v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court ruled, separate but equal. This allowed Mississippi to treat its African-Americans as second class citizens and opened the door to the discriminatory Jim Crow laws. Therefore, some examples of laws that engaged in the color-line were vagrancy and curfew ordinances. Moreover, these laws were directed primarily to the poor African-American. As a result, the very design of these ordinances was to prosecute and jail Afro-Mississippians who were homeless or violated segregation laws. McMillen is staging the events that will unfold in later chapters. In addition, his objective is to show how white-supremacists could justify their actions of discrimination.
McMillen is greatly influenced by Woodward’s work on the Jim Crow Laws. He writes, “The South’s “capitulation to racism” in the quarter century after 1890 has been examined by others, most elegantly by C. Vann Woodward, and needs little further analysis here.” There are many similarities between the two authors. One similarity is the books are both written in the same order of events. Furthermore, they do not follow a chronological timeline but instead address the individual problems of racism by chapter. Only within the chapters is there a timeline. Another similarity McMillen and Woodward share are the subjects within the chapters. These subjects deal with limited freedom, politics, education and land. As a result, McMillen’s book almost absorbs Woodward’s book in the first four chapters.
McMillen is at times more in-depth than Woodward. McMillen shows unjust acts that the white supremacists from Mississippi had inflected on the Afro-Mississippians. Moreover, McMillen gives countless examples of trials that were botched because of the lack of evidence, coerced witnesses and forced confessions. More than not, these trials would end in the result of the Afro-Mississippians being lynched or burned at the stake. Therefore, McMillen’s motives are to stir emotions with the readers. Also, he wants the readers to sympathize and think about how the legal system in Mississippi suppressed the black population. This suppression leads readers into his next chapter on the Black Diaspora of the Afro-Mississippians.
The last chapters deal with the Black Diaspora during the first part of the twentieth century. During this time, the Afro-Mississippians left Mississippi for the northern cities. These Northern cities offered African-Americans a better way of life. The reality, however, was poor living conditions and low paying jobs. In addition, those who moved north were competing against the new emigrants from Eastern Europe. This made the lives of African-Americans more difficult. As a result, some African American froze to death and others moved back to Mississippi. On the other hand, Mississippi fell into a recession because of the lack of black labor. The white supremacists helped drive the blacks out of the state by fear and intimidation but they soon realized that they could not live with out them. Otherwise, the point McMillen’s is trying to make is human capital. Human capital is time, money and skills that people invest in others. Furthermore, this investment is to insure an economically stable environment. McMillen conveys to the reader, that the white Mississippian hated blacks and wanted them removed from their state. Consequently, this came with an economic price when the crops began to fail because of a weak labor force.
Unlike Woodward, McMillen could dig deeper into the subject of Jim Crow due to the changing political climate of the United States. His book was published in the mid 1990s. By this time, segregation was almost unheard of. With the civil rights movement and the passing of the hate crime bills in the United States left our country’s minority groups to flourish. As a result, these events drove the K.K.K. and other white supremacist groups underground. Furthermore, they no longer have legal grounds for their hate propaganda; as a result, people are more willing to talk about the events that terrified the Southern state’s Afro-Americans. Secondly, the media could have been part of this change also. The programming of sitcoms and commercials became multi-racial; therefore, this could have set the standards for the ideal American society. No longer are there shows with all white actors but shows with multi racial actors in more believable settings. Third, by the mid 1990s, other minority groups were making their voices for equal rights known. As a result, the movement of the gays and lesbians was starting to receive more political and media attention. Therefore, this made the media more liberal and the American’s view more acceptant of minorities. Last, another reason that McMillen could investigate the Jim Crow law in greater detail is the availability of information. By the 1990s, the use of the internet and home computers helped in the research and development of his book. Furthermore, McMillen had more access to information and had a more open and tolerant society than Woodward.
Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow is a historical account of the Jim Crow laws in the state of Mississippi. Mississippi’s Jim Crow laws were the most stringent of all the Southern states. Consequently, thousands of African-Americans moved or died because of the brutal enforcement of these laws. One point, McMillen tries to express is that the laws in Mississippi were color blind; however, they almost always favored the white population. Therefore, his intentions are to focus on the African American’s social life such as employment, marriage, legal rights and criminal justice. The last part of the book justifies the inhumane acts that were committed by the White-Mississippian. Moreover, he uses examples of the lynching and midnight torching to move the reader into a sympathetic state of mind. Dark Journey is a very in-depth analysis of the racial problems that plagued the people of Mississippi. It is at times, a very graphic and disturbing realization of how far discrimination can escalate.
Another author who provides a different prospective on the Jim Crow laws in the post- reconstruction era is Mark R. Schneider. Schneider’s book Boston Confronts Jim Crow is a local historical account of the political arena in Boston. Furthermore, Schneider provides historical accounts of the actors that had major parts in the development of political movements between the years of 1890 and 1920. He organizes his chapters not in chronological time but in importance to the political activists and the political events during the post-reconstruction era. In addition, Schneider focuses on the failed federal elections bill of 1890, the development of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people and the legal cases of Holmes, Lewis and Storey. Furthermore, the actors he elaborates on are: Booker T. Washington and the black upper class; Lucy Stone a prominent black feminist; William Monroe Trotter a Baptist minister, and John O’Railly an Irish activist. Even in the height of segregation and discrimination, Schneider’s objective is to reveal how these events and the roles of the actors kept Boston’s abolitionist legacy alive.
Schneider reveals how African-American activists tried to change the nation’s political problems on discrimination, segregation and racism. Therefore, Schneider’s main thesis explains the roles African-American political activists had during the years of 1890-1920. According to Schneider, “The focus is on the political and intellectual lives of activists as they looked outward at the race relations of the nation as a whole, and how they relied upon their sense of the past.” Schneider does not focus on the brutality of discrimination in the South like McMillen does in the book Dark Journey. Unlike Woodward, he does not go into any great depth on the social effects of segregation. Although, Schneider does make references to these problems, he stays more focused on the political movements in Boston.
One of the major point Schneider stresses is to understand why the small community of activists in Boston kept the antislavery protests alive even in the height of Jim Crowism. He also wants to examine the activist’s heritage and the environment they came from. The first person Schneider focuses on is Booker T. Washington, a native born Bostonian who was the founder of the Tuskegee Institute. With this prestigious accomplishment, he became a prominent leader in Boston’s black community. Washington had many supporters in Boston’s political community; however, he was more interested in his career as the head of the Tuskegee Institute. The black community supported him overwhelmingly but did not look fondly on his position of playing down the civil and political rights of African-Americans. Furthermore, he started many magazines that were targeted for the black community and he was the primary financer of other magazines. Some of these magazines were the Alexander’s Magazine and the Colored American.Washington was also the founder of the Nation Negro Business League. Thus, the NNBL’s ideological goal was, “that races would rise in accordance with the entrepreneurial spirit of the age.” Schneider’s objective for including Washington is to demonstrate how the educated middle class African-American dealt with discrimination and segregation. According to Schneider, Washington was adamantly opposed to Jim Crowism. However, Washington realized that as a black man during this time, he must down play the radical opposition towards Jim Crowism. This was for his survival and for the survival of the African-American.
Schneider also examines the life of Washington’s nemesis, William Trotter. Trotter was a Black Baptist Preacher that taught in Boston. Trotter was born in Ohio and went to college at Harvard. Furthermore, after college he settled in Boston and married. Trotter was influenced by his father, Harvard and certain militant groups from the upper class Bostonians to become a civil rights activist. Therefore, his most memorial moment in history was when he challenged Washington in a meeting about the Boston’s race riots. As a result, this meeting catapulted Trotter into the position of being one of Boston’s most influential leaders in the African-American community. In addition, Schneider shows countless examples of the friction between Washington and Trotter. Thus, Schneider portrays Trotter as a radical and out-spoken activist; on the other hand, Schneider plays down Washington as cunning and calculating business man. Therefore, Schneider’s motives are to show the how the African-American’s political agendas were at time competitively disenfranchised.
Another activist that Schneider examines is Lucy Stone. Stone was the primary leader of the New England suffragists and held that position until her death in 1893. Stone was born on a farm in Massachusetts in 1818. She attended school against her father’s wishes. Her main objective was to learn how to read the bible. In doing this, she wanted to know if God had made gender differences. After grade school, she enrolled at Oberlin College and was the first New England African-American woman to receive college degree. Furthermore, Stone taught college for a few years and then became an activist. She married late in life because of her dedication to suffrage and women’s rights. Schneider’s objective is to give credit to women that also suffered from the Anglo-American’s oppression. In addition, Schneider wants his readers to understand the role that Stone played in the struggle for civil rights and her fight against other women that opposed her. Most of all, Schneider points out that her fight was not in-vain. Moreover, her campaign began in the Civil War, and her legacy lived long after her death. Eventually, her ideas evolved into the ground work for the women’s right to vote and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The only white activist that Schneider examines is John Boyle O’Reilly. In the 1700s, O’Reilly fought against England’s oppression of the Irish Catholics. Therefore, this fight was instilled in the Irish immigrants that moved to Boston. Thus, some Irish looked at the oppression of the African-American and it reminded them of what the English government did to Ireland. As a result, the Irish immigrants and the African-Americans forged a bond in the late 1800s. This bond was shortly lived due to the competition for jobs and housing. The Irish were more competitive than Afro-Americans and the Irish had more opportunities to secure jobs in law enforcement and other city services. Therefore, the point Schneider is tiring to make is the Irish could assimilate faster because of their skin color. Also, the Irish were more educated then their counterpart. Thus, leave the African-American in despair again.
Unlike Woodward and McMillen, Schneider analyzes the birth of one of the most influential minority groups in United Sates’ History. The Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People or (NAACP) was created in 1909 due to the race riots of Springfield, Illinois. The people that created this group were white liberalists that refused to think that African-Americans were inferior to whites. One of the more famous supporters of this new cause was William Lloyd Garrison the son of the railroad tycoon. Some of the objectives this group wanted to accomplish were equal opportunities for African-Americans, educating the public for the purpose of wining legal and legislative battles and to maintain a biracial organization that would fight for civil rights. Schneider indicates that the NAACP was not accepted by Booker T. Washington or William Trotter because they both wanted to support an all black organization. The newly formed organization grew to over 100,000 members within ten years. Schneider believes this was caused by the Black Diaspora and the out break of World War One. Therefore, Schneider’s reason for bring the NAACP into his book was to give light to an era of great despair for the African-American.
Schneider closes his book on a stark reminder of what these activists and political groups were fighting for. His last chapter, “Life Experience and the Law” deals with the cases of Holmes, Lewis and Story. Schneider writes, “All three lawyers had to confront Boston’s antislavery heritage, and test its relevance against the evolving new racial codes of the South.” Schneider stress, that Plessy v. Ferguson was the catalyst for segregation in Louisiana and most Southern states. Furthermore, he implies that in the Northern states this decision went unnoticed. For the most part, the North did not care.
Home is the one of the attorneys that Schneider investigates. Schneider reveals that Home had no involvement in the legal proceedings for or against African-Americans, until he was elected to the Supreme Court in 1902. One of Home’s first cases dealt with a convicted back man who was repealing his case to the Supreme Court. During the repeal process, a mob of white supremacists convinced the sheriff to let the man loose from jail, after hunting him down, they publicly lynched him. Judge Home’s public statement was “Lynching was anarchy, and it flew directly in the face of the rule of law.” Therefore, the Supreme Court acted upon this by charging the sheriff with contempt of court and restitution was a ninety-day prison term. In the end, Judge Home felt that the prison term should have been at least a year. Schneider uses these examples to show how that legal systems in the United States were at times corrupt and inconsistent. Consequently, Schneider’s intentions are to end his book with horrible reminders of how far racial segregation and discrimination could escalate.
In closing, Schneider’s book focuses on the political activists and the groups they affiliated with. Their objectives were to fight against the effects of Jim Crowism. He uses the gruesome accounts of lynching and torching to bring closure to his book. Schneider’s final chapter gives the reader a bleak picture of the plight that the African-American must endure until the civil rights movement. On the other hand, McMillen’s book focuses on the sheer brutality of the Jim Crow laws in the state of Mississippi. Furthermore, he also ends his book with a bleak future for African-Americans. Schneider and McMillen used the same references when they refer to the unjust cases of lynching. Also, both Schneider’s and McMillen’s books are far more detailed than Woodward’s. However, Woodward was the first historical author to approach the subject of Jim Crowism. Moreover, Woodward could not approach the subject with as much detail due to the controversy for that time. McMillen’s book uses a substantial amount of information from Woodward. Therefore, Woodward was the motivation for McMillen’s book and McMillan sites his work several times. Schneider also credits Woodward but his book goes another direction.
Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 13.
Annotated Bibliography: Jim Crow Era
McMillen Neil. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. Illinois: University of Illinois, 1989, 6-7. McMillen is a professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi. His primary and secondary sources are books, newspaper articles, periodicals and the U.S. censes bureau. McMillen writes to the general public about the black-white relationships and the circumstances of them. He focuses primarily on Africa-Americans and the effects of the Jim Crow laws in Mississippi. McMillen places himself in the life of a black person from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The book ends with a strong understanding of the oppression that Afro-Americans have endured. The book stops short of World War Two on the dawn of the civil rights movement.
Schneider Mark. Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890-1920. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997, 11-15. Mark Schneider is a historian that explains the relationship between Boston and its African-American population. His primary audience is the historian and the general public. He focuses on the political and intellectual lives as they face the race issues of the United States in the late nineteenth century. Schneider explains the evolution of the NAACP and its affiliations to the Boston Abolitionists. He uses traditional historical sources, books, newspapers, legislative and judicial transcripts. Due to the fourteenth amendment being upheld, Schneider ends the book with carnage and blood shed. This leaves the reader with a grim outlook to the South’s racial problems of segregation and discrimination.
Woodward Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, 1-3. Woodward is a historian that wants to explain the changes from slavery to segregation to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The main audience was desegregated students at the University of Virginia and his book was accepted with tolerance and open-mindedness. The primary sources are books and manuscripts from the Old South. Woodward writes a second revised edition with the support of other historians. His biases are not very prevalent in his argument because he only states the obvious historical events. Even though, Woodward is revered as strong person of interest in the construction of the book Jumpin' Jim Crow.
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