Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases Between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to Civil Rights, by Melissa Milewski

The introduction explores why the South became known as America’s “most documented” region beginning in the 1940s and into the twenty-first century. It argues that documentarians saw the region as a fertile place to do fieldwork for two main reasons. First, the region possessed unique and seemingly fragile folk cultures in need of preservation before modern influences erased them. Second, the region possessed seemingly endemic problems associated with its racial caste system and agricultural economies that needed documentation, study, and reform. The introduction also provides an overview of how historians and theorists defined “documentary” throughout the twentieth century and how and why some black and white southerners resisted the intrusion of documentarians into their lives. Additionally, it traces the history of documentary fieldwork in the South from the eighteenth through the nineteenth century and demonstrates how the tradition’s dominant themes developed during this time, particularly in the travel writings and sketches of Basil Hall, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jonathan Baxter Harrison and others. Finally, it highlights the distinguishing features of twentieth-century documentary by emphasizing the role of Progressive and New Deal reform impulses, the Folk Revival and Civil Rights Movement, and the development of portable recording technologies.

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Timothy J. Minchin and John A. Salmond . After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965 . (Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century.) Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 2011. Pp. x, 405. $40.00.

The American Historical Review ◽

10.1086/ahr.117.3.886 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 117 (3) ◽

pp. 886-886

Author(s):

Anders Walker

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Civil Rights ◽

White Southerners ◽

Black And White ◽

Black Equality

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Litigating Across the Color Line

10.1093/oso/9780190249182.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Melissa Milewski

Keyword(s):

African Americans ◽

Racial Discrimination ◽

Formal Education ◽

Color Line ◽

White Southerners ◽

Southern States ◽

Government Institutions ◽

Civil Cases ◽

Almost All ◽

Line P

From 1865 to 1950, when the financial futures of their families were on the line, black litigants throughout the South took on white southerners in civil suits. In almost a thousand civil cases across eight southern states, former slaves took their former masters to court, black sharecroppers litigated disputes against white landowners, and African Americans with little formal education brought disputes against wealthy white members of their communities. As black southerners negotiated a legal system with almost all white gatekeepers, they displayed pragmatism and a savvy understanding of how to get whites on their side. They found that certain kinds of cases were much easier to gain whites’ support for than others. In the kinds of civil cases they could litigate in the highest courts of eight states, though, they were surprisingly successful. In a tremendously constrained environment where they were often shut out of other government institutions, seen as racially inferior, and often segregated, African Americans found a way to fight for their rights in one of the only ways they could. This book examines how black southerners adapted and at times made a biased system work for them. At the same time, it considers the limitations of working within a white-dominated system at a time of great racial discrimination and the choices black litigants made to have their cases heard.

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