scholarly journals Law, Society, Identity, and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875–1905

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (02) ◽  
pp. 377-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Mack
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
De Jure Segregation ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The American South ◽  
Southern Society ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Jim Crow South ◽  
Modern Era

This article reexamines the well-known debate over the origins of de jure segregation in the American South, which began in 1955 with the publication of C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Arguing that the debate over Woodward's thesis implicates familar but outmoded ways of looking at sociolegal change and Southern society, the article proposes a reorientation of this debate using theoretical perspectives taken from recent work by legal historians, critical race theorists, and historians of race, class, and gender. This article examines the advent of railroad segregation in Tennessee (the state that enacted the nation's first railroad segregation statute) in order to sketch out these themes, arguing that de jure segregation was brought about by a dialectic between legal, social, and identity-based phenomena. This dialectic did not die out with the coming of de jure segregation; rather it continued into the modern era.

scholarly journals The Integration of Schools in Lee County, Florida

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Cutler Valdivia
Keyword(s):  
Historically Black ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black History ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
De Jure Segregation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
The City

Fort Myers, Florida, is one of the fastest growing parts of the United States yet historians have paid little attention to the area. This is especially true of the historiography surrounding Dunbar-Heights, the historically Black sections of the city. Despite having one of the largest Black communities between Tampa and Miami, there is scant information on how de jure segregation operated and ended in Southwest Florida. The research provided here fills this historiographical gap using oral histories that give us a glimpse into Florida’s not so distant past. This methodology enables the Dunbar Community to tell a new Black history of Fort Myers. Collectively the speakers presented in this piece help explain how Jim Crow influenced the integration of schools into the 1970s. This history of Fort Myers reminds Floridians of how connected SWFL was with the rest of the state and how deeply intertwined Florida was with the American South.

An Archaeology of a Chinese Laundryman in the Jim Crow South

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-162
Author(s):  
D. Ryan Gray
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
The American South ◽  
Plantation Labor ◽  
Jim Crow South

The experiences of Chinese diasporic communities in the American South has been little studied compared to those in the West, despite the importance of Chinese immigration in discussions of post-Emancipation plantation labor. This chapter explores the making of a Chinese American identity in Jim Crow–era New Orleans through the archaeology of a Chinese-operated hand laundry, in business at the same location for three decades. Chinese immigrants in the South entered a two-tiered racial hierarchy in which they were officially relegated to a lower status, but the ambiguities of color in an urban setting like New Orleans provided opportunities to use the material markers of ethnicity instrumentally to negotiate a status that was neither white nor black.

Case Study: The Southern Oral History Program

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall ◽  
Kathryn Nasstrom
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
American South ◽  
New Era ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
The American South ◽  
And Gender ◽  
History Department ◽  
The University

A case study of the southern oral history program is the essence of this chapter. From its start in 1973 until 1999, the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) was housed by the history department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), rather than in the library or archives, where so many other oral history programs emerged. The SOHP is now part of UNC's Center for the Study of the American South, but it continues to play an integral role in the department of history. Concentrating on U.S. southern racial, labor, and gender issues, the program offers oral history courses and uses interviews to produce works of scholarship, such as the prize-winning book Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. The folks at the Institute for Southern Studies tried to combine activism with analysis, trying to figure out how to take the spirit of the movement into a new era.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Diane Miller Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
American South ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The American South ◽  
And Gender

Lays out blueprint for the book by outlining methodological approaches, evidence base, and historiographical interventions (including ‘dark turn’ in Civil War scholarship) of a study on suicide and suffering during and after the Civil War in the American South. Identifies evidentiary challenges including poor record keeping, attempts to hide suicides, elusiveness of cause or motivation, and gender bias in lethal suicides. Case studies emphasize experiences of individuals, transcending well-trodden theological and cultural discourse about suicide. Examines impact of war traumas like PTSD on soldiers and veterans, and on their wives and families. Racialized ideas about suicide and depression shaped southerners’ understanding of suffering, held by whites to be a marker of civilized peoples.

scholarly journals Jim Crow Downunder? African American Encounters with White Australia, 1942––1945

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Brawley ◽  
Chris Dixon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
White Americans ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The American South ◽  
The U.S

Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans——and American culture——around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans did encounter racism and discrimination——practices often encouraged by the white Americans who were also stationed in Australia during the war——there is compelling evidence that their experiences were not always negative. Indeed, for many black Americans, Australians' apparent open-mindedness and racial views of white Britons and others with whom African Americans came into contact during the war. Making use of U.S. Army censors' reports and paying attention to black Americans' views of their experiences in Australia, this article not only casts light on an aspect of American-Australian relations that has hitherto recieved scant scholarly attention and reveals something about the African American experience, but also offers insights into race relations within the U.S. armed forces.

Productivity and Income Distribution in the Post-Bellum South

1974 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 422-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen DeCanio
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
American South ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Agricultural Labor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
Southern Society ◽  
Basic Characteristics

Racial discord, political violence, and agrarian unrest are integral to the history of the American South from the close of the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The economy of the region had undergone traumatic changes during the war, not the least of which were the destruction of large amounts of physical capital and the transition of the black agricultural labor force from slavery to freedom. The disruption of production during the war was followed by attempts to reorganize agriculture through a variety of institutional arrangements, including wage labor, cash renting, and widespread use of the sharecropping form of land tenure. Many of the legal and cultural manifestations of the racial prejudice which has long outlived chattel slavery made their appearance during these years. Both contemporary observers and modern historians have recognized possible connections between the economic conditions and the political or institutional developments of the period, yet certain basic characteristics of the post-bellum southern economy have never been adequately determined. Consequently, the influence of economic forces in southern society and political life has remained obscure.

“Just a Bunch of Agitators”: Kneel-Ins and the Desegregation of Southern Churches

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-261
Author(s):  
Joseph Kip Kosek
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Baptist Church ◽  
American Students ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Church

AbstractCivil rights protests at white churches, dubbed “kneel-ins,” laid bare the racial logic that structured Christianity in the American South. Scholars have investigated segregationist religion, but such studies tend to focus on biblical interpretation rather than religious practice. A series of kneel-ins at Atlanta's First Baptist Church, the largest Southern Baptist church in the Southeast, shows how religious activities and religious spaces became sites of intense racial conflict. Beginning in 1960, then more forcefully in 1963, African American students attempted to integrate First Baptist's sanctuary. When they were alternately barred from entering, shown to a basement auditorium, or carried out bodily, their efforts sparked a wide-ranging debate over racial politics and spiritual authenticity, a debate carried on both inside and outside the church. Segregationists tended to avoid a theological defense of Jim Crow, attacking instead the sincerity and comportment of their unwanted visitors. Yet while many church leaders were opposed to open seating, a vibrant student contingent favored it. Meanwhile, mass media—local, national, and international—shaped interpretations of the crisis and possibilities for resolving it. Roy McClain, the congregation's popular minister, attempted to navigate a middle course but faced criticism from all sides. The conflict came to a head when Ashton Jones, a white minister, was arrested, tried, and imprisoned for protesting outside the church. In the wake of the controversy, the members of First Baptist voted to end segregation in the sanctuary. This action brought formal desegregation—but little meaningful integration—to the congregation.

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