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.

A People’s History of American Prohibition

2021 ◽  
pp. 450-486
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Upton Sinclair ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
Elected Representatives

Chapter 16 examines the predations of the parasitic Gilded Age “liquor trusts”--akin to the big railroad, steel, and financial trusts--including the United States Brewers’ Association and the Liquor Dealers’ Association, which corrupted law enforcement and government representatives. Unlike these trusts, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) could not buy off politicians, but relied on agitation and publicity—ensuring that constituents were fully informed as to their elected representatives’ voting records on temperance. Progressive prohibitionists made common cause with good-governance “muckrakers” like Pussyfoot Johnson and Upton Sinclair. The chapter turns to the wave of state-level prohibitions, beginning with the Oklahoma’s prohibition statehood in 1907, drawing on the long-standing prohibitionism of Native Americans. From there, the “dry wave” swept the American South, where the liquor traffic was more diffused and less organized, and temperance sentiment was strong among both white and black communities.

The Color of the Third Degree

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvan Niedermeier
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The American South ◽  
First Time

Available for the first time in English, The Color of the Third Degree uncovers the still-hidden history of police torture in the Jim Crow South. Based on a wide array of previously neglected archival sources, Silvan Niedermeier argues that as public lynching decreased, less visible practices of racial subjugation and repression became central to southern white supremacy. In an effort to deter unruly white mobs, as well as oppress black communities, white southern law officers violently extorted confessions and testimony from black suspects and defendants in jail cells and police stations to secure speedy convictions. In response, black citizens and the NAACP fought to expose these brutal practices through individual action, local organizing, and litigation. In spite of these efforts, police torture remained a widespread, powerful form of racial control and suppression well into the late twentieth century. The first historical study of police torture in the American South, Niedermeier draws attention to the willing acceptance of violent coercion by prosecutors, judges, and juries, and brings to light the deep historical roots of police violence against African Americans, one of the most urgent and distressing issues of our time.

scholarly journals Collecting locally : Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama in Alabama institutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallory Lapointe Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Walker Evans ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South

Within the United States, the American South can be perceived as its own entity. From the arts to Southern cuisine, the South commands attention with its own history, myths and culture. Within the history of photography, Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama are arguably some of the most culturally significant images taken of the state and its residents. This thesis investigates how photographs of Alabama are collected in the same locality. By examining the collecting practices of four Alabama institutions in regards to photographs in general, and Walker Evans specifically, this case study will expand on the question of how photographs, in a Southern cultural context, work to create a sense of place and attachment to local geography.

scholarly journals Slavery and the new history of capitalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-244
Author(s):  
Trevor Burnard ◽  
Giorgio Riello
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
The American South

AbstractThe new history of capitalism (NHC) places a great deal of emphasis on slavery as a crucial world institution. Slavery, it is alleged, arose out of, and underpinned, capitalist development. This article starts by showing the intellectual and scholarly foundations of some of the broad conclusions of the NHC. It proceeds by arguing that capitalist transformation must rely on a global framework of analysis. The article considers three critiques in relation to the NHC. First, the NHC overemphasizes the importance of coercion to economic growth in the eighteenth century. We argue that what has been called ‘war capitalism’ might be better served by an analysis in which the political economy of European states and empires, rather than coercion, is a key factor in the transformation of capitalism at a global scale. Second, in linking slavery to industrialization, the NHC proposes a misleading chronology. Cotton produced in large quantities in the United States came too late to cause an Industrial Revolution which, we argue, developed gradually from the latter half of the seventeenth century and which was well established by the 1790s, when cotton started to arrive from the American South. During early industrialization, sugar, not cotton, was the main plantation crop in the Americas. Third, the NHC is overly concentrated on production and especially on slave plantation economies. It underplays the ‘power of consumption’, where consumers came to purchase increasing amounts of plantation goods, including sugar, rice, indigo, tobacco, cotton, and coffee. To see slavery’s role in fostering the preconditions of industrialization and the Great Divergence, we must tell a story about slavery’s place in supporting the expansion of consumption, as well as a story about production

“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done”: Southern Religious History in Retrospect and Prospect

1998 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
The South ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many

One of the most distinguishing marks of the American South is that religion is more important for the people who live there than for their fellow citizens in the restof the country. When this trait began to identify the region is surprisingly unclear, but it has begun to attract attention from scholars of religion and society who have hitherto been esteemed as students primarily of areas outside the South. The study of religion in Dixie cannot but benefit from this change. After centuries of obsession with thickly settled, college-proud, and printexpressive New England—an area not noted for excessive modesty in thinking about its place in the New World—students of American religion are turning to a region whose history has sustained a selfconsciousness that makes its place in American religious history unique. For studying the American South begins with a dilemma born of ambiguity: whether to treat it as a place or an idea. Sometimes, to be sure, the South appears to be both; but sometimes it is “place” presented as an idea; and sometimes it is a place whose historical experience should have, according to reflective writers, taught Americans historical and moral lessons they have failed to learn. Confusion results in part from the South's contested history not only between the region and the rest of the United States but also among various competing groups within its permeable and frequently indistinct borders. Differences between region and nation will, however, continue to dominate conversation even though the myth of southern distinctiveness may mislead students as much as the myth of its evangelical homogeneity. If inquiry about religion in the South should be sensitive to the many faith communities there, the history of the South will still by contrast provide insight into the broader “American” society.

“I Ain’t no Man!”

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-88
Author(s):  
Veronica T. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Black People ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Black History ◽  
The World ◽  
Women Of African Descent ◽  
The American South

As an African American man in Augusta, a town deeply rooted in the racist ideologies and practices of the segregated South, Frank Yerby certainly had had enough experiences with Jim Crow living, discrimination, and racial terrorism to fuel his writing for a lifetime. Despite becoming best-known, perhaps, for his prolific authorship of novels that focused primarily on white lives and characters, Yerby commented in an interview with Maryemma Graham, “In every novel I have written about the American South, I have subtly infused a very strong defense of Black history and Black people” (70). Rhetorical defenses in novels that are largely not about Black lives are certainly worth noting; however, in this chapter I argue that the exploration of the world as it impacted Black people was a more consistent interest for Yerby than many recognized. He wrote a number of short stories that specifically focused on the impacts of racism and subjugation on the Black psyche and identity, the intimate relationships between men and women of African descent, and the understandings and performances of Black masculinity.

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.

“No Unfavorable Comments from Any Quarter”: Teaching Black History to White Students in the American South, 1928–1943

2012 ◽  
Vol 114 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Christine Woyshner
Keyword(s):  
White Students ◽  
American South ◽  
Black History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Segregated Schools ◽  
Racial Tolerance ◽  
History Curriculum ◽  
White Schools ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South

Background/Context The history curriculum is often used to help reach the goal of racial tolerance and understanding by teaching about the nation's diversity. Many educators believe that teaching about diverse peoples in schools will bring about greater equity in society. This historical study looks at the segregated American South from 1928 to 1943 and an effort by a mixed-race voluntary organization to teach Black history in White schools. Focus of Study This study examines the efforts of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), beginning in 1928, to promote the teaching of Black history in southern segregated schools in an effort to bring about greater racial tolerance and awareness. The CIC circulated a booklet, which was a short history of African Americans titled “America's Tenth Man,” and invited schools to submit essays on Black history for cash prizes. The contests ran from 1928 until 1943, when the CIC was renamed the Southern Regional Council, which reflected a change in the organization's emphasis on regional planning. Research Design This is a historical examination of teaching Black history in segregated schools. The author relies on primary sources—including teachers’ reports, correspondence, and students’ projects—and secondary studies in the history of education and the curriculum. Conclusions By challenging historians’ views of the CIC—that the organization was largely ineffectual and that its Tenth Man contests did not result in any measureable improvement in race relations in the South—the author raises questions about the implementation of Black history curricula in order to influence students’ behavior and attitudes about race. Likewise, the author shows how White teachers were outspoken activists for Black history in schools. The study concludes that the teaching of Black history to White students was not uniform and was ideologically diverse.

Afterword

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice J. Hobson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
World Class ◽  
The American South ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Atlanta, Georgia, witnessed both the greatest successes and greatest failures with regard to blacks in the United States. A Deep South city, Atlanta was marked by the sordid racial history of the American South with its riots and rebellions, yet was transformed into the South’s newest world-class international city by the late twentieth century....

Lynching Beyond Dixie

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The American South ◽  
Comprehensive History

In recent decades, scholars have explored much of the history of mob violence in the American South, especially in the years after Reconstruction. However, the lynching violence that occurred in American regions outside the South, where hundreds of persons, including Hispanics, whites, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans died at the hands of lynch mobs, has received less attention. This book fills this gap by illuminating the factors that distinguished lynching in the West, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic. The chapters compare the episodes and patterns of lynching in these regions with those that occurred in the South, placing the violence within a broader context of the development of American criminal justice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It adds to a more comprehensive history of American lynching and will appeal to all readers interested in the history of violence across the varied regions of the United States.

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