Jim Crow originated in the antebellum North

[carolinayellowdog]

Hey,

Some of the things said in other fora have inspired me to look further into the history of race relations. Today it was said that Jim Crow laws were specifically Southern. In fact, though, the majority of states had legal segregation of some kind and Jim Crow laws originated in the north. Here's an interesting link with info on a book called by Dr. King the historical bible of the Civil Rights movement, The Strange Career of Jim Crow:
http://www.kevincmurphy.com/woodward.html

CYD

[QC]

1. That's an excellent book.

Woodward is the real deal, and that book should be on every liberal's reading list.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Woodward was a genius...

I miss his work.

I've read everything the man ever wrote -- I think -- even some stuff that's not in common circulation.

A friend of mine in grad school at the time, a fellow student of Southern history, was talking to me once about this professor he had who seemed to have a thing for trying to beat him down. While discussing his plight, I realized my friend had only a casual relationship with Woodward's work and so suggested he look into it more fully in preparation for his battles with this professor. He came out of the experience with a new motto: What Would Woodward Say (W.W.W.S.), a play on the W.W.J.D. thing going around at the time.

He fared much better against his professor after that.

[RoyGBiv]

3. BTW ...

I meant to mention this when I first read your message, but it slipped my mind.

The history of "race" and the manifestation of race definitions and the interactions between so-called races is a particular interest of mine. An old professor of mine turned me on to a number of lines of study to find out more about it, and this has made my library grow considerably.

Anyway, find a book called _North of Slavery_ by Leon Litwack. Litwack is best known for his book _Been in the Storm so Long_ in which he explored the aftermath of slavery and the impact of freedom on the common, individuals formerly enslaved. But, this other book is quite revealing, on the order of "Strange Career" in how it traces the origins of racial tensions, the attitudes that led to it, etc.

You might also look for a book called _The Black Image in the White Mind_ by George Frederickson. Like Litwack, Frederickson is more famous for another book entirely, but after writing an intellectual history of the Civil War, he concentrated almost entirely on racial history, often comparative history using South Africa and the United States as models. "Black Image" is an excellent study and, again, quite revealing.

And to put a fine point on it, both these books and the Woodward book are excellent ammunition to have on hand when others get a bit too holier-than-thou. :-)

[carolinayellowdog]

4. Since you're recommending books...

I'll return the favor and ask you for more. Do you know of anything that goes into detail on "passing" and the disappearance of "mulatto" as a category? Genealogical research has led me to discovery of 4 NC family lines (maybe 5) all of which were "free mulatto" in colonial times but "white" from 1790 on. Local tradition insists that they were Indian but gets vague beyond that point. Have recently read Living Indian Histories by Gerald Sider, about the Lumbee etc. of Robeson County NC, which sheds plenty of light on the Free People of Color designation. My ancestors escaped 150 years of humiliation by becoming "white" when they did. Also liked John Hope Franklin's excellent The Free Negro in North Carolina. Melvin Patrick Ely's new book Israel on the Appomattox is a compelling account of a free black community in antebellum Virginia, which was surprisingly well accepted by the whites in the county. Have just started Pauline Hopkins's novel Of One Blood and am waiting for Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition. Both feature dramatic revelations in which whites find out they're not as white as they thought.

CYD

[RoyGBiv]

5. Passing ...

Sorry for the delay in getting back. I apparently missed this when you first posted it.

However, I'm afraid I won't be of much help. I don't know of a central resource for this kind of subject. I'm not sure one exists. The studies I do know about concentrate on late 19th and early 20th century race relations and various ethnic groups "passing" for and eventually becoming white.

I might suggest _Making Whiteness : The Culture of Segregation in the South_. It's not a direct answer to your inquiry, but it gives some good background of the basic idea and how "whiteness" itself developed in the America generally, but with a focus on the South. I would think the bibliography might lead you to other resources.

I approach the study of race as a social construction. That is, we define what "race" is, and as your own research has clearly shown you, how we define that changes over time. Usually these are legal distinctions. In fact one of the problems we face now is that we insist on adhering to these old definitions that were created explicitly for the purpose of institutionalizing descrimination and try to use them to avoid descrimination. But, I digress ...

I'm also not sure when the term mulatto fell out of common use, although I think it is safe to say this coincided with it absence from legal distinctions. As it pertains to Native Americans, the term isn't specifically used, but the substance of its meaning is embodied in tribal and federal law as a determinant of who qualifies for membership in the various tribes.

You might try books like _How Jews Became White_ or _Race: The History of an Idea in the West_ as a starter. Note that the latter book is extremely boring, but an excellent resource for understanding the history of race and racial identity in Western culture.

OnEdit:

I sometimes forget what I've read. I turned around and saw this peaking out of my bookshelf and hit myself for not mentioning it.

_Race: The History of an Idea in America_. Again I don't know if it will answer exactly what you're wanting to know, but it's an excellent start. It forms the foundation of almost every study of its kind being done today.

[DemBones DemBones]

6. Funny story about "integration" in the North.

When I was in third grade, we lived just outside Chicago in Waukegan, Illinois, my dad being stationed at Great Lakes Naval Base. My mother was always catching a certain amount of grief from Northerners since she spent her formative years in Atlanta and had an accent. In those years, that accent often led to people interrogating her about why Southerners hadn't integrated their schools yet.

Here's the interesting part: three years after Brown vs. Board of Education, when the South was being pressured to integrate immediately, there was not one black child in school with me in Illinois. Not one!

We found out where all the black kids were when the polio vaccine became available that year and we were all bused to a larger school in the district to get our shots. As we walked down the halls of the school, we saw that each classroom held either an entirely black class of students, or an entirely white one, with the teacher's race matched to her students' race. :eyes: Yes, this was integration, Northern-style!!! Separate but equal in different rooms of the same building!

[RoyGBiv]

7. Nation's Shame

Segregation, racism, etc. is truly a national shame, not a regional one.

And old professor of mine put it like this when lecturing about the Civil Rights movement:

The fight for Civil Rights, in particular desegregation and voting rights, became the national focus when "well bred" white families in the North saw their idealistic children getting injured and even killed in the South. They began pumping money and exercising their influence into the movement in part for the sake of their own kids, the people of SNC and other organizations. Over time, they experienced a measure of success, got their kids back, and then became disallusioned when they turned around and saw their own cities on fire. "How dare they ..." they would think, "... after all we did for them," after which attempts to enact the very same reforms that had been demanded of the South were fought tooth and nail.

Southern racism is very real, very open, and very ingrained. Northern racism is a dirty little secret that everyone likes to pretend doesn't exist.

Disclaimer: This meandering prose is not intended as a moral equivalency argument, not a suggestion that because "they do it too" that one is any better than the other. Indeed, that's the point. One is no better than the other.