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Introduction: Segregation’s Constant Gardeners

Elizabeth Gillespie McRae

in Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy

Massive resistance to the civil rights movement has often been presented as sequestered in the South, limited to the decade between the Brown Decision and the Civil Rights Act, and attributed to the ... More

Massive resistance to the civil rights movement has often been presented as sequestered in the South, limited to the decade between the Brown Decision and the Civil Rights Act, and attributed to the most vehement elected officials and the Citizens’ Councils. But that version ignores the long-standing work of white women who sustained racial segregation and nurtured both massive support for the Jim Crow order in the interwar period and who transformed support into massive resistance after World War II. Support for the segregated state existed among everyday people. Maintaining racial segregation was not solely or even primarily the work of elected officials. Its adherents sustained the system with quotidian work, and on the ground, it was often white women who shaped and sustained white supremacist politics.Less

Race, Class, and the Civil Rights Movement

Carol A. Horton

in Race and the Making of American Liberalism

The early Civil Rights movement radicalized the postwar liberal agenda by infusing it with much more expansive conceptions of both racial equity and social justice. While postwar liberalism remained ... More

The early Civil Rights movement radicalized the postwar liberal agenda by infusing it with much more expansive conceptions of both racial equity and social justice. While postwar liberalism remained focused on the problem of Jim Crow segregation in the South, the movement also emphasized problems of racial discrimination and segregation in the rest of the nation. At the same time, it encouraged the development of a new form of racial consciousness, particularly a more positive and empowered sense of black identity. The movement also advocated an essentially social democratic agenda, whose primary goal was to increase social and economic equity among all Americans. By the early 1960s, these commitments had created a pronounced rift between “white liberals”, who favored the more moderate politics of postwar liberalism, and the Negro movement, who supported the new form of social liberalism developed by the Civil Rights movement.Less

Inequality and White Supremacy

Carol A. Horton

in Race and the Making of American Liberalism

The successive collapses of the Knights of Labor and Populism during the 1880s–90s officially ended producer republicanism in the United States. In particular, the presidential election of 1896 ... More

The successive collapses of the Knights of Labor and Populism during the 1880s–90s officially ended producer republicanism in the United States. In particular, the presidential election of 1896 supported the development of three institutional arrangements that played a primary role in creating a more unequal society and a more constricted political universe: the dominance of the highly conservative American Federation of Labor within the labor movement, the establishment of Jim Crow segregation and the “solid South”, and the contraction of the popular bases of electoral politics. Through these primary mechanisms, the scope and aspirations of American liberalism were dramatically contracted. Although the ensuing Progressive Era would achieve some important reforms, this triumph of Darwinian liberalism reinforced the cultural and political dominance of a newly differentiated form of racial hierarchy, a broad endorsement of social and economic inequality, and a narrow and exclusionary conception of citizenship.Less

The Dilemma of Racial Identity

Kathleen M. German

in Promises of Citizenship: Film Recruitment of African Americans in World War II

This chapter explores the historical problems of understanding and dividing society along racial lines. In some ways, World War II was a race war as both Allies and Axis enforced forms of racial ... More

This chapter explores the historical problems of understanding and dividing society along racial lines. In some ways, World War II was a race war as both Allies and Axis enforced forms of racial segregation and purity. This chapter traces the roots of race in Christianity beginning with the Great Chain of Being, then explores federal definitions of race, and finally explains the implications of social and legal separation of races in the Jim Crow segregation persistent through World War II.Less

The Color Line in Virginia: The Home-Grown Production of White Supremacy

Elizabeth Gillespie McRae

in Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy

In the 1920s, white women constituted the main workforce for Virginia’s new Racial Integrity Law. In the western counties of Rockbridge and Amherst counties, white female registrars, public welfare ... More

In the 1920s, white women constituted the main workforce for Virginia’s new Racial Integrity Law. In the western counties of Rockbridge and Amherst counties, white female registrars, public welfare officers, teachers, and social work students cataloged the racial identity of their neighbors and informed state officials of those who might have a “mixed racial” heritage. Imbued with the authority of the Progressive Era state, local white women produced a white supremacist politics built on preventing interracial marriage and “mixed-race” children and cooperating with supporters of eugenics. Armed with their local knowledge, the state registrar, Walter Plecker, reported “mixed-race,” Indian (Monacan) families to schools, hospitals, and courthouses in order to strengthen the Jim Crow order. By turning in their neighbors, white women both created and enforced the color line, securing the future of Jim Crow segregation.Less

The Last Phoenix: Conflicting Legacies, 1890–2007

Edmund L. Drago

in Confederate Phoenix: Rebel Children and Their Families in South Carolina

This chapter discusses the two conflicting legacies of Civil War and Reconstruction which competed for hegemony in South Carolina after the 1890s. The present conflict evolved out of the triumph of ... More

This chapter discusses the two conflicting legacies of Civil War and Reconstruction which competed for hegemony in South Carolina after the 1890s. The present conflict evolved out of the triumph of Racial Radicalism in South Carolina. Racial Radicalism, by establishing Jim Crow segregation, nurtured the growth of a black professional class who provided the leadership to establish the South Carolina Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). On the eve of the sesquicentennial of the firing on Fort Sumter, the issue of slavery seems to be the key to the reconciliation of conflicting legacies.Less

Charles W. Chesnutt, Whiteness, and the Problem of Citizenship

Donald M. Shaffer

in The Construction of Whiteness: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Race Formation and the Meaning of a White Identity

In this chapter, I will examine perhaps Charles W. Chesnutt’s most celebrated color-line novel, The House Behind the Cedars, as a philosophical and legalistic engagement of the problem of ... More

In this chapter, I will examine perhaps Charles W. Chesnutt’s most celebrated color-line novel, The House Behind the Cedars, as a philosophical and legalistic engagement of the problem of citizenship. Through a reading of Chesnutt’s racial non-fiction, including several of his unpublished essays and speeches, I also want to show how the novel engages Chesnutt’s perspective on race—one that held racial difference to be at once a “social fiction” and a “social disability.” Through his portrayal of the black mulatto in this novel, Chesnutt argues for an inclusive ideal of citizenship in response to the ascriptive ideology that defined American Jim Crow society in the wake of the 1896 Plessy decision.Less

Introduction: The Color Line and the Public Sphere

Robert Cassanello

in To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville

This chapter explores the theories that inform concepts of color-line, public sphere, public space, and right to the city. It demonstrates how Jacksonville after the Civil War represents a case study ... More

This chapter explores the theories that inform concepts of color-line, public sphere, public space, and right to the city. It demonstrates how Jacksonville after the Civil War represents a case study of the intersection of public sphere and public space. Additionally, it postulates that Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement should be examined in the context of right-to-the-city literature and other explorations of space and the public sphere in the contemporary global south.Less

“Intruder of Color”: Freedom, Sovereignty, and Kinship in Indian Territory

Kendra Taira Field

in Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War

Chapter 1 documents the life path of Thomas Jefferson Brown, the son of an African-American father and Irish mother, who migrated from Arkansas to Indian Territory in the 1870s and married two ... More

Chapter 1 documents the life path of Thomas Jefferson Brown, the son of an African-American father and Irish mother, who migrated from Arkansas to Indian Territory in the 1870s and married two African-descended women of the Creek and Seminole nations. This chapter uses Brown’s story to illustrate how some early African-American settlers initially bolstered their claims to freedom in the postemancipation era by attaching themselves to American expansion, Native Americans, and the acquisition of Indian land. This complex moment of African-American participation in the expropriation of Indian Territory was tellingly short-lived. African-American access to Indian land ended abruptly with the advent of Oklahoma statehood, Jim Crow segregation, and oil speculation. As Indian sovereignty was dissolved and notions of racial purity and “blood” acquired growing significance, “race” ultimately eclipsed “nation” as a guarantor of rights and resources. Brown’s story illuminates the construction of a new racial order in Indian Territory, and, ultimately, the limits of North American escape.Less

“No Such Thing as Stand Still”: The Chief Sam Movement and the “African Pioneers”

Kendra Taira Field

in Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War

Chapter 4 recovers the origins of the little-known 1913–15 Chief Sam back-to-Africa movement and the lifelong migrants who created it. African-American access to Indian land ended abruptly after 1907 ... More

Chapter 4 recovers the origins of the little-known 1913–15 Chief Sam back-to-Africa movement and the lifelong migrants who created it. African-American access to Indian land ended abruptly after 1907 with the advent of Oklahoma statehood, Jim Crow segregation, and oil speculation. These migrants and many of their black and Indian counterparts lost their land and the associated mineral rights to white settlers and oil speculators through a combination of legal and extralegal exploitation. Thousands, including Coleman and Davis, joined Chief Alfred Sam’s 1914 “back-to-Africa” movement in hopes of claiming lasting freedom once and for all on the Gold Coast. This chapter employs the stories of Elic Davis and Monroe Coleman to show that this movement was not only prelude to Garveyism and the Great Migration, but capstone to “a century of negro migration.”Less

“These Women Really Did the Work”: Marching on More than Defense Plants

David Lucander

in Winning the War for Democracy: The March on Washington Movement, 1941-1946

This chapter describes a series of sit-ins during 1944. Led by largely forgotten African American women, this interracial direct-action campaign sought to challenge the color line at department-store ... More

This chapter describes a series of sit-ins during 1944. Led by largely forgotten African American women, this interracial direct-action campaign sought to challenge the color line at department-store lunch counters. Integrating, or at least improving, access to food service at major downtown retailers was an important step in the process of breaking down elements of Jim Crow segregation in St. Louis. That same year, the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) shifted its attention toward obtaining and retaining jobs for black workers in publicly funded workplaces. Gaining access to jobs operating switchboards and in the local administration of Southwestern Bell Telephone offices was presented as a stride toward securing sustainable employment for a largely female contingent of working-class African Americans who wanted long-term white- and pink-collar employment. This sort of local women's activism, juxtaposed against national men's leadership, is consistent with a gendered pattern of activism in civil rights campaigns that persisted through the 1960s.Less

Fear

Christopher B. Strain

in Burning Faith: Church Arson in the American South

This chapter discusses the terror caused by these crimes and the history of such arsons in the American South. The fires recalled darker days in American history, harkening back to the days of Jim ... More

This chapter discusses the terror caused by these crimes and the history of such arsons in the American South. The fires recalled darker days in American history, harkening back to the days of Jim Crow segregation, when white southerners perfected the finer points of racial terror in keeping black folks “in their place” and hooded Klansmen destroyed property and lives at will. Like similar attacks in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, the fires of the 1990s created terror, as intended.Less

Race, Memory, and Military Men’s Sexuality

Rebecca Forgash

in Intimacy across the Fencelines: Intimacy across the Fencelines

This chapter analyzes Okinawan discourses on race and military men's sexuality, with a focus on how Japanese and American racial discourses have shaped local understandings of difference. It ... More

This chapter analyzes Okinawan discourses on race and military men's sexuality, with a focus on how Japanese and American racial discourses have shaped local understandings of difference. It discusses how the imperial rhetoric positioned Okinawans and other Asians alongside the Japanese in unified opposition to Europeans and Americans. During the postwar occupation, the U.S. military and its personnel were introduced into the Okinawa discourses on U.S. imperialism in Asia, Jim Crow segregation, and the 1960s civil rights and black power movements. The chapter also features the personal narratives of individuals who self-consciously viewed their relationships as transgressing established racial boundaries. It narrates stories that illustrate the struggle of military international couples in order to understand and rework racial ideologies and expectations in Okinawa's postwar society.Less

1873: Slaughterhouse Revisited

in A Community Built on Words: The Constitution in History and Politics

Perhaps no decision of the Supreme Court that is not perceived as morally evil in its result has been the subject of so much criticism as the Slaughterhouse Cases. The Court's holding—that the state ... More

Perhaps no decision of the Supreme Court that is not perceived as morally evil in its result has been the subject of so much criticism as the Slaughterhouse Cases. The Court's holding—that the state of Louisiana did not violate the Constitution of the United States by granting the Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company a monopoly over the operation of slaughterhouses within the city and environs of New Orleans—is seldom the object of great interest. What excites widespread censure are the constitutional misdeeds the Court allegedly committed in coming to its judgment. The central items of the usual bill of particulars are the assertion that the Court eviscerated the privileges or immunities clause of section 1 of the fourteenth amendment by giving it so narrow a construction that it has since been of virtually no practical importance, and that the Court manifested a fundamental hostility toward the Civil War amendments that led eventually to the judicial dismantling of Reconstruction and Plessy v. Ferguson's tragic approval of Jim Crow segregation, judicial misdeeds that indefinitely delayed implementation of the nation's promise of freedom and equality to African Americans.Less