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Consumerism Meets Jim Crow’s Children:: White Children and the Culture of Segregation

Kristina DuRocher

in Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South

White southerners took advantage of the emergence of mass culture in the early twentieth century to reiterate their justifications for white dominance over African Americans and impart to their ... More

White southerners took advantage of the emergence of mass culture in the early twentieth century to reiterate their justifications for white dominance over African Americans and impart to their children a distorted version of southern history. National advertisement campaigns made use of evocative images of the South to reinforce the idealized racial roles of southern antebellum society that were also portrayed in public-school instructional materials. Much like southern history books, many toys portrayed African Americans as entertainment, reinforcing the idea that blacks enjoyed subserviently performing for whites. Mechanical toys encouraged male dominance and rewarded aggression, placing white boys in control of stereotypical figurines of black bodies. Even in the chants and rhymes that children recited during games and playground amusements, African Americans are often referred to in a derogatory manner or as deserving of some form of violence. Parents also encouraged their children to participate in school plays and become members of youth organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Children of the Confederacy, to prepare them for their future racial and gender roles.Less

“My Mother had Warned me about this”:: Parental Socialization in the Jim Crow South

Kristina DuRocher

in Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South

The lessons that white southern parents taught their children regarding their identity during the Jim Crow era revolved mainly on race and gender. To ensure the preservation of white supremacy and ... More

The lessons that white southern parents taught their children regarding their identity during the Jim Crow era revolved mainly on race and gender. To ensure the preservation of white supremacy and ensure their social and economic security, white parents closely monitored their children's early encounters with blacks. The government also helped in child rearing by introducing literature that offered suggestions about raising youth in a modern culture. In the south, parenting handbooks emphasized the need to teach children from an early age their appropriate racial and gender roles and demonstrated the consequences of unsuccessful parenting with fear-inducing anecdotes. The evidence of day-to-day efforts of southern white parents to socialize their children can be found in the autobiographies and other writings by southerners who experienced this indoctrination in their race and gender roles during their childhoods. Some have recognized that their socialization in racial issues is irreconcilable with their own experiences and understanding, leading them to reject their childhood understandings.Less

“The Course My Life was to Take”:: The Violent Reality of White Youth’s Socialization

Kristina DuRocher

in Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South

Indoctrinated by their parents and the community to believe in white supremacy, many white children in the Jim Crow South saw incidents of racial violence as natural and inherent to the racial order ... More

Indoctrinated by their parents and the community to believe in white supremacy, many white children in the Jim Crow South saw incidents of racial violence as natural and inherent to the racial order of the times. They had come to accept that any violation of the dictates of segregation required punishment, primarily through physical brutality. Many children readily embraced their predetermined role in maintaining segregation as they matured, but there were others who, faced with the realities of racial violence, began to recognize the personal and social repercussions of the racial lessons they learned from an early age. Some of these children would later grow up to write their autobiographies, many pointing to a single traumatic event or several disturbing episodes of racial violence that changed their conceptions of self and racial identity and helped them to resist racial inequality. Children also played a central role in the campaign against lynchings. Images of white families involving their children in lynchings as part of their social ritual became a powerful propaganda tool for the antilynching movement, which sought to bring to national attention how white southerners perpetuate harm by exposing their children to what they viewed as horrific acts of violence.Less

Conclusion

Kristina DuRocher

in Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South

During the Jim Crow era, white southerners struggled to maintain cultural, political, and economic control as African Americans and reformers began to gain ground in their fight to eliminate ... More

During the Jim Crow era, white southerners struggled to maintain cultural, political, and economic control as African Americans and reformers began to gain ground in their fight to eliminate segregation. With the absence of slavery, white adults feared that their children would grow up not knowing their proper racial and gender roles. Hence, southern adults focused on socializing white children into their racial beliefs by replicating and perpetuating the ideology and practices of white supremacy. The white community strengthened the race-related lessons learned at home as white youth attended segregated public schools and their newly published southern texts presented an idealized image of race relations and gender roles carefully crafted to reflect the concepts of white adults deemed appropriate for their children. White adults also took advantage of the emerging mass culture of youth, including advertising, toys, and games, to create an idealized image of white power by perpetuating racial caricatures of black bodies and suggestions that African Americans enjoyed their subservient roles. Because of their successful indoctrination into the mores of segregation and white supremacy, many white boys readily accepted mass mob lynching rituals and, at times, actively participated in them. White girls capitalized on their idealized image of passive, protected females to gain some measure of social power. The violent enforcement of segregation in the Jim Crow era began to fade in the early twentieth century and during World War II as African Americans succeeded in bringing the problem to national attention. Many white southerners stopped attempting to enforce white supremacy in 1939, and with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, they no longer had unchallenged exclusive access to southern institutions and society became increasingly intolerant of open examples of extralegal violence.Less

Orphaned in Oakland:: Institutional Life during the Progressive Era

Marta Gutman

in A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950

During the Progressive Era, new state agencies transformed the charitable landscape in Oakland. College-educated women, Jessica Peixotto at the State Board of Charities and Corrections (1903), and ... More

During the Progressive Era, new state agencies transformed the charitable landscape in Oakland. College-educated women, Jessica Peixotto at the State Board of Charities and Corrections (1903), and Amy Steinhardt, at the Children’s Department of the State Board of Control (1913), targeted congregate orphanages, especially when run by Catholic charities. In line with the first White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children and the Children’s Bureau, they advocated mothers’ pensions and foster care and replacing dormitories with cottages. The concept, selective accommodation, is applied to the Smith Cottages, West Oakland Home, and the Ladies’ Relief Society, where racial segregation went hand in hand with modernization, as did sorting children qualification for state aid. The insistence, that the physical condition of an institution determined the emotional consciousness of children, is challenged using the oral history of Mollie and Belva Cooley.Less

South versus North

in Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650–1920

The southern educational system reflected the nature of southern society, with an elite committed to supporting secondary and collegiate institutions, but leaving the diffusion of popular primary ... More

The southern educational system reflected the nature of southern society, with an elite committed to supporting secondary and collegiate institutions, but leaving the diffusion of popular primary schooling less well supported than in the North. Nevertheless, as economic historian Albert Fishlow cautioned long ago, “Lack of…sympathy with the educational philosophy should not obscure an ongoing process of instruction in the Southern states.” Southern primary schooling in some form seemed to have reached high proportions of white children, and, by the 1840s, adult literacy was at 80 percent of the level reached in the North. The involvement of women in schoolteaching was much less prevalent in the South than in the North not because arrangements for schooling in the South were scant but because arrangements differed from those in the North. Teachers were not as common in the South as in the North, but southern teachers were not rarities.Less

Governing Witchcraft: Journalists and Brujos in Republican Cuba

Reinaldo L. Román

in Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898-1956

In 1919, Cuba was swept by a “militant Negrophobia” characterized by a public fright of witchcraft, or brujería. A group of blacks called the negros brujos were suspected by white families of ... More

In 1919, Cuba was swept by a “militant Negrophobia” characterized by a public fright of witchcraft, or brujería. A group of blacks called the negros brujos were suspected by white families of abducting and sacrificing their children. Many Afro-Cubans, especially males, were confronted with accusations that sometimes led to lynchings and other similar attempts at vigilante justice. These witchcraft scares were fueled in large part by the press through its propagation of rumors and misinformation about the ritual killing of white children. This chapter examines the involvement of journalists in generating the witchcraft scares in early twentieth-century Cuba. It also considers the role of the public as well as those with vested interests, including some practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions. The chapter focuses on the most abhorrent acts of brujería, especially those that most preoccupied journalists, what the authorities termed “ritual murders,” with emphasis on crimen de la niña Zoila.Less