Paper 4 topic1 The Strange Career of Jim Crow C.

Vann Woodward (1908-1999), was an influential historian who experienced the peak of Arkansas Jim Crow laws in his early years. Woodward later became renowned for his brief volume entitled The Strange Career of Jim Crow which was praised by Martin Luther King as "the historical bible of the Civil Rights movement." Contrary to popular belief, his central compelling thesis in The Strange Career of Jim Crow was that in strict segregation actually did not emerge immediately after the fall of slavery, segregation was not a long standing southern attitude but system was born in the North, and finally there was no large national push for segregation more a relaxation of opposition against distrust of African Americans (69). Woodward logically deducted and proved that segregation was not established right after the fall of slavery but instead instutuded later after solidifying in the North. The south was characterized in nineteenth-century by a mergence and close contact between blacks and whites (17). Southern whites grew up with black nannies, maids and worked and lived side by side with them in cities. This proximity and contact between one another was completely is different then segregation of the late 1890s and early twentieth century. In the south, "segregation would have been an inconvenience and an obstruction to the functioning of the system. The very nature of the institution made separation of the races for the most part impracticable. (12)" The true origins of segregation and racism came from those who did not have the continual contact with blacks but instead were a group of people with limited experience and understanding. The first dejure legislation, Jim Crow laws, appeared in the North.

"One of the strangest things about the career of Jim Crow was that the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force." Although recognizing that because there were much fewer blacks in the North, Northerners did not have the moral and economic restraints in segregating a group of people they barely ever see, making the birth place of Jim Crow laws less strange. In the south rural farmers and communities tended not to have as much contact with blacks, which also tend to be the poorer whites. The wealthier class tended to have maids, nannies, servants and other black workers and had more contact with the black community. "An excessive squeamishness or fussiness about contact with Negroes was commonly identified as a lower-class white attitude, while the opposite attitude was as popularly associated with the 'the quality.'" (4850). There were three main attitudes towards race relations, conservatism, radicalism, and liberalism. Conservatism "believed that the Negro was inferior, but denied that it followed that inferiors must be segregated or publicly humiliated." Radicalism was about uniting white and black working class against their common enemy of oppression and poverty. Unfortunately the once strong tide of Liberalism in the media began to recede with Plessy v. Ferguson bringing the conservatism prestige and Southern radicalism in tow. In its placed swelled the formally repressed sludge of hatred and fear, now given unrestricted powers of dejure segregation which began to changed the landscape of American opinion. "Negrophobia" and passing the blame to African Americans for the failures progressive reform, Populist Revolt and the division between whites became the common outlook. However the validity of "Negrophobia" and the Jim Crow laws began to come into question in the 1930s. Eventually the tides began to turn back and President Truman had

desegregated the military, and the Court system became to desegregate America. The Strange Career of Jim Crow derived from research made by Woodward for the NAACP's in Brown vs. Board of Education which overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson and paved the way to the Civil Rights Movement. Woodward showed that Jim Crow Laws were the doings of only one generation. However after the end of the Jim Crow Laws blacks were expected to shed all of their distinctions but those distinctions could not be left behind because they where a critical part of their identity. (220) Jim Crows strange career appeared odd because strict segregation actually did not emerge immediately after the fall of slavery in the south. How the segregation system originated in the North, and finally the relaxation of opposition against segregation instead of a national push for segregation, at fist also seemed strange. However once one understands the vital role of human contact in regulating paranoia, "Negrophobia," and fear of the unknown; one begins to understand how Jim Crow laws of separation only added fire to the flame. And the life of Jim Crow doesnt seem so strange.