Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00 Uh, so, uh, we're continuing our kind of U S survey sequence this week with a deep dive into Jim Crow and the after effects of reconstruction and kind of the partial successes and the failures of that and how that kind of echoes and uh, I think it's gonna be an interesting conversation.
Speaker 1 00:25 Yeah. I'm excited to dive into this because we kind of talked a little bit before we started recording, but it spans such a huge period of time. And so when you're trying to do a us history sequence class, sometimes Jim Crow can come a little bit later. Sometimes it can come right after reconstruction. And this is always a question that we have when we're designing our classes is where do we put events and how do we want to talk about them when you're trying to do something chronologically. And sometimes because something chronologically can span such a large period of time. So what we're talking about today with Jim Crow, we're talking about almost a hundred year period. And so to try to set it, you know, we'll write after reconstruction. It's important to know that it's related, but that it does go on for a very long time and we can circle back to this time and time again. That's what I thought. It was good to put it right after reconstruction because as we go through other topics, we can always circle back to this. And I think that I like to do that in class too. So I'm glad that we're going to cover this today.
Speaker 0 01:25 Yeah. So is this where you normally put it in your sequence?
Speaker 1 01:29 You know what? No, it's not. Um, I usually, go ahead. Yeah, I, I put it in the 1920s. Yeah, well I, that's typically, I don't actually know, I put it a little bit before the progressive or I put it before the progressive era. Um, after the industrial revolution, the robber barons immigration in late 19th century. And then I put it because of Plessy versus Ferguson, but then I revisited again of course in the 1920s with the reemergence of the clan. But I'm, I like doing it right here and this is, I guess a little bit experimental, but because I've never done it directly after reconstruction, but I wanted to, because I think it's an interesting followup because you can discuss the fallout of reconstruction and then how Jim Crow kind of gets cemented into place. Um, and then I think again, you can continue to circle back for the next several decades, all the way into the twenties, 1920s, thirties, forties fifties and then into the sixties. So we'll see how it goes. I think that maybe I'll move it. I don't know. We'll see how the conversation goes.
Speaker 0 02:36 Alright, well, uh, join us today as we talk about judge Jim Crow. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff.
Speaker 1 02:45 And where are your hosts for this weekly history podcast? <inaudible>
Speaker 1 03:07 alright, so Jim Crow, um, I mean, give us, I mean, why do we think of this as a, uh, period we need to talk about as something coherent like this? Wow. Gosh. Well, again, it is spans such a large amount that it is important to talk about it again and again and again. And I think that it is so important because there's a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that it's imperative to flesh out what happens as a result of emancipation freedom. What does freedom mean for so many people who have just recently become free? What does the economy start to look like and how does it start to function and how does society cope with life post civil war? And the answer to that a lot of times, even though reconstruction happens for about a little over a decade, the answer mostly is Jim Crow is the response.
Speaker 1 04:14 It's a backlash to any sort of progress that was made during reconstruction. And I think that getting into this and talking about it is important because it kind of flushes out a broader narrative about this country. Um, a broader narrative about the place of African Americans in this country and how much of a concerted effort there was even after slavery was over to hold people back. And you know, I teach in the South now and I've taught in, um, North of the Mason Dixon line in Pennsylvania. And I've taught out in the West, in California where it's not as much on people's minds. Um, but in the South it's still very much on people's minds. And in Pennsylvania even there was a lot of, um, civil war reenactors and enthusiasts. I had students coming to my class. And one of the things that I think is so important for students to understand, and I try to get through to this in the 21st century is like, look, racism doesn't stop when slavery stops.
Speaker 1 05:16 And I know it sounds so elementary, but it's just students have to understand that because I've had students actually come to me and say, well, slavery ended so long ago, why are we still talking about this? And I've had white students and black students tell me this. Honestly, in Pennsylvania, I had a really big conversation with students at Penn state about this. And it's like, it, the problems in this country don't stop because the civil war ends. And because of emancipation, it's not like this cure all. And so talking about Jim Crow I think is so, so important to talk about. What is the backlash and fallout, um, after the civil war ends. Do you have any, and you had issues
Speaker 0 05:58 like this with students where they think like, Oh well things just magically got better after the civil war or what do you think is the most important part? Well, I think so. I think there were a couple of things going on here. First of all, I mean, students, a lot of students get upset with me in the U S survey sequence because, and I've had students say this to me before, they were like, I feel like every week we come in and learn about bad things the United States did.
Speaker 0 06:23 And I'm like, well, I'm like, yeah, I mean it's like, you know, we don't do the survey sequences is celebratory history. Right? Um, that was in the past. We did that and I said, at the same time, there are point things we point to that I think are very positive things and we talk about those. But I think this idea of the civil war is students, I think they want to get, they want to move beyond it. They want to just forget about it and push it back. Because I think the United States in general, people in general want to forget that that happened. They want to pretend it didn't happen. They want to ignore it. And maybe that's signs that maybe the gear of Jim Crow and stuff isn't really over. And I know there are a lot of people we can get on here, kind of support us in this position.
Speaker 0 07:16 Um, which is why it's so important to talk about it again. I mean, when, so when I teach about Jim Crow, when I talk about, um, the institutionalization and, uh, uh, of, of segregation, um, and creating kind of a segregated American society where black Americans are second class citizens. Um, when I do that and I do it in the 1920s and there are a few reasons I do it. They're one of the most to do with Woodrow Wilson who simultaneously has this really kind of expansive view of the United States world and security kind of freedom and human rights and dignity for people abroad, but at the same time has these very deep seated racist ideas he uses at home. Um, one of the reasons I talk about it in addition to him has to do with the rise of lynching, right? That lynching becomes this huge thing. And I think it's important for students to kind of face, you know, this is the reality of what U S history looked like at times. And for the vast majority or of American history, if you were a black person, you lived in fear of your life most of the time, particularly if you've lived in certain parts of the country. And emancipation doesn't make that better. The end of the civil war doesn't make that better. Reconstruction, maybe had the ability to make it better, but it doesn't at the end of the day, right? We talked about that the last episode of the failures of reconstruction. So the question becomes what do we do with it? Well, I think we use it as a lesson, right? We use it as a lesson that
Speaker 0 09:04 failing to follow through on things can have like longterm consequences. Um, not just decades, but almost a hundred years. I mean, the civil war and the civil rights movement are almost a hundred years apart. And for that 100 years, the situation for black Americans is pretty dire many times. And I think it speaks volumes, um, to many, uh, people in that community that they were resilient and kind of fought in American Wars. Um, like when, when we talk about people not wanting to fight in world war II or world war II, I totally understand why some people didn't want to, right? I mean, if you're an African American man, why should you fight in world war two?
Speaker 1 10:00 Well, we've touched on this in past episodes, right? Where so many soldiers did fight and they experienced equality abroad that they never experienced here at home. And that's what ended up spurring some of the movements towards civil rights in the 1950s and sixties. And I can't remember which episode we talked about it in, but I know that we've touched on this in the past, but you're right, there's that push and pull, right? On the one hand, like why do I want to fight for a country who doesn't even give me equal status, equal rights, equal opportunity. Um, why do I want to fight in Wars? So this country, but on the other hand, so many do, but then go to experience a level of equality in the military that was not even close to the proper amount of equal. And actually equality was more experienced when our troops participated with other countries and fought with alongside other countries like France and Britain.
Speaker 5 10:52 Um, but
Speaker 1 10:55 there was a bigger level of equality or autonomy or respect that was given toward people in the military that wasn't necessarily at home, but then experiencing that,
Speaker 5 11:07 uh, that level of,
Speaker 1 11:10 I guess like somewhat of respect, right? I think that that ends up making people say, Hey, you know, we're going to come back and make our communities better. Um, and so the discussion of Jim Crow is so important because it does lay the foundation for the African American experience, not just in the South, but throughout the United States for about a hundred year period. And to ignore that or to say that that wasn't the case, or to say somehow it's different or not connected to slavery or, I mean, I guess it's not important to compare like what's better or what's worse, but to understand that there's a continuation
Speaker 5 11:48 of
Speaker 1 11:49 disparity. There's a continuation of system, a systematic violence towards African Americans that there's still, um, you know, issues surrounding labor equality, access to the law, access to education, access to equal opportunity, all these different things, right? That they're connected still very much to slavery. But then in some ways it actually gets, um, I don't want to, I don't want to say better or worse, but like in some ways it gets even more cemented because it becomes a law when the South institutionalized. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 0 12:23 I mean, and that's the thing is I think so during kind of slavery, uh, kind of before the civil war and during the civil war, the slave driver kind of enacts violence on the bodies of the slave peoples. Right. But after the civil war, that role, that, that mission to enact violence on the body bodies of freed black people transfers from the slave driver to the sheriff.
Speaker 1 12:49 Exactly. And then in turn, you ha you see a strengthening of government at the, at the local levels, at the state levels, and at the federal level. Um, that's drew Gilpin Faust, whole argument in the wake of the civil war that the federal government becomes so much stronger in order to deal with all of the dead bodies that are laying around. What do we do with all these dead bodies? What do we do with all these dead horses? Right. Well, we have to build stronger government infrastructure and that takes place at the federal level. But that infrastructure trickles all the way down into the state and local governments. And when you start taking power away from the small fiefdoms, right? Like these plantations that can be small or big, um, but we're power just kinda rests in these little areas and these small communities, you start taking away power from there because so much land was seized, property was seized property in the form of humans, right? Um, you, you start to see a strengthening of these governments and then the impetus to, to maintain or with holder of uphold order is on these governments and these local authorities and they take it and institutionalize it on a level that makes it law, that makes, you know, inequality law and um, that, that's where it's, it's not that it becomes worse. It just becomes harder to undo in a sense. Would you say that's true?
Speaker 0 14:14 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think you're right, but I think before we kind of get into the kind of this, this nitty gritty discussion, I want to pause and just talk about, I mean, why do we call it Jim Crow? Where does this, why do we call this era of Jim Crow?
Speaker 1 14:30 Well, it comes from much earlier period, right? It comes from um, the 1830s from like a, um, a show, right? A, um, let me choose a character, right character in a show, but from like back into the 1830s. Right. And it's like jumped Jim Crow or something. Right? It's the character. Thomas daddy
Speaker 0 14:51 is the character in the little show, right? Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so you have these C so minstrelsy becomes this dominant form of entertainment, um, across the United States. Actually. I mean it's, while it may start in the South, it kind of spreads pretty rapidly. And I want to mention there are a couple of books I'm going to mention it. I think we're going to try to be a little more diligent in this. Um, one I wanted to mention, um, right now there was this book that came out just a couple of years ago by Brian Robertson. It's called blackface nation. Um, highly recommended. It's a really interesting book. And what do you, what Roberts argues is that in the 19th century you have the kind of this conflicting cultural or competing cultural forums. And he says, one is this kind of middle class folk music from the North.
Speaker 0 15:47 This, he calls it the Hutchinson's, uh, if I remember the name correctly, uh, and then he, uh, it's kind of opposed by this blackface minstrelsy and blackface minstrelsy. Um, you know, what it involved was blacking up, right? And what would happen is you would take court and you would burn cork and kind of make this, um, uh, you know, Ash or sit out of it. And, and white men would put this on their face and then they would draw kind of exaggerated lips and other facial features and they would play this, you know, characterized version of these, of these stock figures in Jim crow's one of them. And there have been interesting arguments made that at various times people who are members of ethnicities that weren't necessarily viewed as white, um, used blacking up to cement their whiteness. And I think it's a really interesting idea.
Speaker 0 16:50 And in fact, we know at several points in the history of menstrualsey, we get black men who actually black up to play menstrual figures, right? And, and by doing that, um, it's a really complicated kind of portrayal of race going on there and everything. But, but Jim Crow comes from this character and this book by Brian Roberts, he argues eventually blackface minstrelsy kind of wins and it creates kind of dominant forms of entertainment. Um, there's been a lot of contemporary critique of this. Um, couple of years ago there was a, a song and a music video called this is America. And it kind of pays homage to that thing of, uh, the, the black man as object of minstrelsy. This, this even today, uh, critics of contemporary sports culture in the United States point to this, uh, critics of, you know, entertainment in general, ask, you know, have we really moved beyond minstrelsy? Have we replaced the black face with African Americans being forced to adopt or embrace certain roles?
Speaker 1 18:09 Well, it's important to point out to what it was, right? I mean you, you're saying it's like a form of entertainment and all this and I think that it's grown and evolved over time and it's interesting to state that it's still, it's still continuing, right in different forms, but it is this form of entertainment that is meant to poke fun, right? It's, it's not just to, it's the entertainment. The entertaining aspect of it was that it was making fun of black people.
Speaker 0 18:38 Well, I don't know. I mean, Roberts makes an interesting argument, so he says it's called this love crime. Racism is what he calls it. And what it is, was this, this idea that as long as a black person conformed to the stereotypes being presented in menstrual shows, they could be lovable in the eyes of white Americans and nonthreatening.
Speaker 1 19:03 Well, but it's these crazy stereotypes, right? About superstitious or happy go lucky whistles, the lustful, all of these things. But those things get them in trouble too, right? Like there's, it's a noble relation.
Speaker 0 19:19 Well, yeah, ultimately, yes, that's the thing is it's, it is a damned if you do damned if you don't situation, but I mean, Robert's kind of arguments interesting. The idea that, uh, as long as black Americans conformed to what white audiences thought they should be doing and this, there wasn't as much problem. The prob, the main flaw in that though was this kind of, how should they act? It was very much a moving target. Right. And you know, we can see this kind of moving out of this into kind of the DePree history of Jim Crow. Um, we can see this even in the Mississippi black codes, right? The black codes we talked about in the reconstruction episode. I mean, I want you to listen to the language of this, this legal kind of moving from Robert's kind of cultural history. And we'll get back to a couple of points he makes and some other historians make.
Speaker 0 20:12 But here's from 1866, this is the first black code, um, all Friedman freed Negroes and mulattoes in this state. And this is Mississippi over the age of 18 years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866 or thereafter without lawful employment or business or found unlawfully assembling themselves together earlier in the day or nighttime and all white persons. So assembling themselves with Friedman, freed Negro or mulattoes or usually associating with Friedman, fried Negroes or mulattoes on terms of equality or living in or fornication with a freed woman, freed Negro or mulatto shall be deemed vagrants and on conviction thereof shall be fine in a Subnautica seeding, in the case of a freed man freed Negro or mulatto, $50 and a white man, $200 and in prison at the discretion of the court, the free day grow not exceeding 10 days and the white man not exceeding six months. So you read this and if you don't pay much attention to it, it seems like the penalties for a white person breaking these laws are more extreme, but then you think about what it's actually saying and that's not true at all. Correct? Yeah, go on. Well, excuse me. I mean, it's this idea that first of all, it's, it's being designed to prevent black and white people from Congress,
Speaker 1 21:43 right? Which people have found to be dangerous,
Speaker 0 21:46 which means it's design, right? Which means it's actually designed to undermine reconstruction, right? 1866, this is going into effect. And the idea is it's there to undermine any possibility of cooperation in the reconstruction. But then you add to this, um, white Mississippians could avoid the penalty by swearing a popper zone. However, for black Mississippians, this was not an option. And the law went on to state the duty of the sheriff of the proper County to hire out, said Freeman free Negro or mulatto to any person who will for the shortest period of service pay said fine or forfeiture and all costs. Uh, so basically if you know, a white person convicted under this law could say they were a popper and couldn't pay it and they would be released, whereas a black person, if they did this, if they could not pay it, they couldn't swear out a Popper's. Instead, the sheriff would hire those people out to whomever would get them paid for the least number of days. Work
Speaker 1 22:58 sounds familiar, right? Hire the people out to work against their world. Right? The code is designed to reinflate people and there's no, to me there's no, there's no secret about it. Right. And the idea that there's a control over labor still that it's not the plantation owner who controls the labor, but now it's been institutionalized to where the state or the local government controls the labor. The sheriff controls labor. That's yeah.
Speaker 0 23:26 Thing. I mean at the sheriff is like explicitly put in charge of this and we know, I mean, and this is the thing, a lot of,
Speaker 0 23:36 a lot of people who go into this role as sheriff in these Southern locations are actually coming out of having worked at plantations, right? As slave drivers, as slave catchers. I mean this is, there's a, there's a kind of progression in their career right there. They move from one job to the other. And so we've got kind of that kind of cultural background of why it's named Jim Crow. But kind of the, the, the, the social reality of it is this, is that, I think what you said was right, is that the black codes create the situation that through which Jim Kerr arises and it's basically an attempt to reinsulate black people there. Now there's a recognition they cannot legally reinsulate them the same way they did before, however, they create a new segregated society. Um, one where, uh, equality is strictly theoretical for black people. It's nothing practical, right? It's nothing. No, it's nothing practical. What do you mean by that though? Well, they can't, they can't. So, Oh yeah, we've got these constitutional amendments, a maitre citizen, fine, fine, fine. But we also have these other laws in Mississippi of things you have to do before you're allowed to vote.
Speaker 1 24:59 Right? And then that just creates confusion too, right? So there's a confusion over like, well, what takes precedent? Is it this co the law of the land, right? We already went to war over federal government intervention, right? Or is it, is it down to the small municipality or something or the small state government. And you do start to see cases go forward all the way up to the Supreme court that end up cementing this. So they'll make these small policies, um, statewide or citywide or something, right, like rural township wide and they're pretty adhere to because the law of the land, so to speak, there's like, well the sheriff, the sheriff is in charge who used to be an overseer and all this kind of stuff. Right? So there's fear there, but then you do have cases that make it all the way up to the Supreme court and then they are upheld
Speaker 0 25:54 in, yeah.
Speaker 1 25:55 You know, I mean in direct opposition to the 14th amendment. And that's a big question I get from students a lot. It's like, Whoa, how did the 13, 14, 15 amendments pass? But then these things are still considered legal. So I think that can lead us into talking about Plessy versus Ferguson, 1896, um, that not overturned until Brown versus board of education. 1950 is at 53.
Speaker 0 26:22 Um, yeah, I mean this is so, I mean, what's interesting though, Mississippi does reject the 13th amendment, right? That's the thing is you've got, uh, the only Southern States that those amendments pass in our Southern States that have kind of radical reconstruction legislature seated, right. That if they don't, they tend to not pass it. Now, not all 50 States have to pass a constitutional
Speaker 1 26:48 right. But that's the thing. It doesn't mean that it's not the law of the land just because Mississippi rejected it. Right? But that's the, that's the constant tension. And this is the tension that we still see to this day with many issues versus, you know, state versus federal, state versus federal. And we oftentimes see these geographically Southern States still going against what federal mandate is. And there's still a lot of confusion and disruption and fight in the courts over multiple issues, some related, still very much to, um, to voting. Uh, but then there's a plethora of other issues. And I'm thinking abortion mostly. But, um, you know, there's still this tension. And so when I have students who have said to me so many times, slavery was a long time ago, it was like, no, the problems that are rooted there, I mean there's no, you can't separate those things.
Speaker 1 27:42 You can't say, Oh well slavery was over. So then all the other problems go away because of it. It's like, no, it, it goes into another phase, and we touched on this a little bit last week, but one of the main ones is the institutionalization of it, but then the law, right? How justice comes in. Justice in quotes really comes in and then just reinstates this new slavery. Um, and Michelle Alexander wrote the really popular book that, um, many people read outside of academia, the new Jim Crow, she talks about announce incarceration and how the prison industrial complex starts with this conduct leasing stuff. And the 13th amendment says explicitly that you can be enslaved if you've been arrested for a crime. So you see all these connections taking place, right? If you make vagrancy a crime, well, who gets to judge who's being Vagrant? If vagrancy is a crime, you are now a slave. Again, and so it's like who's designing the laws? And then who breaks the laws? People think that the law is so black and white, but really, I mean it is designed with
Speaker 0 28:52 well, but is it is black and white. There's a version of the law that applies to white people and there's a version of the law that applies to black people. And I mean to keep it, to put it in perspective, I mean jump forward to the war on drugs. Right? And I always, you know, I mean this is the thing with Jim Crow is such an expansive issue and covers so much time that I often jump around when I teach this as students. If you jump forward to the war on drugs, there's a decision made by the federal government to prosecute possession of crack cocaine very differently than possession of cocaine, powdered cocaine. Right? And it's black versus white, right? It's a question. Right? And the question is, powdered cocaine, cocaine is consumed generally by upper class people, whereas crack cocaine tends to be used people, um, stereotypically in African American communities. Right?
Speaker 1 29:49 So, in other words, laws are drafted in order to target certain
Speaker 0 29:54 into the eighties and nineties. Right? I mean, it's not, so it's not like this thing magically disappear. So I mean, you said, you know, we should move into Plessy versus Ferguson. I think we should, but I think it's important to note. So I just wanted to note this. So Jim Crow as a term related to what we're talking about, which is the creation of an institutionalized segregated America and kind of what that means, uh, it's actually coined in the New York times 19 or 1892. There's an article that's actually criticizing voting laws in the South. It's criticizing these restrictive voting laws and it actually uses this term Jim Crow. So while Jim Crow is also a cultural reference point, it's also this early critique that's emerging out of some newspapers in the North by the 1890s. That maybe is everything isn't well, right. And we move into new Orleans, Louisiana, 1890 right. And railroads, right? So Louisiana passes the separate car act and uh, it required that, uh, railroads provide separate cars for black and white passengers that you could not just take one car and kind of have a line that divided the, you know, one section from the other. There had to be actually separate cars. And here's the thing,
Speaker 0 31:31 um, a group of people, uh, come together to repeal the law and it's a pretty diverse group and as often happens in cases that eventually ended up getting her by the Supreme court, they actually get this man Homer Plessy to purposely break the law. So there can be a test case about it. Right,
Speaker 1 32:00 right. And this is something that I always talk about with students too, is that their resistance to Jim Crow does not start with Rosa parks sitting at the front of the box. I mean, it's right, it's resistance does not start in the 1950s. And we do have these very celebrated figures that most certainly should be celebrated, right. But like there's always been resistance and there's always, they've always wanted, there's always been an attempt to test these cases and all this kind of thing. Um, in this case though, it's kind of,
Speaker 0 32:33 well, I mean it's an interesting thing. So homo plus, he's an interesting guy. So according to Louisiana law, he's black. Um, even though he was classified, and this goes back to these old ways to racially classify people as octoroon, which meant he was seven eighths white European descent and one eighth African descent. Um, Homer Plessy presented with a very, a Caucasian complexion. Um, he, uh, could pass right quite easily. And why society and, but legally under Louisiana law, if somebody was aware of his classification, he was required to sit while he was, even if they weren't aware, he was required to sit in the car that was reserved for colored people is, which is a term that they used at the time. So on June 7th, 1892, he buys this ticket, he buys a first class ticket and boards in the white car of the East Louisiana railroad in new Orleans.
Speaker 0 33:39 And it's bound for a community called Covington and the railroad, um, opposed the laws. Well, right. I mean, here's an interesting intersection of interest, right? So the railroad hated the laws. Well, first of all, it costs them money, right? They have to run a separate car. Right? It's insane from that perspective because it's super inconvenient economically speaking. Right? It doesn't make sense. Right. Um, so the railroad company knew what was going on. Plessy was doing this, hoping to get arrested and to make sure he actually gets arrested. The committee goes even further and they hire a private detective with a rest powers to detain Plessy. They want to make sure he gets arrested for this, right. To make the test case go through. Uh, and no, just average policeman's going gonna arrest Plessy because they're not going to look at him and assume he doesn't belong in that car.
Speaker 0 34:44 Correct. Yeah. It's a pretty interesting little scheme, right, because technically under the law, so, but it brings all these questions about what is white, right, right. Well, I mean, so, so plus he gets on the car, he gets his ticket, he sits down and a railroad employee, remember the railroad knew he was going to do this. A railroad employee says he needs to go sit in the other car that's reserved for black passengers. Plus he refuses. And the detective arrested him immediately of the train was stopped. Plus he's taken off and he's remanded for trial in Orleans parish. So success, successful. So they're successful, they got this done. And what ends up happening is this makes its way, makes its way all the way to the Supreme court. And the Supreme,
Speaker 1 35:40 to me it's such a clear case, right? Well that's the thing is like
Speaker 0 35:45 equal access is supposed to be the thing.
Speaker 1 35:48 Equal protection law amendment. What's the Supreme court ruling?
Speaker 0 35:56 Um, is separate but equal is constitutionally permitted.
Speaker 1 36:03 Right. And this is the really important one that I always try to include several Supreme court cases in all my classes. But this is the one that most people they know separate but equal. They've heard that phrase, but it's 1896 and it's this specific instance. And what does that mean? What does separate but equal mean? And how does it end up being that like, okay, yeah, that doesn't violate the 14th amendment because if you're giving equal protection under the law, the idea is, well, if you give equal accommodations, then there's no problem to segregation. So it upholds 1896 upholds racial segregation and racial segregation started during reconstruction in small ways here and there. The public school systems were interestingly enough, pretty well integrated all through reconstruction in many places. North Carolina, Louisiana and new Orleans has always a special case because there's been so much, there's so much mixing of the races in new Orleans for many decades. Right? But you see the cementing of, well, you can be equally protected under the law. As long as the accommodations are equal, then it's not a problem. And then it's this ruling that starts to kind of tear people apart where there isn't in things aren't integrated. Whereas they had been a little bit before. I mean, the transportation thing was interesting because I believe Florida was the first state to implement, um, the racially segregated, uh, transportation. And then it quickly spreads. Like Louisiana, Mississippi would be, you know,
Speaker 0 37:39 and argue it's a continuation of something we've talked about before. I think it's, um, so once, um, black people are emancipated once slavery's abolished in the United States, um, the delineator between who is black and who is white becomes a little more ambiguous. And I would argue the creation of a racially segregated space is just a new version of that. Right? So, whereas before there was this distinction between free and slave that also marked your membership in one racial group or the other after the civil war and after reconstruction, the delineator becomes where are you spatially? Right? You know, what places are you allowed to be in? When are you allowed to be there? Um,
Speaker 1 38:28 but it's so ambiguous, right? It's, well, it is intentionally ambiguous, but it becomes so important, right. To pass, as you said earlier, or you know, like, yeah, what spaces you're allowed to be in are not allowed to be in and who you're marrying or not married. Whereas it was really kind of cut and dry prior because it was like, well, you're either enslaved or you're not enslaved. Right. But it, it becomes more ambiguous, but also more pressing to, to make more from racial lines. And we'll see this as we move through the next several weeks where we're talking about immigration and what is the stat, what was the status of immigrants in terms of their, you know, are they white, are they not white? Were the, your, were the European immigrants coming from and how are they treated? And race becomes so important and, and cemented, whereas it is, there's a lot of historians who've been talking about the fluidity of race really prior to this era where there's just so much more. Um,
Speaker 6 39:34 okay,
Speaker 0 39:34 well there's harmony. There's hard there of racial lines, right?
Speaker 1 39:39 Yeah. Because slavery has ended. So there does like, it's almost like trying to reorder society in order to make it a certain way. It's like you do have to harden the racial lines in order to say, this group is this, or this group is that. But just the very, just saying that sentence right there. Should make everyone realize, well, there's no such thing as separate but equal. Cause there's no such thing as equal. You're separating people.
Speaker 0 40:04 And this eventually when the Supreme court overturns it with Brown V education or kind of repudiates it, they there, there's a statement, right. That separate can never be equal. Separate is inherently unequal.
Speaker 1 40:19 Right, exactly. And it did like, I know they know that, I know that there wasn't, there was never an idea that Oh yeah, it is, it's totally equal. It was just trying to finagle, it was trying to, you know, take a shortcut or something, but it's like there's no way you think it's actually equally,
Speaker 0 40:39 we talked about this last time, right? I mean it's, it's not like the North is a racial paradise after the civil war. Right. And they're like, um, welcoming, uh, former slaves, like freed black people in with open arms into their communities. Right.
Speaker 1 40:55 Well, and so much of this racial segregation, um, and so many of these laws and ordinances and stuff originated in Boston.
Speaker 0 41:03 Yeah. Well, and you're going to S right? And you're going to see it actually expand and it's going to start to, you know, this happens right at the end of the 20th century or 19th century and you're gonna see across the 20th century, um, this idea of segregating people based on membership and perceived race or ethnicity expands, right? And you're going to get restrictive covenants and communities. You're going to get red lining. Um, you're going to get a lot of this. And, and finally what happens, it's funny you mentioned Boston because Boston becomes a big epicenter in the school busing situation, right? In the sixties, seventies, and even into the early eighties is that Boston becomes one of the last holdouts on school busing, busing students to balance, uh, racial compositions at, at schools,
Speaker 1 41:56 right? Because Boston was one of the birthplaces of many of these, um, segregated ordinances and, um, you know, racial segregation and policy surrounding it, um, in the Northeast Boston kind of is the pioneer there. And it is important to point out that, um, you know, when we say things like the South, immediately our minds go, you know, slavery, segregation, violence, all this, and is, that's fair, right? Like these things definitely are true. But when you say the North, there's so much more fluidity in what you imagine. But the point is that it's not like there is a racial paradise there. And when people do start moving, I talk about, you know, we'll talk about the great migration of course a little bit later, but when people start moving, when black people start moving into Northern cities, it's not like, you know, everyone, they're just like, yay.
Speaker 1 42:51 You know, I mean, racism is not, uh, you know, exclusive to Mississippi. And I believe it's Malcolm X who has the famous quote, right? Um, Mississippi is America. You know, he says there's no, there's no separation. You can't just blame everybody in the South and can't just blame Mississippi. Mississippi is America. And he says, if you have a filthy room in your house, you can't say, I have a clean house because you have a filthy room in your house. You know, your house is dirty, right? Like it's like it's all under an umbrella. And so to even try to paint the North as somehow blameless and I think it makes it a little easier to, and I would blame that on,
Speaker 1 43:39 I don't want to say blame it on K-12, but like, it's so much easier to create good guys and bad guys when you're talking about history to young kids. Right? And so we get this idea cemented in us from the time we're very young, that like the North, the good guys, the South, the bad guys, and then it just kind of goes from there. I mean, I don't know, I wasn't educated in the South. You were, I'm sure that there is a little different, but it becomes really difficult once students get into college and beyond to try to complicate that and parsed out and be like, you know, it's not that straightforward. And to try to tease that out a little bit, it's uncomfortable for people to think like, Oh, Boston. Yeah, yeah. Boston, you know, there's racism everywhere and it's, it's uncomfortable, but it's like, it's important to discuss.
Speaker 0 44:23 Well, I mean it's so not to turn our attention back to the South and portrayed in a certain way. I think it's important kind of we end this episode and the last kind of quarter of it to focus on, it's the wedge that I use when I talk about Jim Kurtz, my students and I talk about lynching, right? And we kind of talk about lynching and I show them images. Uh, they're disturbing images and I think, but it's, I think it's important for Americans to kind of see these things. But I mean that's one thing that does happen to black people in much greater numbers in the South.
Speaker 4 45:05 Okay?
Speaker 1 45:06 Yes. Regionally speaking much greater. And I also cover this, I'm not in, I mean it's of course in relation to Jim Crow, but I'll have a whole week talking about lynching and you're right. Sharing images and stories. And I assign Ida B Wells, um, on lynching. Right? And I mean it's, it's something that students are so uncomfortable with. And that's typically where I get the re the complaint you were talking about like, well why don't we ever talk about anything nice. And it's like,
Speaker 0 45:33 right. Well, I mean, so let me, I want, I have a little day. You know, I love data, I love my data.
Speaker 1 45:39 I love data, I love data.
Speaker 0 45:42 I want to give some data here. So Mississippi leads the nation in lynchings, um, over 581 we know of 581, we assume there are more, a lot of counties expunged records or hid lynchings. Um, oftentimes sheriffs were involved somehow in lynchings. Uh, so a lot of the data's incomplete, but well over 581 lynchings happen in Mississippi during this period and more than 90% of those lynched were black. So Lynchian becomes, you know, there's form of vigilante justice and it kind of had been for some time, but it takes on a racial characteristic during Jim Crow. It's aimed at black bodies much more than it is aimed at white bodies.
Speaker 1 46:32 Yeah. And I'd like to point out really quickly that lynching is acting outside of the law to, like you said, vigilante justice to try to bring justice. And oftentimes lynching happened when somebody was in custody. Somebody would be in custody in a local jail or something and then you'd have a mob of people come to the jail, drag the individual out, torture be murder, maim that person in the presence and company of everybody in the town. And oftentimes the, the sheriff was involved or the deputies were involved and you know, that there was, there was very little, um, the lines were very blurry between, um, the vigilantes and the general justice system. And so it becomes a spectacle. And to discuss it in this way too is very uncomfortable, but that people would go to a lynching as if it were some sort of sporting event.
Speaker 1 47:26 I mean, it was, it was known, it was advertised. People would send postcards from lynchings with photographs of somebody who was murdered, maimed, um, and at a photo of them like hanging from a tree or burned or things like that. And it is such a grotesque, I mean it, every time I have to do, it's so hard, right? And it's so hard to teach about this, but it's like this is the reality that black people in Mississippi and other places throughout the South were living on a day to day basis in fear that this would happen. And so to say, well, slavery is over. Okay, yeah. That's one horror that's over. But then this is a whole other horror that is birthed as a result and a backlash to slavery and a backlash to reconstruction. And this insane violence is what rules
Speaker 0 48:18 and the violence and the violent ratchets up. Right. I mean, so the most famous lynching in Mississippi is, is undoubtedly the lynching of Emmett till, uh, takes place fairly close to where you live. Right?
Speaker 1 48:31 Yes. Takes place close to where I live. And there was actually a couple of lynchings where I currently live in Oxford. There's some famous, I'm not famous, infamous, um, instances of lynching that happened right here in Oxford. And, um, I actually have a colleague whose grandfather was lynched. I mean, this is really pertinent to everyone,
Speaker 0 48:54 right? So, so whereas lynching prior to this time would have been used to bring criminals to justice who kind of were somehow escaping punishment during the gym career, right?
Speaker 1 49:07 Still not okay. Still not okay. But
Speaker 0 49:09 now it becomes a way to punish,
Speaker 4 49:13 uh,
Speaker 0 49:15 behavior deemed inappropriate by society, by white society, by those they're trying to exclude. So what you end up happening is Emmett till, he's 14 years old, he spending the summer with his family down in Mississippi and he gets accused of whistling at a white woman. So this is a 14 year old boy. This happens too, right? This is not a man, this is not a criminal. This is not somebody needs a child. He's not threatening anyone or anything like that. Um, you know, a group of men hunt till down, beat him, gouged one of his eyes out, shot him in the head, and then at some point tied a 70 pound cotton gin fan around his neck with Barb wire before dumping him in the Tallahatchie river.
Speaker 1 50:04 Yes. And I drive over the Tallahatchie river often when I'm traveling. And I can't just think about that, right. I mean, it's, this happens in 1950
Speaker 0 50:17 Jeff homies at 54, um, 1950s. Right? Well, right. And his mother Emmett Till's mother, she in Chicago, she's in Chicago,
Speaker 1 50:28 Emmett Till's body gets returned and she's encouraged, she wants to have a public funeral. She's encouraged to have a closed casket funeral. And she actually refuses. She says, no, it's going to be open know, and people walk past his body. People need to see what they did to my son. Yes. And this, this is in magazines and it for the first time really makes a national story out of a horror that had been happening throughout the South for decades. But finally, Mamie till his mother becomes sort of the spokeswoman and activist on behalf of her son, on behalf of her murdered child. Um, and it brings this issue of lynching to the forefront. And I'd like to point out that in the 1950s, I mean, that's not that long ago, my parents were alive, right? I mean, it's not, but I mean the lotion had gone right and the lynching had gone on and on for decades, right?
Speaker 1 51:26 I mean, Georgia had 531 lynchings in the period from Jim Crow of Jim Crow. Right? Basically from the 1890s through the civil rights movement, 531 there's a 10 year period where mobs kill at least one black person every month from 1890 1900 right? There are these public lynchings and these lynchings aren't, so it's not a bunch of men and KU Klux Klan robes hanging or somehow violently or brutally murdering one person, public public affairs and children to watch. I mean, so I show some of the images I show my students are really disturbing. There's one eye that always comes back to me. It's a black man hanging in a tree and all these white people are kind of gathered around and there's this young girl, this young white girl, she's kind of in the front of the picture and she's looking at the camera. She's not exactly smiling, but she does not seem disturbed by it at all.
Speaker 1 52:35 No. Because it was, it was such a normal part of life. And I, I think I know exactly which image you're talking about, but here's the point of it too. So you look at those numbers and it is used to instill fear in every black person, right? It is used as white people and in white people who would help them, right? Yes. I mean it is, it is a tactic. It is a scare tactic in order to violently force a means of social order. And here's the thing. I mean, you never know what you're going to be targeted for. It's not like, well, if you follow this exact set of rules, you'll be fine. Right? Because you have a little boy who's buying bubblegum in Mississippi. And for the record, the woman who said he whistled at her, she recanted that story. Carolyn, I'd also like to point out that she is, her nephew is the governor of Mississippi, or was the governor of Mississippi is, I have to check on that.
Speaker 1 53:35 But still in PA, like these people, the Brians are still very much empowered. Mississippi. I'm gonna lose my job after I say this. But, um, no, it's just important to point out that like this is still like there, there are still it's reverberating, right? And there isn't a specific social code like, well, if you do this, this, this and this, you'll be fine. So people are terrorized every single day. Terrorized, wondering, am I going to get lynched? You know, and they're seeing, I mean, the bodies, um, are abused and used in order to instill and instill fear and incite violence and to normalize, normalize this amount of violence onto black bodies. And this is what we're still seeing a problem with today with police pilots towards black Americans, is that for centuries it has been normalized to be violent to black people. And we stand in pictures and have no sense of fear or horror on our face because it's been institutionalized, number one through the constitution, through court rulings, but it's been normalized socially.
Speaker 0 54:41 Right. Well, and I think that's the thing is this idea of, uh, violence on black bodies vs white bodies is it has been normalized to the point where it's kind of a, a restating of one of the kind of pillars of slavery of the channel slavery system was that black bodies were always subject to the whims of white masters, right? And that included an acting of violence. And that could be physical violence, uh, uh, maiming death, but it goes also be sexual violence. And a lot of these lynchings had strong sexual components, especially when sex became involved, right? So you would end up with, um, you know, miscegenation laws exist across the South here in this line, basically the lies, if you are black and, and many locales of the South defined being black is the one drop rule, right? If you were black, you could not have relations with somebody who was a member of the white race, right?
Speaker 0 55:49 Whatever that was. Right? But you know, you had communities, you had mobs that would enforce this type of justice, but you're also have sheriffs who would arrest people for this. And you know, the violence that was enacted when that happened. And there's one particular incident that I talk about with my student where a black man and a white woman were living together. Um, and this was in the early part of the 20th century and you know, it was reported to the sheriff and the sheriff kind of warned them. Um, so I think several times, but eventually the mob kind of enacted justice. And the way the mob enacted justice was by mutilating the genitals of both of them, uh, did not kill the white woman named her, um, but killed the black man and mutilated as generals in the process. So not only, I mean this, these lynchings were meant to send a clear message to broader communities. They weren't even meant to send a message to the person being killed necessarily. Right. It was to send a bra, a message to the black.
Speaker 1 57:01 Yes, yes, exactly. To the community more generally. And also, um, you know, to, to send a message, not just to instill fear, but to still instill a sense of ownership. Right. Like we own you, we will do whatever we want to you, your body, your family, your children. Um, we will still separate families. Uh, we will still take men away from their wives and their children. Um, and we will humiliate and emasculate, um, these men and we'll be violent towards them because even though you're not property, we still own you. I mean, the message was so clear and, and even, you know, I hate to talk about numbers in a way that that diminishes some, but like, you know, over the course of many decades, you're looking at the numbers of 500, 600 things like that. Like you're spacing out like one a month, one a month, one a month. That's enough, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's to send that message and to reverberate into, to reinstill that message. It's not an outright war. It's not like hand to hand combat, but it's just this constant reminder to everybody in the community. You stay in line, we still own you. You're not allowed to step out of line. Right. And it's, it's so terrifying. It's terrifying.
Speaker 0 58:20 Well, but this kind of reverberates even today, right, with the whole thing of driving while black.
Speaker 1 58:27 Yes, exactly. I mean, and this is what people of color, when they're pulled over by police, they're terrified. They're terrified
Speaker 0 58:36 because one of the kind of things that upheld this Jim Crow segregation was that for black Americans, there was no recourse with local law enforcement. In fact, local law enforcement was either there at lynchings or their relatives were right. Even if the sheriff wasn't technically they're a member of the Sheriff's family. Inevitably
Speaker 1 58:59 it was very much sanctioned. Yeah. Because nobody got in trouble for it. I mean they would have photos, people's full faces. Cause that's another point you made that so interesting, right? Like this isn't clansmen going in hooded in the middle of the night to take people away and nobody knows who they are. No, these people were having picnics and taking pictures, literally picnics at the site of a lynching and taking photographs. People knew who participated. There was and there was no intervention. And this goes back to what we discussed last week. We're with the civil war, right? There was this punishment was never properly meted out after the war. The North and the union had just like, okay, let's just come back together. Like, okay, we'll forget about, just let them do whatever they want down there and it goes out of control. They're building governments, they're, they're institutionalizing racism, they're building these institutions, these local jails and prisons and the leasing systems and all this, and it goes completely unchecked. When reconstruction ends, it goes unchecked. So of course it's going to spiral into this disaster. Right? That's still unraveling right now, unfortunately.
Speaker 0 00:12 So you mean history isn't progressive?
Speaker 1 00:16 No, God, I'm so fired up. I didn't think I was going to get this. Like,
Speaker 0 00:21 so anytime I give my Jim Crow lecture or my lynching lecture in the survey course, I get like this because for many students it is something they don't know about. They don't, and this is the thing is, well this is the thing, I think in K through 12 history education, they do a pretty good job of hiding this across the nation.
Speaker 1 00:42 Well, it's, first of all, it's a difficult subject to discuss, number one. And I will admit, I didn't know anything about lynching until I got into college. I really didn't. I knew the word. I vaguely understood, you know, kind of what was happening. I didn't really know because no, it's not discussed it cause it's not, it's not a pretty moment in our history. Um, but it makes sense when you understand it's vital for understanding current events. It's vital. Yeah. And you know, I had my notes here and I'm like, Oh, Plessy versus Ferguson, you know, I'm looking over my notes and they're just so like vanilla notes. Right. But then I start talking about it and I get so amped up, particularly living here in Mississippi now where the wounds are still so fresh. Right. Um, well there was violence enacted on the Emmett till Memorial. Okay. So I've been, I've been wanting to say that I'm afraid because I don't know, I don't wanna make anybody at the university man. But there was, there were students from all mess. No, go, please save my job. So there are students from old miss who like posed with a picture of the shot up Emmett till Memorial. They chopped it up.
Speaker 0 01:55 Emmett till Memorial has ever since it went up is like a target for people. People vandalize it and target it, but they actually posted a picture on social media of them next to it and it put the university in a situation where they had to act right. They could not ignore it because these were clearly students from Ole miss who had done this. What I think is interesting as kind of, um, conservators now I've come up with a think, uh, is a Memorial that is much more bullet resistant and vandalism resistance. But I think it's so there's just something so symbolic about even the Memorial marking where Emmett Till's mutilated body was found,
Speaker 1 02:40 is perpetually mutilated. This was last year I'd like to point out this happened. It happened like a month before I moved here and I saw the new story and like my house was already on the market and I was like, Oh, um, you know, because these are students and I, and here's the thing, I, I love teaching. I love what I do. I love where I teach. And I love the opportunity to talk to students about this because so much of this is just out of plain, flat ignorance. And I don't mean that in an insulting way. I mean it in literally you are ignorant of facts and of history and of knowing what's happened and you've been, you, there has been a disservice to you into your education and to your possibilities in this world if you have not been told about what happened.
Speaker 1 03:29 And if youth, if there's still like if you, if you know all of that and you still have that hate in your heart, I'm not sure what to do from there, I suppose. But like, so much of this is bred out of ignorance. And again, I, I wanna, I wanna emphasize, I not saying ignorance and I think I'm dismissive. I'm saying I'm lack of knowledge not knowing and it's just, it's not knowing and it's not done. I hope it's not done on a mouse. And like I love the opportunity to have students in my class to talk through this, to go over it and to talk openly about it because I want to know what did you learn? What have you learned about Emmett till? What do you know about lynching and what would possibly encourage somebody to go and vandalize a sign memorializing a child who was brutally murdered? Right? Like let's talk about that. I want to get into why it is that this is still happening in the 21st century. Right? And so the opportunity to do that, like I don't teach because I make a lot of money. I teach because I'm super passionate about it. And like even doing this today, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know I was going to get so riled up. But this is so important and we can circle back to it again and again and again as we marched.
Speaker 0 04:50 I think we'll be back to Emmett till when we talk about things like Brown V education and things
Speaker 1 04:56 most certainly, and there's a lot more to get into. There's a lot more to it.
Speaker 0 05:00 So this is all, so obviously we couldn't deal with everything today. Um, but I think we've, we've kind of touched on some big things and I think one thing that's really important is if you are using our podcast to kind of supplement teaching at home during this time of kind of self isolation. Don't shy away from difficult topics, right? This is the thing is I think our education system does a disservice to children and future citizens, the United States by shying away from these really difficult topics in American history. And I think you have to look at them. You kind of have to lay them open and kind of talk about what's going on there. Um, now I'm not saying I'm not advocating showing lynching photos to a kindergartner, right? But what I'm saying is right when the time is appropriate, I think you need to have these conversations and uh, particularly if you notice kind of if you're talking about the civil war with your children and then you talk about reconstruction and you get the sense that they feel everything is fine after that, you need to do some corrective education there and say, well look, it's not actually fine.
Speaker 1 06:11 Well, and the other thing is like, there's always an opportunity for improvement. If you're teaching history to your kids, whether they're an AP us history in 11th grade or you're having a conversation with your college student who's taking us history class or they're in fifth grade, right? You can't teach about history as being this upward trajectory of progress. Like things were bad and now they're good and they're only going to get better. It is so important to talk about history as this roller coaster of events. Bad things happen, good things happen, worst things happen, right? It goes up, it goes down. Um, there's things that we're proud of. There's things that we're ashamed of. There's things were horrified by, and we have to accept all of it. It's like a family, right? Like there's a messiness and every family and you've got to just like embrace all of it and you got to embrace all the messiness if you want to work through it. And that's, that's what it is as a nation. If you got to embrace all of the messiness, if we're going to improve in any way. Right. And that's our charge. I mean, people ask why I teach history, and it's like, because we've got to do better. We've got to just like work to do better in. The best way to do that is to have a good understanding of things that have happened so we can improve and do better next time.
Speaker 0 07:23 Yup. Well said. One the episode there. Well said, Hillary. Well, thank you very much for joining us today on an incomplete history. I'm Jeff. I'm Hillary. Until next time. Bye bye.
Speaker 2 07:35 <inaudible>
Speaker 3 07:47 <inaudible>.
