The Rise & Fall of Jim Crow

April 24th, 2008

C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Carrier of Jim Crow is an excellent overview of the Jim Crow system from its early days to its decline in the fifties and sixties. He shows that Jim Crow actually started in the north and that northerners have far more of a history of racism than many of them would like to believe. He also shows that segregation did not exist under slavery and that, for the most part, Jim Crow was not in effect for over twenty years after emancipation. The system was put in place beginning in the 1890s as a byproduct of class struggle and imperialism. The ruling class, particularly in the south, reacted to working-class movements, especially the Populists (a multi-racial movement of predominantly poor farmers) by inflaming racial tensions in order to divide the poor against each other along racial lines, leading to white supremacy campaigns and the establishment of the Jim Crow system. Woodward covers the subsequent history of Jim Crow and has a good analysis of its decline, arguing that Jim Crow was demolished by the Cold War, decolonization, and direct action by the black liberation movement. Overall the book is well written and very persuasive, with the exception of its last chapter.

Strange Career shows the connection between the evolution of white supremacy in the United States and the evolution of white supremacy in the broader world. The Jim Crow system rose and fell with the rise and fall of colonialism and classical imperialism around the world. As the United States (and other nations) conquered the world, the white man’s burden and other similar racist ideologies used to justify imperialism also increased racism within the conquering nations. As whites gained more power abroad they also gained more power at home. The federal government could hardly intervene in the south to stop racism when the feds themselves were expanding racism abroad. Jim Crow was effectively a domestic version of the “civilizing mission.”

The decline and fall of Jim Crow also had important international connections. Jim Crow became a liability during the Cold War because the Soviet Union and other opponents of the American empire used it to attack the U.S. in their propaganda. World public opinion was moving to the left and in an anti-racist direction in the middle of the twentieth century; if the U.S. didn’t make at least some small moves in the same direction it would alienate most of the planet.

At least as important, probably more important, were the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist rebellions that shook most of the world in the three decades following the Second World War. These rebellions inspired people of color within the United States to also rebel. Global white supremacy was weakened by the achievement of formal political independence by nations in Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. This increased the incentive for the U.S. to repeal Jim Crow because not doing so increased the probability that new nation-states run by people of color would take a hostile stance towards the U.S. The black liberation movement of the fifties, sixties, and seventies in the U.S. was in many ways the American version of a broader worldwide rebellion by people of color against their oppressors.

Although I very much agree with most of Strange Career I do not agree with Woodward’s last chapter, “The Career Becomes Stranger.” This chapter effectively equates black nationalists and separatists with white supremacist segregationists. Hence, Jim Crow’s career became “strange” because the people who were previously oppressed by Jim Crow now advocated it. This equivalency is problematic for at least two reasons. First, it doesn’t pay enough attention to the power differences between the two groups. There is a significant difference between a master whipping his slave and his slave whipping his master. The same is true of white segregationists and black separatists. The goal of black separatism is to overturn institutionalized racism, while the objective of white segregationists is to maintain or strengthen white supremacy. Second, Woodward’s argument neglects Malcolm X’s distinction between segregation and separatism. Segregation is something forced on blacks by the oppressor race, while separation is something undertaken voluntarily.