Jim Crow
Introduction
Jim Crow refers to a racial segregation system which was particularly enacted in the south and border state, form 1877 to mid-1960 (Guffey, 2012). The system comprised of strict anti-black laws, and it became a way of life. During this era, the African-Americans were considered to be second class citizens, and thus they enjoyed limited privileges than the whites. The Jim Crow system made it easier for whites to practice anti-black racism. Even in churches, many Christian preachers communicated that whites were the chose people while they referred to the blacks as cursed people who were meant to be servants and that God was not against racial segregation (Guffey, 2012). Teachers and scientist supported the ideology that the blacks were intellectually and culturally inferior compared to whites. Most pro-segregation leaders usually objected racial integration as a threat to the purity of the white race. The media used various diminutive terms such as nigger, coon, and darkies to refer to African-Americans, while magazines reinforced anti-black images and ideas (Tolnay, 2017). Life during this era was difficult, especially for the African-Americans who experienced segregation in every area of life. This paper presents first-hand information from a person who experienced life under Jim Crow.
My interviewee was a 53 years old woman named Annabelle who was born and brought up in Jacksonville, Florida. She is white, and she narrates her life experiences during the Jim Crow. Annabelle revealed that although the Jim Crow era seemed to favour the whites over the whites, it had negative impacts on them as well. Annabelle shared her experiences both at school and in the outside world and how she experienced segregation of the African-Americans in the public space. According to her, the Jim Crow era was hurting. Growing up in the rural, she thought that the Jim Crow laws were idiotic when they first began to become aware of them. In the rural area, both whites and blacks could swim together, but about 20 miles away in town they had built a swimming pool that only the whites could swim in. However, growing up, she started noticing that there were different drinking fountains, restrooms and waiting rooms for the black and whites. Compared to those of the blacks, the white ones were better and cleaner. There were no separate restrooms for black men and women, and she noticed that that one was filthy while the white restroom was well taken care of. This, to her, did not make sense, and she perceived that it was cruel. Her first experience with extreme racism was when her aunt decided to take children out for ice-cream, and they had to eat ice-cream on the sidewalk because with them was a black young girl of their hired man. Despite her aunt being white, her pleas to the white clerk to allow her to take the little girl to the washroom fell on deaf ears, and she ended up wetting her pants. At that moment, she became aware of racism.
One of the remarkable moments in her life is the first time she tasted “colored” water in a department store in Pittsburg, Kansas. She expected it to be different, but she could not hide her disappointment upon tasting and realizing that it just tasted like “white” water. She was embarrassed and proud at the same time. Immediately it dawned to her that this was really wrong. She recounted her memories in college and narrated that her first college roommate is a special memory that she always wants to share when asked about her experiences during the Jim Crow era. She recounted that since her parents were from Pittsburg, KS are they decided that it was appropriate for her to join a college in the area in 1966. At the time she had only known one black person by name, a sales counter clerk in downtown May-Cohn’s named Annie and her friend Sugie whom she always made a point to visit.
To her amazement, when she joined college, her first roommate was an African- American girl named Lilene. She helped by her grandparents to move to the room, and the presence of some hair care products on her dresser made them realize that her roommate was black. Annabelle and her grandmother relished that this would be a great learning opportunity for her and she looked forward to it. She decided not to tell her parents about it until after a week. The following day the Dorm monitor invited her to her office and told her she noticed that she formed the South and her roommate was black and wanted to confirm if she was okay with that. Immediately she knew that this must have been a request from her parents. Her parents had called her uncle, a senator of the Kansas state who went to the dean and told them to get her a new roommate by Monday the following week failure to which she would be transferred from the college.
This broke her, and she cried helplessly. This prompted her to go to her uncle and ask him what had gone wrong. He made her call her parents from his house, and her father informed her that if his many business associates realized that her daughter was living with a black girl, they would be offended.
It was at this moment that she decided to defend herself and opposed her parents for the first time. She argued that no single person in the campus would point at her and claims that she has a nigger for a roommate yet if they got her another roommate for that reason then everyone would point the finger at her wondering who she thinks she is. She never regrets her decision to oppose her parent, and she was glad that she was able to stand up for herself and won her right to choose how to live her life. Sadly, they switched with girls across the hall that were experiencing the same pressure, but she claims that if it were to happen again, she would not do it. However, she narrates that they maintained friendly relationships, and by the end of the two years, all of them had grown close to each other.
She narrates of yet another experience that became the turning point in history. It was in the spring of 1967 when she was going back to school and on approaching Memphis. But the highway was blocked, and they were forced to enter the town. There were no streetlights, cars or people, and they wondered what was going on. The first thing she saw was some broken flowerpots scattered on the road. Shortly they were approached by three police cars and a civilian car that surrounded them. It was a bizarre moment for her, and she wondered what was going on. The police informed that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated and the city was in total blackout. They were escorted to the fueling station, and they were led out of town by a taxi driver. Annabelle says that she is glad that the Jim Crow era had gone at this moment.
After interviewing Annabelle, I learned several things that not academic reading could help me. The first thing I learned was that although the Jim Crow policies were meant to segregate the blacks, it ended up segregating even the whites. The young people could not understand why they were not being treated equally. The whites lived in fear that if they associated with the African-Americans would lower their standards in the society. The ideology was so strong that people could not reason out for themselves, but the media took centre stage to control their thinking and choices. Segregation was made a usual thing, and those who supported it portrayed it as the right thing to do. The Jim Crow ideologies had influenced even the church, and the ministers taught that God supported racial segregation. However, from Annabelle’s experiences, I have learned that to be a racist or not is a personal choice. Like Annabelle, it is appropriate to stand with what we think is right and choose to live our lives as we want and not what others want us to live. The Jim Crow era was a hard time for people who were against racial segregation.
Importance of Oral History
Oral history is significant in many ways in understanding various historical moments or periods. Oral history brings a better understanding of the topic at hand as it helps in rounding out a story of the past. Oral history provides a more detailed, accurate picture of the past by supplementing the information provided by other sources, including maps, letters, and statistical data, among other historical materials (Thompson, 2017). People who experienced certain historical events provide different viewpoints and perspectives that fill the voids in the existing historical sources as they at times correct or contradict recorded history (Perks & Thomson, 2015). Oral history provides that interviewer to ask questions that were not asked in other records and get the perspective of people whose experiences have never been heard or were forgotten (Thompson, 2017). Moreover, the interview might be the only source of information concern a given historical phenomenon.
Another benefit of oral history is that it enables us to understand how individuals and communities experienced specific historical forces. Traditional history is broad and provides the learners with information from major historical events, mainly on the important aspects of who, what, when, where, why and what (Thompson, 2017). On the other hand, oral history expands the understanding of the learners by taking them to understand the experience at a personal level. Some of the questions asked during interviews help the interviewer understand the forces behind various personal decisions that individuals made during a specific period (Yow, 2014). For instance, it may interview with Annabelle I came to understand that her decision to oppose her parents against changing her roommate was influenced by her desire to live her life as she wanted and not what they wanted it to be.
Through oral history, the earner can understand what has changed and what has remained the same over time (Perks & Thomson, 2015). Change is unavoidable, but through oral history, people can express the personal consequences of change. The interviewees can reflect on the aspects that have changed in their lives, especially in areas of values, traditions and beliefs (Yow, 2014).
In her work Guy Sheftall (2013) points out the feminist approach on black studies and identifies various probes, silences and complexities that encompass the experiences of African-Americans in their areas where they live. She argues that gender has become a major category of historical analysis, especially in racialized experiences. Most of the African American studies are focus on sharing male experiences. My oral history has helped correct this phenomenon by sharing the experiences of a female interviewee during the Jim Crow era. Moreover, I not only chose to get detailed information about the experiences of a female participant but also get it from a white woman. This is because in most cases, black studies share the experiences of the black people ignoring the equally important perspective of the white who were living in the same society. My oral history has taken into account the viewpoint of a female as she shared her experiences under the Jim Crow era. It is evident from the narrative that even women have remarkable experiences from some of the historical occurrences that we seek to understand.
Sheftall argues that black studies are gender shaped and their gender equally influences that like women. She further argues that men have actively participated in the gender construction notion of who a man is in American society. Therefore, men’s and women’s racial experiences have been shaped by specific gendered constructs. Several questions may arise that might be effective in offsetting the dominant conceptual frameworks shaped by the hegemonic Black Nationalist discourse. It is important to find out a harmonious approach that will help in ending both racial segregation and gender oppression. The new questions that arise may include, to what extent has recuperating black manhood and constructing of patriarchal families contributed to increased gender, class and sexuality oppression towards women?
In analyzing how the aspects of gender, race, and class intersect in the experiences of my interviewee, I find that there is a close relationship between these aspects. Considering Annabelle case, it is evident that racial segregation was a forced phenomenon upon the people. The interactions are mainly gendered, considering that Annabelle does not give an account of any black male she came across. Therefore it is hard to establish if white women would freely mingle with black men during the black, it was considered a worse scenario that when a white woman interacted with a black woman. Additionally, the class is another phenomenon that seemed to strengthen racial oppression across all races during the Jim Crow era. From Annabelle’s experiences, I established that the main reason that her parents wanted her to get a different roommate is that they feared that their business associates would be offended. Thus they feared that their daughter’s association with a black roommate would affect their social standards.
My oral history provides detailed information about what it was like living under Jim Crow. The paper provides a different perspective of a white female who narrates her experience during the era. Most of the historical records about Jim Crow experiences are from black people and especially men (Dominguez-Karimi, 2018). The perspectives of white females are limited. Thus the paper provides a different dimension of the oral history about the Jim Crow era.
In conclusion, oral histories provide significant information about some of the African American experiences that are rarely shared or exposed. Oral history gives a deeper understanding of the African- Americans history. Through oral history, we can record the lifeways and stories of the elite as a means of providing healing to the minority. As a result, it brings a sense of responsibility and the need for restorative justice in society. Oral history enables us to understand the impacts of racial segregation in society. Oral history unearths serious issues that resulted from traumatic racism of the Jim Crow era.