40 pages • 1 hour read
C. Vann WoodwardThe Strange Career of Jim Crow
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
In the Introduction, Woodward situates his history of segregation in the South within the context of the “Second Reconstruction,” a period of increasing civil rights for African Americans that escalated after World War II. These changes came from many sources. The US Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 was a watershed moment in desegregation. Presidential executive orders and acts of Congress also implemented a series of notable legislative changes, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Woodward further highlights “policy decisions of federal agencies, actions by labor unions, professional organizations, churches, corporation executives, and educational leaders […] the officers of the army, navy, and air force” (39). The commemorative edition of the text was written after these momentous changes, and the Introduction contextualizes the history of segregation within these transformations. However, as Woodward notes, “what the perspective of years will lend to the meaning of change we cannot know” (38).
These changes marked the end of an era in Southern history. Southern history has experienced other moments of rupture and discontinuity, including “slavery, secession, independence, emancipation and reconstruction, redemption and reunion” (31). Race relations structured Southern history, but Woodward argues that it is not the basic determinant of Southern history. Instead, there is an “impressive amount of evidence indicating that the Negro’s status and changes therein have been the product of more impersonal forces” (34), including economic or political changes.
Woodward shows that change is a constant in Southern history. In contrast, segregationists argued that segregation was an inevitable outcome of Southern history, describing Jim Crow as the “final settlement,” the “return to sanity,” and the “permanent system” (36). In this framework, integration was impossible. Woodward dismisses this viewpoint; considering the constant changes in Southern history, Southerners have little reason to expect that any set of social or political institutions—including segregation—will last indefinitely.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Of Old Regimes and Reconstructions”
In Chapter 1 Woodward argues that segregation was not an outgrowth of slavery. Slavery and segregation share a core ideological foundation: a belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority coupled with innate African American inferiority. Slavery was just one of many different systems or methods through which white supremacy was maintained. He argues that “segregation in complete and fully developed form did grow up contemporaneously with slavery, but not in its midst” (49). The histories of slavery and segregation are connected but not continuous.
Slavery as a system made segregation impractical. The intimacy of household labor and other forms of slave labor required regular contact between slaves and slaveowners. Racial contact was not wanted by either side, but it was impossible to avoid. In the cities of slave states, races lived in closer physical proximity than anywhere else in the United States. Limits to association did exist. For instance, hotels and restaurants typically barred free African Americans. Hospitals, jails, and public buildings separated races.
Woodward compares the racial intermixing found in the South to the North in the same period. By 1830, slavery was, in practice, abolished in the North. Only 3,500 African Americans were still in bondage. However, racial discrimination was prevalent. In the North segregation developed to reinforce racial hierarchies. By 1860, segregation permeated the Northern states. Segregation was enforced by both laws and social convention. The conventions of racial separation developed in the North and were imported to the South.
Introduction-Chapter 1 Analysis
Woodward begins by comparing the status of African Americans in the South and the North. While free African Americans in the North were in a much better position than Southern slaves, Northern society was also rooted in the doctrine of white supremacy. In the South racial hierarchies were preserved by the structure of slavery and often by upheld by force. However, in the North white supremacy was constantly asserted to maintain racial hierarchies. Woodward cites French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote, “the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known” (56). Woodward proves de Tocqueville’s observation by quoting Abraham Lincoln, who described “that there is a physical difference between the black and white races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality” (58).
The trauma of the Civil War had complex effects on racial relations in the South. Woodward describes an “often a simultaneous withdrawal of both races from the enforced intimacy and the more burdensome obligations imposed by the old regime on each” (59). Laws and conventions developed to maintain racial hierarchies, including the segregation of public schools. Races were often separated in hospitals, jails, and asylums. However, Woodward is careful to note exceptions to these situations.
Woodward also argues that while there was not racial harmony in the South, extensive contact between the races is present in the historical record. He highlights outliers that challenged rigid racial hierarchies, noting, for example, high rates of cohabitation between white men and black women due to the gender imbalance in the South. However, he argues that these outliers typically existed in cities, and the Old South was overwhelmingly rural. For instance, only 7.8% of the total population lived in towns with over 4,000 residents. Woodward argues that because slavery firmly entrenched white supremacy, segregation was not necessary to maintain the racial hierarchy.
