Jim Crow Segregation: The Difficult and Anti-Democratic Work of White Supremacy
Segregation contradicts what most students have learned about American freedom and democracy. Textbooks locate segregation's origins in Southern disenfranchisement laws of the 1890s and highlight the Supreme Court's 1896 "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. The majority of African Americans still lived in the South and worked as agricultural laborers for white landowners who denied them an education and exploited them economically. New job opportunities during World War I offered one escape. More than a million African American Southerners joined the Great Migration to the North, where they could vote but where "custom and tradition" meant they encountered discrimination in employment and housing. Textbooks emphasize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's legal challenges, and portray the 1954 Brown v. Board decision as the culmination of the fight. Thus, from the 1890s to the 1950s, African Americans endured as best they could.
Origins of Segregation
Historians debate the origins of Jim Crow, but it is important to remember that slavery had mandated the use of laws and practices to govern interracial relations. Both de jure and de facto segregation of free African Americans in public accommodations, schools, and churches emerged in the nation prior to the Civil War. The South's turn to de jure segregation in the 1890s did not, however, restore patterns that had prevailed under slavery, when slave owners and slaves often lived and worked in close proximity to one another. Separation from whites by choice accompanied freed people's desire for independence from their former white owners even as they expected the full and equal citizenship guaranteed to them by the 14th Amendment. Historians have also persuasively argued that segregation represented a modern, Progressive Era solution to problems spawned by industrialization and urbanization. Hence, it was a creation unique to the New South.
Reconstruction and Beyond
The first generation of freeborn black Southerners were strivers, and the extent of their successes during and after Reconstruction alarmed the white supremacists determined to reassign all black people a subordinate place in the social order. Still, white supremacists had to be clever. Disenfranchisement laws, like those from the 1898 Louisiana state constitution, did not mention race explicitly because to do so would openly violate the 15th Amendment (see Primary Source Louisiana Grandfather Clause [1898]). Textbooks remain silent on the economic context in which de jure segregation was created as well as how ideas about manhood and womanhood influenced the rationale for imposing it. Interracial political alliances in the Republican and Populist parties informed the timing of Jim Crow's debut, but Southern Democrats wrapped their justifications in the cloak of protecting white women from African American men. They relied on rape scares to convince all white men that they must unite along racial lines, not shared class interests or party alliances, to rid politics of African American men.
Textbooks also ignore the fact that the South's opposition to the 19th Amendment was rooted in the realization that enfranchising women would bring African American women to the polls too.
Textbooks do not adequately link the disenfranchisement of African American men to its consequences. Reviews of specific legislation hardly provoke a deeper consideration of what the vote accomplishes, particularly with regard to the allocation of resources for schools, neighborhoods, and social services. Nor do textbooks explain how the narrowing of the Southern electorate and the region's domination by one political party affected national politics. Seniority in Congress meant that Southern legislators had an inordinate amount of power to shape all federal legislation. Textbooks also ignore the fact that the South's opposition to the 19th Amendment was rooted in the realization that enfranchising women would bring African American women to the polls too.
Impact of Segregation
Displaying photos of segregated water fountains utterly fails to convey how Jim Crow's long reign shaped life for generations of African American and white Southerners. Whether in neighborhood stores or on public sidewalks, segregation established an intricate set of rules to govern every kind of interracial contact that were reinforced by its repeated daily humiliations. Laws and practices that assigned African American laborers the most menial and lowest-paying jobs and kept them out of labor unions ensured their economic subordination.
White newspapers stirred fears of black criminality and white police often arrested black people for the most minor infractions. As the primary source from the Cleveland Advocate in 1918 suggests, all-white juries and white judges punished African Americans more severely than whites, even when whites had committed the greater crime (see Primary Source "'Colored' Gets Three Years -- 'White' Gets Thirty Days" [1918]). More broadly, Southern courts sentenced a disproportionate number of African Americans to chain gangs and prison.
Segregation literally rendered African American life less valuable than white life. Black Southerners had higher mortality rates, for example, because they lived in areas where white officials did not invest in improving sanitation and because the lack of public spending on health services for black people typically meant fewer hospitals and treatment options. An untold number of black adults and black children died as a result.
Violence
Students need a clear understanding that violence—or the threat of it—was central to maintaining segregation, and what made racial terrorism so effective was its randomness in execution. Rumors of rape might spur a lynching or a race riot in which white mobs attacked entire black communities.
Textbooks obscure how lynching functioned as a political and economic tool. They do not explain spectacle lynchings which were highly ritualized events that drew hundreds or thousands of onlookers. Nor do the textbooks examine the specific contexts in which racial violence flourished and how these changed over time. Textbooks also fail to call adequate attention to the reality that this violence was national in scope. Primary sources like Claude McKay's 1919 poem "If We Must Die" express African American responses to the racial violence that erupted following World War I (see Primary Source "If We Must Die" [1922]).
Students need a clear understanding that violence—or the threat of it—was central to maintaining segregation
Also absent in textbooks are the organized efforts, first led by African Americans and later by interracial groups, to combat lynching and their failure to secure federal anti-lynching legislation. The December 1930 newsletter from the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching reviews disfranchisement's effects on Southern politics and condemns mob violence that resulted in lynching (see Primary Source News Bulletin, December 1 [1930]).
Textbooks that portray segregation as a prelude to a more celebratory narrative of the civil rights era collapse the history of earlier generations of African American people into a monolithic victimhood. Yet the dependence on violence as the ultimate enforcement tool underscores the difficult work of white supremacy. During Reconstruction, African Americans established churches, schools, businesses, and mutual aid societies to institutionalize their freedom, strengthen their communities, and train future leaders. They did not cease to act politically after losing the right to vote.
Legal Battles
An almost exclusive focus on the Brown decision in textbooks eclipses other legal battles for equality in education, employment, and housing, along with the right to vote in the all-white Democratic primary. Primary sources demonstrate that African Americans embraced a variety of strategies to combat segregation's injustices.
The excerpt from the Supreme Court's 1948 decision in Shelley v. Kraemer, for example, pertains to a battle for equal access to housing outside of the South (see Primary Source Excerpt from Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson [1948]). At the same time, textbook celebrations of Brown overlook both the overt and the subtle delay tactics designed by state legislatures, which kept some school districts segregated into the early 1970s, as well as recent court decisions that have led to re-segregation in public schools.
Primary sources demonstrate that African Americans embraced a variety of strategies to combat segregation's injustices.
Questions to Ask
Those studying segregation would do well to ask several questions:
- In what ways did international events influence national attitudes toward race at the turn of the 20th century?
- When and in what contexts did racial violence flair?
- How did segregation differ in urban and rural areas?
- How did African Americans strategies to challenge segregation evolve between the 1890s, the World War I era, the New Deal years, and during World War II and the Cold War?
- What factors shaped their successes and failures?
- Finally, why did the federal government allow such blatant injustices to flourish so long? What was its role in sustaining segregation outside of the South, whether through housing, loan, or urban renewal policies?
As the primary sources show, the South's vicious de jure system of segregation stands apart. Yet the rest of the nation's reliance on both informal custom and formal policy means that segregation—as well as the white supremacy and federal complicity that sustained it—cannot be dismissed as a regional aberration in an otherwise democratic nation.
Louisiana Grandfather Clause (1898)
Annotation
This document provides an example of the disfranchisement laws added to Southern state constitutions at the end of the 19th century. Section 3 mandates a literacy test. Section 4 explains that if a potential voter lacked literacy, he had to prove that he owned property worth at least 300 dollars. In practice, this usually meant providing a tax receipt.
Section 5 introduces the grandfather clause, allowing any man who had voted prior to 1867, or who was the son or grandson of a man who had, to vote. Interestingly, it protects the franchise for foreign-born men who had become U.S. citizens prior to January 1898, but not for those who would become citizens after that date. Section 5 also stipulates that the educational and property restrictions would not apply to those qualified to vote under the grandfather clause if they could demonstrate that they had lived in Louisiana for at least five years. Both the property and residency requirements posed an insurmountable hurdle for black sharecroppers and tenant farmers who farmed land owned by whites and moved frequently.
The legislation obliges all voters in the state to re-register by August 31, 1898, or "be forever denied the right to do so." Readers will note that it explicitly avoids mentioning race, which was necessary due to the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The text below contains excerpts from the original document.
Primary Source(s)
Excerpt from Louisiana's Grandfather Clause:
[Article 197] Sec. 3. He [the elector] shall be able to read and write, and shall demonstrate his ability to do so when he applies for registration, by making, under oath administered by the registration officer or his deputy, written application therefor, in the English language, or his mother tongue, which application shall contain the essential facts necessary to show that he is entitled to register and vote, and shall be entirely written, dated and signed by him, in the presence of the registration officer or his deputy, without assistance or suggestion from any person or any memorandum whatever, except the form of application. . . .
Sec. 4. If he be not able to read and write, as provided by Section three . . . then he shall be entitled to register and vote if he shall, at the time he offers to register, be the bona fide owner of property assessed to him in this State at a valuation of not less than three hundred dollars . . . and on which, if such property be personal only, all taxes due shall have been paid. . . .
Sec. 5. No male person who was on January 1st, 1867, or at any date prior thereto, entitled to vote under the Constitution or statutes of any State of the United States, wherein he then resided, and no son or grandson of any such person not less than twenty—one years of age at the date of the adoption of this Constitution, and no male person of foreign birth, who was naturalized prior to the first day of January, 1898, shall be denied the right to register and vote in this State by reason of his failure to possess the educational or property qualifications prescribed by this Constitution; provided, he shall have resided in this State for five years next preceding the date at which he shall apply for registration, and shall have registered in accordance with the terms of this article prior to September 1, 1898, and no person shall be entitled to register under this section after said date. . . .
A separate registration of voters applying under this section, shall be made by the registration officer of every parish. . . .
The registration of voters under this section [5] shall close on the 31st day of August, 1898, and immediately thereafter the registration Officer of every parish shall make a sworn copy, in duplicate, of the list of persons registered under this section, showing in detail whether the applicant registered as a voter of 1867, or prior thereto, or as the son of such voter, or as the grandson of such voter, and deposit one of said duplicates in the Office of the Secretary of State . . . and the other of said duplicates shall be by him filed in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of the parish. . . .
All persons whose names appear on said registration lists shall be admitted to register for all elections in this State without possessing the educational or property qualification prescribed by this Constitution, unless otherwise disqualified, and all persons who do not by personal application claim exemption from the provisions of sections 3 and 4 of this article before September 1st, 1898, shall be forever denied the right to do so. . . .
Citation
"Constitution of the State of Louisiana, Adopted May 12, 1898," in Walter L. Fleming, ed., Documentary History of Reconstruction, Vol. 2 (Cleveland, Ohio: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1906), 451–453.
"'Colored' Gets Three Years -- 'White' Gets Thirty Days" (1918)
Annotation
This newspaper clipping shows the racial disparity that prevailed in the Southern judicial system under segregation. It can serve as an introduction for discussions of discrimination in contemporary judicial practices that continue to disproportionately imprison people of color today.
Primary Source(s)
"'Colored' Gets Three Years — 'White' Gets Thirty Days."
Columbia, S.C. — The peculiar workings of justice in Southland when Jas. Davenport, Colored, was sentenced to three years at hard labor for stealing a bicycle, and Clarence D. Gould, white, was sentenced to thirty days in the county hail for stealing an automobile.
Both sentences were imposed the same day and in the same court room — Judge Memminger presiding. Both men were found guilty of stealing.
"If We Must Die" (1922)
Annotation
Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay wrote this poem in response to the racial violence that erupted across the United States following World War I. Between April and October of 1919, approximately 250 black men and women died in 25 urban race riots and a racial pogrom in Elaine, AR. By December, white mobs had lynched 78 African Americans. Of those victims, 10 wore military uniforms and 11 were burned alive at the stake.
Primary Source(s)
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Citation
McKay, Claude. "If We Must Die." 1922. Accessed March 21, 2011.
News Bulletin, December 1 (1930)
Annotation
Jesse Daniel Ames, a white Southern woman, was involved with the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in the 1920s and the founder of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching in 1930. This document reviews how African American disenfranchisement affected Southern politics, condemns mob violence that resulted in lynching, and chronicles a rare but successful suit for damages by the widow of a lynch victim in South Carolina. Other documents from this collection have been digitized and are accessible for classroom use.
Primary Source(s)
Excerpt from 1930 news bulletin:
POLITICS
From early spring until the general election, November 4, in the Southern States, a voteless [sic] people has been the issue in political campaigns of many candidates,The white south declares the Negro is out of politics. Individually he may be, because he is not allowed to vote, but as a race the Negro dominates political thought. Fear of an element of the population — weaker numerically, economically, and culturally — is the weapon which is used in contests for office. The Negro race this year was not an issue between Republicans and Democrats, but between the Democratic factions. The return of Reconstruction days who predicted in the event bolting Democrats were elected. Neither expected to receive votes of the most destructive and disasterous [sic] emotion in the human mind. The puzzling question is how long will an intelligent people allow the Negro race to be the controlling issue in our government?
LYNCHING
The Mob Is Never Right
October 8, 1930 — A young woman living near Bristol staggered home a few days ago bleeding from slashes in her throat and wrists. She stated that she had been attacked by a Negro in a woodland through which she had passed and gave a description of her alleged assailant. A considerable crowd gathered, there were expressions of indignation and anger, and a hunt for the criminal was ready to start when physicians who had been called in announced that the wounds were self-inflicted and would not prove fatal.
What this incident teaches is that the victim of a lynching mob may be guiltless, that every person accused of crime should be given his day in court, that the law should always be allowed to take its course. Mob lawlessness is never right. It cannot be right in a land of law. — Herald Courier, Bristol, Tennessee.
Walhalla, S.C. . October 20, 1930 — A directed verdict for $2,000 damages from Oconee County was won by the widow of Allen Greene, Negro, who was lynched by a mob near Walhalla last spring, in civil court here today. The woman will be paid the sum by the county under a South Carolina law.
Green [sic] was charged with having criminally attacked a white woman. A number of persons were charged with the lynching, including several prominent Walhalla citizens, but when the case was called last summer it was postponed because of "excessive heat."
A crowded court room heard testimony of Sheriff John Thomas on cross-examination that indicated that Greene was not guilty of the attack. The Negro was once publically [sic] recognized in Walhalla for heroism during a fire.
Dallas, Texas — The cases to try the Sherman rioters set for November 17, were transferred to Austin when it became evident to Judge C.A. Pippin that a fair trial could not be had in Dallas. Over three-quarters of a venire [sic] of of seventy-seven talemen declared that they would not convict the men even tho [sic] the State should prove them guilty. Fourteen men are under indictment.
Dallas County cannot justly say a word against Grayson Country because of the fact that a mob in that County burned down a courthouse and roasted a Negro alive doing it. For, when the case of a defendant, charged with some part. . .
Citation
“News Bulletin, December 1, 1930,” folder 1, scan 4, in the Jessie Daniel Ames Papers #3686, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Subseries I.I.I., Organizational Papers, 1930-1941. Accessed March 21, 2011.
Excerpt from Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson (1948)
Annotation
This excerpt reveals how de facto segregation affected African Americans outside of the South. In 1945, the Shelley family purchased a home in St. Louis, MO, and a nearby white resident sued to prevent them from taking possession of the property based on a 1911 racially restrictive housing covenant. The U.S. Supreme Court considered Shelley v. Kraemer with a companion case stemming from Detroit, MI. Lawyers for the white plaintiffs argued that such restrictive covenants could potentially be applied to white people and were therefore not unconstitutional. The cases hinged on the question of whether private property owners could seek to enforce restrictive housing covenants through the courts.
Writing the opinion, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson allowed that private parties could voluntarily agree to race-based property restrictions. However, judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants represented state action and thus violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The opinion also underscores the Court's concern with historical context, which would emerge as a major issue in the Brown decision six years later.
(Note: The ellipses in this quote represent deleted footnotes and/or additional court case citations as well as some sentences.)
Primary Source(s)
Excerpt from Shelley v. Kraemer:
We hold that in granting judicial enforcement of the restrictive agreements in these cases, the States have denied petitioners the equal protection of the laws and that, therefore, the action of the state courts cannot stand. We have noted that freedom from discrimination by the States in the enjoyment of property rights was among the basic objectives sought to be effectuated by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment. That such discrimination has occurred in these cases is clear. Because of the race or color of these petitioners they have been denied rights of ownership or occupancy enjoyed as a matter of course by other citizens of different race or… color…The Fourteenth Amendment declares 'that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color…Only recently this Court has had occasion to declare that a state law which denied equal enjoyment of property rights to a designated class of citizens of specified race and ancestry, was not a legitimate exercise of the state's police power but violated the guaranty of the equal protection of the laws...Nor may the discriminations imposed by the state courts in these cases be justified as proper exertions of state police power....
Respondents urge, however, that since the state courts stand ready to enforce restrictive covenants excluding white persons from the ownership or occupancy of property covered by such agreements, enforcement of covenants excluding colored persons may not be deemed a denial of equal protection of the laws to the colored persons who are thereby affected…This contention does… not bear scrutiny. The parties have directed our attention to no case in which a court, state or federal, has been called upon to enforce a covenant excluding members of the white majority from ownership or occupancy of real property on grounds of race or color…
Nor do we find merit in the suggestion that property owners who are parties to these agreements are denied equal protection of the laws if denied access to the courts to enforce the terms of restrictive covenants and to assert property rights which the state courts have held to be created by such agreements. The Constitution confers upon no individual the right to demand action by the State which results in the denial of equal protection of the laws to other individuals. And it would appear beyond question that the power of the State to create and enforce property interests must be exercised within the boundaries defined by the Fourteenth Amendment…
The historical context in which the Fourteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution should not be forgotten. Whatever else the framers sought to achieve, it is clear that the matter of primary concern was the establishment of equality in the enjoyment of basic civil and political rights and the preservation of those rights from discriminatory action on the part of the States based on considerations of race or color. Seventy-five years ago this Court announced that the provisions of the Amendment are to be construed with this fundamental purpose in mind. Upon full consideration, we have concluded that in these cases the States have acted to deny petitioners the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Having so decided, we find it unnecessary to consider whether petitioners have also been deprived of property without due process of law or denied privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States.
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Missouri and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Michigan must be reversed.
Primary Source Annotated Bibliography
Lerner, Gerda, ed. Black Women in White America: A Documentary History. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.
This valuable collection of primary documents focuses on writings by black women from slavery into the 1970s. It has 10 sections, divided topically and proceeding chronologically. Documents detail education, employment, clubwomen's efforts to combat sexual stereotypes and sexual harassment, interracial relations among women, and reflections on black womanhood.
Smith, S., Ellis K. , and Sascha Asianian. Remembering Jim Crow [CD]. St. Paul, MN: American Public Media.
This site is based on the Behind the Veil oral history project, sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and subsequent multimedia publication, Remembering Jim Crow, edited by William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad. The main content is divided into six parts; each includes audio clips from the oral histories and a link to a photographic slideshow. The home page also features a "Read personal histories of segregation" link to transcripts from oral histories conducted by American Radio Works that are organized by category; and a link to a related documentary on African Americans' use of radio to fight racism during World War II. Other links on the home page provide a sample of state laws, by category, and access to additional online and print resources.
Wells, Ida B. Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. Edited by Jacqueline Jones Royster. New York: Bedford / St. Martin's, 1996.
Former school teacher and African American journalist Ida B. Wells singlehandedly launched the anti-lynching movement in the United States after two of her personal friends were among three men lynched in Memphis, TN. This slender volume introduces readers to Wells and reprints three primary documents on racial violence that she authored. Its appendices present a chronology of Wells' life, questions to guide discussions, and an annotated bibliography.
James Allen and John Littlefield collection. Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America. 2005.
Note: This site contains graphic images that may not be suitable for all ages. The site grows out of a traveling museum exhibit and subsequent book of lynching photographs and postcards that were once routinely sent through the U.S. mail. The images cover a wide geographical area but range mainly from the 1880s to the 1920s. Viewers can choose to see them in a Flash movie with commentary by James Allen or as a gallery of still photographs, with a link providing additional details for each. The site also includes a searchable visitor discussion forum. The use of these images must be accompanied by discussions that provide historical context that shows the objectification of the black body and considerations of whom or what is not pictured.
Educational Broadcasting Corporation. Wormser, R., Jersey, B., and Sam Pollard (producers). The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. 2002.
This site offers premier pedagogical resources for history and literature teachers, including full lesson plans, and a plethora of activities for middle and high school students. Its main features revolve around interactive maps; an interactive timeline with corresponding essays; oral histories; and a section on presidents, Congresses, and the Supreme Court. The site combines the material in ways that encourage student use of primary documents and roleplaying.
Secondary Source Annotated Bibliography
Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Gilmore documents the experiences of Southern African American men and women from disenfranchisement to passage of the 19th Amendment. Focusing on the black professional class, she convincingly argues that after black men lost the right to vote, black women stepped in as "racial diplomats" who negotiated with white officials to secure funding and resources for the black community. Gilmore's broad definition of politics underscores the many methods of resistance used by African Americans as Jim Crow became law.
Kelley, Blair L.M. Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Kelley reexamines the struggles against segregated transportation, beginning with New York in the 1850s and moving south to Richmond, Savannah, and New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of Kelley's main interventions lies in showing working-class black women's predominance among protesters in the streetcar boycott movement, thereby challenging the view that only the black professional class initiated and led such actions. Equally important is her discussion of how Plessy resulted from community organizing in New Orleans, which provides very useful insights for teaching that are completely unexamined in textbooks.
Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
Litwack's synthesis history includes many anecdotes and stories that can be used for teaching. Exhaustively researched and organized topically, it focuses on the imposition of segregation, white brutality, and survival strategies deployed by African Americans, with particular attention to black institutions and culture. Among the book's many strengths is its attention to rural life.
Smith, John David. When Did Southern Segregation Begin? New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
Smith's concise volume introduces readers to the major debates among historians regarding how race relations evolved in the post-Civil War era and resulted in the creation of de jure segregation. A lengthy introduction prepares readers to evaluate excerpts from the work of C. Vann Woodward, Joel Williamson, Edward L. Ayers, Howard N. Rabinowitz, Barbara Y. Welke, and Leon F. Litwack. Topics include the interplay of laws and customs, why railroads became sites of contest, the role of gender in rail travel, and how segregation re-inscribed racial subordination.
Smith, Lillian. Killers of the Dream. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1994.
Originally published in 1949, this work conveys the crippling mental, emotional, and spiritual legacies of growing up in the Jim Crow South. A white woman and native to the region, Smith reflects on her childhood and segregation’s psychological costs and moral consequences. Her critical insights also speak to enduring problems of white supremacy and white privilege and their effects on race relations in the nation.
Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.
Spanning the 1920s through the present, Sugrue's political history insists that we cannot fully understand the civil rights movement without adequate attention to struggles north of the Mason-Dixon Line. As he observes in the introduction, in both North and South, “private behavior, market practices, and public policies created and reinforced racial separation” (xv). Sugrue defines politics broadly to include protest, voting, racial violence, activities at the grassroots and among intellectuals and journalists, litigation, and policy making.
Sullivan, Patricia. Lift Every Voice and Sing: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: The New Press, 2009.
Sullivan's study, published at the NAACP's centennial, documents the organization’s founding and history through the Brown decision. She moves deftly through time and between the North and the South, high politics and the grassroots. Along the way, readers meet both familiar and lesser known African American and white activists, and gain a better understanding of the NAACP's strategies, successes, and shortcomings.
Katherine Mellen Charron is an Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. She is the author of the award-winning Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (UNC Press, 2009), and the co-editor of Recollections of My Slavery Days by William Henry Singleton (1999). Her teaching and research interests include African American, Women's, and Southern history. 
