Summary Of The Strange Career Of Jim Crow

Segregation in the American South has not always been as easy as determining black and white. In C. Vann Woodward’s book, “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” post-civil war in Southern America has truly brought the “Jim Crow” laws into light and the ultimate formation of segregation in the south. The book determines that there is no solid segregation in the south for years rather than several decades following the end of the American Civil War in 1865 where the South achieved a better stand on segregation and equality as compared to the North at this time. Racial segregation in the form of Jim Crow laws that divided the White Americans from the African Americans in almost every sense of daily life did not appear with the end of slavery but towards

Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the former slaves and now freedmen had a new position in White American society that had to be integrated in many different terms differing from social to political aspects. In the Strange Career of Jim Crown, Vann Woodward seems to argue that segregation in the form of Jim Crow laws was not actually a foregone conclusion following the civil war as many may think. It was following the abolition of slavery in 1865 where things went astray and ultimately were much different than what we have a stereotype of today. The Northerners had an “advanced age” as Woodward had said in terms of the Jim Crow system that was born in the North. While many freed black men lived in the north during the time of slavery in the south, there was a distinct way of life that let the African Americans realize their inferiority in the White American society – many laws had already segregated the races in many institutional methods of daily life. The North’s beginning of segregation in comparison to the start of the South’s formation of segregation is very different; in some ways the South portrays a more moral and equal way of living despite

While it was during this time that there was an exceptional amount of violence and race issues the two races in some aspects were getting along on alright terms. As Woodward had mentioned in his work, a man named Stewart had been writing news reports on the relations between the differing races and had presumed that “the return of the Democrats would mean the end of freedmen’s rights, if not their liberty” while he was on business and witnessed the two races interacting with each other in a civil manner. After the time of questionable relations between the freedmen and the whites there came to be a number of issues that resulted in the full blown action of the Jim Crow laws. Woodward discusses different influences on race relations – conservatism, radicalism, and liberalism. He argues that it was these three forces that integrated the full belief of white supremacy on the Americans of the South. The conservative were “an aristocratic philosophy of paternalism and noblesse oblige” that “the Negro was inferior, but denied that it followed that inferiors must be segregated or publicly humiliated.” The Radicals focused on a more equal point of view for everyone. The liberals were for racial equality but struggled due to the opinions of the southern people. It was each of these three very different political