From Jim Crow to the early 21st century, struggles over racism persist despite court decisions and legislation. Although a painful history to confront, this book inspires as it probes the enduring story of racial inequality and the ongoing fight for freedom in black America.
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From Jim Crow to the early 21st century, struggles over racism persist despite court decisions and legislation. Although a painful history to confront, this book inspires as it probes the enduring story of racial inequality and the ongoing fight for freedom in black America.
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The American historian Leon Litwack (b.1929) taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1964 until his retirement in 2007. Litwack is best-known for his scathing critiques of segregation in the post-Civil War South in "Been in the Storm so Long: the Aftermath of Slavery" (1979), which received both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and its sequel, "Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow". (1998). A gifted teacher, Litwack writes in a provocative, challenging style which draws freely on popular culture as well as on political and economic history.
Litwack's most recent book, "How Free is Free: The Long Death of Jim Crow" (2009) consists of three lectures Litwack delivered at Harvard following his retirement as the "Nathan I. Huggins Lectures." Huggins (1927 -- 1989) was a distinguished professor of African American history at Harvard. In 1981, he established the W.E.B. DuBois Lectureship in Afro-American Life, History, and Culture.
In three short and lively essays drawn from the lectures, Litwack offers an overview of Jim Crow in the South and in the United States from the conclusion of the Civil War until today. Litwack argues that for all the real gains that African Americans have achieved, Jim Crow remains alive as evidenced by the continued segregation of American public schools, the disparity in economic status between blacks and whites, the substandard living conditions of many blacks, the expanding underclass, the high incarceration rates for black males, among other things. His book concludes with the observation that "Everything has changed, but nothin' has changed." (p. 143)
In the first lecture, "High Water Everywhere", Litwack examines the growth of segregation and Jim Crow in the South following Reconstruction. He tells the chilling story of intimidation, lynchings, economic and personal subordination of blacks to whites, and violence that characterized the South from the late 1900s through WW I. The discussion of the prevalence of lynching during this time is particularly eye-opening. It reminds Americans of a part of our history that is all-too-frequently passed over. This lecture ends with WW I. With African Americans serving in the war to end all wars in great numbers, many became hopeful that they would receive a place of equality in American life. This hope was dashed, but political consciousness was raised.
The second lecture, "Never Turn Back" focuses on WW II and its decisive impact on the Civil Rights Movement. Over 1,000,000 African Americans served in WW II. African Americans noted the apparent incongruity between fighting the brutal and racist German and Japanese regimes on the one hand and living in a deeply segregated society in which their own rights were sorely limited and abused on the other hand. African American troops were subject to humiliation in the United States, as German POWs were allowed to ride in the white only railroad cars and eat in the white only restaurants while the African Americans themselves remained excluded. The African American troops were subject to indignities in the segregated army camps of the South. The experience of WW II, Litwack concludes, was the driving factor that led to the Civil Rights revolution which followed.
The final lecture, "Fight the Power" offers a brief summary of the Civil Rights Movement focusing on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and on places such as Selma and Birmingham which have become ingrained in the American conscience. Litwack fully recognizes the strides that were made during these times. But in the continued economic and social marginalization of many African Americans, Litwack concludes that Jim Crow still has not yet died.
Litwack has written a thoughtful, polemical book with the purpose of getting the reader to examine the questions the book raises afresh, free of preconceptions. There is much to be learned from Litwack's historical account and from the challenge posed by his conclusions. Litwack's command of African American music and his ability to use its words to explain the continuity of African American experience in the United States is illuminating. The first two essays draw heavily upon the blues while the final essay shows as well Litwack's impressive understanding of rap and hip-hop. Litwack writes (p. 137):
"Since its inception, rap, like R&B, the blues, and rock 'n roll, has been subjected to every imaginable charge: it's been called blasphemous, obscene, subversive -- the sound of the social fabric dissolving. Of course, what sets off the most creative rap from the rest is precisely the degree to which it lives up to these charges. It is precisely these qualities that make rap such a vital and indispensable expression, perhaps the most creative force in American music of the past quarter-century, certainly the most disturbing, intimidating, and subversive."
This short book is important both in its own right and as an antidote to complacency in understanding the history of Jim Crow in the United States.
