Digging Deeper: Unearthing Injustice in ‘Mudbound’. “I don’t know what they let you do over there, but you’re in Mississippi now. You use the back door.” – These chilling words, spoken by Pappy McAllan, a white man, to Ronsel Jackson, a black man, capture the grim reality of the Jim Crow era. This period, renowned for its segregation laws, forced Black people to enter through back doors while reserving front doors for whites, signifying the deeply embedded racism that permeated almost every aspect of everyday life in a dark chapter of American history. “Mudbound” explores the challenging and gradual nature of change, revealing the enduring influence of deep-seated prejudices and unyielding forces of custom that hinder social progress. Through a rich historical tapestry, the film draws powerful parallels to present-day issues, offering a thought-provoking and unsettling reflection on our times. Set in the Mississippi Delta when Jim Crow laws were still in effect, the film, directed by Dee Rees, is a poignant exploration of race and class in the post-World War II era. The film intricately weaves the tale of two families—the McAllans, a white family, and the Jacksons, a black family—against the backdrop of a society still deeply entrenched in racial and economic inequalities. The film offers a stark portrayal of the intersection of race and class and the …show more content…
The McAllans, despite their financial struggles, occupy a higher social standing than the Jacksons simply because of their race. This hierarchy is evident in the power dynamics between the two families. Henry McAllan, the patriarch of the McAllan family, exemplifies this dynamic through his treatment of Hap Jackson, the head of the Jackson family. Despite Hap’s expertise and hard work on the farm, he remains at the mercy of Henry’s decisions, highlighting the systemic oppression that restricts upward mobility for black
Making Whiteness: the culture of segregation in the south, 1890-1940 is the work of Grace Elizabeth Hale. In her work, she explains the culture of the time between 1890 and 1940. In her book she unravels how the creation of the ‘whiteness’ of white Southerners created the ‘blackness’ identity of southern African Americans. At first read it is difficult to comprehend her use of the term ‘whiteness’, but upon completion of reading her work, notes included, makes sense. She states that racial identities today have been shaped by segregation, “...the Civil War not only freed the slaves, it freed American racism
C. Vann Woodward’s most famous work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, was written in 1955. It chronicles the birth, formation, and end of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states. Often, the Jim Crow laws are portrayed as having been instituted directly after the Civil War’s end, and having been solely a Southern brainchild. However, as Woodward, a native of Arkansas points out, the segregationist Jim Crow laws and policies were not fully a part of the culture until almost 1900. Because of the years of lag between the Civil War/Reconstruction eras and the integration and popularity of the Jim Crow laws, Woodward advances that these policies were not a normal reaction to the loss of the war by Southern whites, but a result of other impetuses central to the time of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow immediately became an influential work both in the academic and real worlds because of the dramatic events that coincided with the book’s publication and subsequent revisions. It was inspired from a series of lectures that Woodward delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954 on the Jim Crow policies that the South had reverted to in order to deal with the dynamics of its Negro population. The original publication debuted in 1955, just prior to the explosive events that would occur as part of the civil rights movement climax. Because of these developments in less than a decade, the book’s topic and audience had drastically changed in regard to the times surrounding it. Woodward, realizing the fluidity of history in context with the age, printed a second edition of the book in 1966 to “take advantage of the new perspective the additional years provide” and “to add a brief account of the main developments in ...
Woodward argues that the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s were a new concept of separating the two races. Throughout slavery and during the reconstruction period, the two races were fully integrated working on economics and political problems; the separation of the two races would lead to an insufficient and ineffective plantation. “The typical dwelling of a slave-owning family was a walled compound shared by both master and slave families.
In his book, Blood Done Sign My Name, the author Timothy Tyson tells the story of the highly combustible racial atmosphere in the American South before, during, and after the Jim Crow era. Unlike Margaret Mitchell’s account of the glory and grandeur of the Antebellum South, Tyson exposes the reader to the horrific and brutal reality that the black race experienced on a daily basis. Tyson highlights the double standard that existed during this period in history, arguing that the hypocrisy of the “white” southern judicial system allowed the murder of a young black African-American male at the hands of white racists to go unpunished (Tyson 2004, 244).
The book, the Strange Career of Jim Crow is a wonderful piece of history. C. Vann Woodard crafts a book that explains the history of Jim Crow and segregation in simple terms. It is a book that presents more than just the facts and figures, it presents a clear and a very accurate portrayal of the rise and fall of Jim Crow and segregation. The book has become one of the most influential of its time earning the praise of great figures in Twentieth Century American History. It is a book that holds up to its weighty praise of being “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The book is present in a light that is free from petty bias and that is shaped by a clear point of view that considers all facts equally. It is a book that will remain one of the best explanations of this time period.
Although some of Woodward’s peripheral ideas may have been amended in varying capacities his central and driving theme, often referred to as the “Woodward Thesis,” still remains intact. This thesis states that racial segregation (also known as Jim Crow) in the South in the rigid and universal form that it had taken by 1954 did not begin right after the end of the Civil War, but instead towards the end of the century, and that before Jim Crow appeared there was a distinct period of experimentation in race relations in the South. Woodward’s seminal his...
Assumptions from the beginning, presumed the Jim Crow laws went hand in hand with slavery. Slavery, though, contained an intimacy between the races that the Jim Crow South did not possess. Woodward used another historian’s quote to illustrate the familiarity of blacks and whites in the South during slavery, “In every city in Dixie,’ writes Wade, ‘blacks and whites lived side by side, sharing the same premises if not equal facilities and living constantly in each other’s presence.” (14) Slavery brought about horrible consequences for blacks, but also showed a white tolerance towards blacks. Woodward explained the effect created from the proximity between white owners and slaves was, “an overlapping of freedom and bondage that menaced the institution of slavery and promoted a familiarity and association between black and white that challenged caste taboos.” (15) The lifestyle between slaves and white owners were familiar, because of the permissiveness of their relationship. His quote displayed how interlocked blacks...
...ty and their survival as a group in society because of restraint from the federal government in the ability to litigate their plight in Court. The Author transitions the past and present signatures of Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow with the suggestion that the New Jim Crow, by mass incarceration and racism as a whole, is marginalizes and relegates Blacks to residential, educational and constitutionally endowed service to Country.
C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow looks into the emergence of the Jim Crow laws beginning with the Reconstruction era and following through the Civil Rights Movement. Woodward contends that Jim Crow laws were not a part of the Reconstruction or the following years, and that most Jim Crow laws were in place in the North at that particular time. In the South, immediately after the end of slavery, most white southerners, especially the upper classes, were used to the presence and proximity of African Americans. House slaves were often treated well, almost like part of the family, or a favored pet, and many upper-class southern children were raised with the help of a ‘mammy’ or black nursery- maid. The races often mixed in the demi- monde, and the cohabitation of white men and black women were far from uncommon, and some areas even had spe...
The cultural transition from youth to adulthood in the U.S. is often a period of chiefly physical maturation, accompanied by progressive changes in perceptions of the world that surrounds oneself. The years in which Anne Moody grew up in Mississippi were marked by often vicious racism, regardless of the emancipation of African-American slaves some 80 years earlier. The laws of many of the former Confederate states, such as the Mississippi Black Codes, often included in them provisions to severely limit the rights of African-Americans. Such passages as the Mississippi vagrant law, fining ‘idle’ blacks, illustrate this through the underhanded encouragement to keep blacks in their former place of servitude. Anne Moody’s coming of age in the era of the oppressive Black Codes was not only that of physical change, but chiefly one of mental growth from that of a victim of the injustices of the Southern U.S. to an active agent of change for her fellow African-Americans.
Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Van Woodward, traces the history of race relations in the United States from the mid and late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. In doing so Woodward brings to light significant aspects of Reconstruction that remain unknown to many today. He argues that the races were not as separate many people believe until the Jim Crow laws. To set up such an argument, Woodward first outlines the relationship between Southern and Northern whites, and African Americans during the nineteenth century. He then breaks down the details of the injustice brought about by the Jim Crow laws, and outlines the transformation in American society from discrimination to Civil Rights. Woodward’s argument is very persuasive because he uses specific evidence to support his opinions and to connect his ideas. Considering the time period in which the book and its editions were written, it should be praised for its insight into and analysis of the most important social issue in American history.
Does the name Jim Crow ring a bell? Neither singer nor actor, but actually the name for the Separate but Equal (Jim Crow) Laws of the 1900s. Separate but Equal Laws stated that businesses and public places had to have separate, but equal, facilities for minorities and Caucasian people. Unfortunately, they usually had different levels of maintenance or quality. Lasting hatred from the civil war, and anger towards minorities because they took jobs in the north probably set the foundation for these laws, but it has become difficult to prove. In this essay, I will explain how the Separate but Equal Laws of twentieth century America crippled minorities of that time period forever.
Some say, history is the process by which people recall, lay claim to, and strive to understand. On that day in May 1963, Mississippi’s lay claim: Racism. Between 1882 and 1952 Mississippi was the home to 534 reported lynchings’ more than any other state in the nation (Mills, 1992, p. 18). Jim Crow Laws or ‘Black Codes’ allowed for the legalization of racism and enforced a ‘black way’ of life. Throughout the deep-south, especially in rural communities, segregation prevailed.... ...