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A funny thing happened earlier this week, after my lecture on the “race” relations aspects of Stephen Foster’s music. An audience member asked The big Why Question about the Jim Crow event.

I probably should have anticipated this, since no matter what historical topic you address, if you cover the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jim Crow event dominates everything else. It was horrific, it was unique, its effects still linger, and today’s Americans (Black and White) pretend that it never happened—that today’s U.S. social pathology stems from mere slavery that ended 150 years ago. Nevertheless, I was caught by surprise and had no readymade answer.

To refresh your memory, the Jim Crow era saw the cruelest wave of "racial" hatred that America has yet experienced. Between 1895 and 1955, millions of African Americans were disenfranchised, killed, brutalized, even discouraged from learning the Three Rs. According to newspaper records kept at the Tuskegee Institute, about 5,000 men, women, and children were murdered outright by the system, tortured to death in documented extrajudicial public rituals—human sacrifices called "lynchings." Public murders not reported by the newspapers plus similar executions under the veneer of due process were estimated by Ida B. Wells to have added up to about 20,000 killings.

Although most Jim Crow scholars (except Loewen) look at the South, it was actually a nationwide phenomenon. Intermarriage was outlawed everywhere. The ODR was adopted everywhere. Nearly half of the lynchings were in the North. In fact, the sundown towns that created today’s crime-ridden inner-city ghettoes (see my review of Loewen’s book) were entirely a Northern phenomenon.

Also, most scholars (including Loewen) blame the Jim Crow event on slavery somehow. But, while slavery may be a necessary explanation, it is not sufficient. It ignores the fact that most other nations in this hemisphere started slavery a hundred years earlier than the U.S., ended slavery later than the U.S., were crueler to their slaves than the U.S. (in the sense of working them to death so that their slave populations could not demographically self-reproduce), and had numbers of slaves, both absolute numbers and as population percentages, far in excess of the United States. And yet they never had lynchings, sundown towns, nor endogamous color lines. They do not have two-caste systems nor "racially" delineated urban ghettoes today. They never had a Jim Crow event. [They have cruelly hereditary class divisions, but this is something else again.]

And so, I ask you, dear reader, how would you have answered The Why Question? Why did the United States (alone) have a Jim Crow event? Keep in mind that it is customary to explain an event unique to the United States by causes also unique to the United States. It would be unpersuasive to claim, for instance, that Jim Crow happened because Americans ate meat; we all know that everyone in this hemisphere ate meat.

Good thread and I like the "why" question that was being raised at the end. Now, this is a chance to constructively debate an issue that should not start and end with "white people racist" because the author raised some very strong points about slavery in other countries which did not leave a legacy as cruel as Jim Crow in the US. This is very thought provoking and I think it could possibly be linked to what Weber talks about in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Because couldn't the same thing be asked about the US being the biggest capitalist nation in the world? He looked at the way economic and social inequalities were justified by using the Puritan views of religion. Even though Capitalism saw its genesis in Great Britain and the rest of Western Europe, the system is no where as strong as it is in the US. But getting back to the Jim Crow legacy, I believe it was a severe case of culture becoming structure. The persons in power held ideologies about race and they were able to institutionalise these beliefs. To break it down a bit more I think the US is unique in the sense that the two populations have had to live side by side, in a manner of speaking, after the abolition of slavery. This was not entirely the case in the West Indies, for example where there was a lot of absenteeism by the planter class to begin with and, after the abolotion of slavery many that remained left. So maybe the culture of fear that Whites in the US held for the now free Blacks was not as prominent in the West Indies? Then in Latin American the Church always served as an intermediary between the two classes and slavery was never as harsh there as it was elsewhere. Gosh, this is a really good question and I'm looking forward to seeing the responses of others.

I not responding fuh you to juss' start cussing me. Dem days done.

If I said something you disagreed with or you'd just like to contribute, fine by me. I wouldn't, I'm actually interested in hearing other's opinions as long as is nuh shit.

Ok den. Its on like boil corn... later tonight look out for my reply. Oh... and no I doh disagree wid nuttin' yuh seh.

Ah the good old days are back...

Good thread and I like the "why" question that was being raised at the end. Now, this is a chance to constructively debate an issue that should not start and end with "white people racist" because the author raised some very strong points about slavery in other countries which did not leave a legacy as cruel as Jim Crow in the US. This is very thought provoking and I think it could possibly be linked to what Weber talks about in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Because couldn't the same thing be asked about the US being the biggest capitalist nation in the world? He looked at the way economic and social inequalities were justified by using the Puritan views of religion. Even though Capitalism saw its genesis in Great Britain and the rest of Western Europe, the system is no where as strong as it is in the US. But getting back to the Jim Crow legacy, I believe it was a severe case of culture becoming structure. The persons in power held ideologies about race and they were able to institutionalise these beliefs. To break it down a bit more I think the US is unique in the sense that the two populations have had to live side by side, in a manner of speaking, after the abolition of slavery. This was not entirely the case in the West Indies, for example where there was a lot of absenteeism by the planter class to begin with and, after the abolotion of slavery many that remained left. So maybe the culture of fear that Whites in the US held for the now free Blacks was not as prominent in the West Indies? Then in Latin American the Church always served as an intermediary between the two classes and slavery was never as harsh there as it was elsewhere. Gosh, this is a really good question and I'm looking forward to seeing the responses of others.

Interesting topic indeed!
My answer is a little simplistic so excuse me in advance, but i think JimCrow occurred in the US because it could.
After abolition white southerners were extremely pissed off at losing their "property" and equally feared retribution. Jim Crow was an effective way of not only segregating blacks from whites, but also in instilling fear. Slavery may have been over, but the message needed to be sent to blacks that they were still not entitled to the rights afforded to whites and promised in the constitution.

Also the US unlike the WI had a large white majority who could enforce and sustain a policy like Jim Crow. In the Caribbean the white minority could have in no way really enforced such a policy unless they were prepared to rely on the support of the mother country to supply troops and forces to squash any rebellions the blacks may have staged. After the lossesof life and economic devastation of WW1 and WW2 the colonial powers had no interest in using troops or soldiers in the colonies to enforce something like Jim Crow they had their own problms to deal with in Europe.

So in conclusion Jim Crow exisited in the US b/c of white fear of retribution for slavery, the desire to instill fear in the black population, and b/c they had the white majority to support such a policy (included in the majority are police, troops, gov't etc.).

You and Toppa make some good points

But one thing that I have to question is the factor of the whites being in the majority. Granted slavery in the UK was not nearly as bad as it was in the US and the West Indies *or so we are told*, but the same situation occurred where the whites were in the majority. So how come this 'Jim Crow' effect didn't cross the Atlantic? Especially seeing how the US and UK have historical ties... if one sneezes, the other catches a cold.
And for that matter how does one use that explanation to ratify the Apartheid system (which has overtones of Jim Crow) in South Africa, where I believe the whites were not in the majority?

Dis gehing too complicated oui. lol Leh we just leave it as some white people just more racist than others.

You and Toppa make some good points

But one thing that I have to question is the factor of the whites being in the majority. Granted slavery in the UK was not nearly as bad as it was in the US and the West Indies *or so we are told*, but the same situation occurred where the whites were in the majority. So how come this 'Jim Crow' effect didn't cross the Atlantic? Especially seeing how the US and UK have historical ties... if one sneezes, the other catches a cold.
And for that matter how does one use that explanation to ratify the Apartheid system (which has overtones of Jim Crow) in South Africa, where I believe the whites were not in the majority?