Remembering Jim Crow

Listen Up

• Commentator Clarence Page (3:55) reflects back on a time he had to move to the back of a bus, and thanks Rosa Parks for triggering the modern civil rights movement.



• The three-part radio documentary, Remembering Jim Crow, is based, in part, on Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South, a multi-year oral history project conducted by The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The audio files are located under resources: Part 1 (15:28); Part 2 (19:29); Part 3 (16:28)
  
  
• NPR’s Morning Edition presented an abbreviated version of the Remembering Jim Crow documentary: Part 1 (8:48) and Part 2 (8:37)

Write Now

• Jim Crow seems to have taken place in another world. How is it possible to explain that these were the actual conditions in the United States a little over forty years, for nearly 200 years after celebrating our Declaration of Independence?
• Since most people want to believe that they live in a just society, conditions like those under Jim Crow require the control of the language so that people in support of existing practices can make them sound just while labeling changes as unreasonable. Describe any specific language practices you observe in these accounts that helped to prop up a system of racial segration?

Read On

• More from Wikipedia on Jim Crow