I've just turned in a short review of Barnard College political science professor Kimberley Johnson's very fine book Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and State in the Age Before Brown (Oxford University Press, 2010). I'll wait to talk a lot about the book until the review comes out in the American Historical Review later this year -- though I will say now that legal historians who're interested in Jim Crow will like this book a agreat deal, because it puts the state at the center of the discussion of Jim Crow. Where we often talk about courts or about those who opposed Jim Crow, Johnson does a very nice job of reminding us of what should be obvious -- the state (the federal government, as well as southern states) had a lot to do with undermining Jim Crow. She also shows how a number of reforms that might at first look like they were designed to ameliorate Jim Crow and thus make only incremental change were part of the larger movement against it. Reformers put the state on the trajectory to big changes. Phrased another way, small reforms led to big changes.
But right now I want to talk about something else related to the book. As I was putting the dust jacket on the book last evening I wondered about the photograph on jacket. Who were those people? And where where they? As I peered at the back flap for the description, I was astonished to see that they were members of the Virginia Interracial Cooperation Commission and that they were standing out front of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond. I know the church well. What really surprised me was that they were there to honor Right Rev. Beverley Dandridge Tucker! Never ceases to surprise me how small the world is. I study an earlier Beverley Tucker (Nathaniel Bevereley Tucker) -- a professor at William and Mary before the war.
Sounds interesting. Does the book at all talk about the impetus for undermining of Jim Crow? I.e. what made southern states and the federal government introduce these reforms?
Posted by: Brando Simeo Starkey | January 03, 2012 at 04:49 PM
It's focused around the reformers; some of the impetus for change came from them (and in a later period from more radical people, obviously). Sometimes the reformers were people who wanted moderate change, but not wholesale abolition of Jim Crow. After the mid 1930s a significant impetus for change came from appeals to African American voters in northern states. And important part of this story is about voters "purchasing" more freedom with their votes.
Posted by: Alfred Brophy | January 03, 2012 at 04:55 PM
Great. I just checked my school's library and they have it. It sounds like something I should be citing.
Posted by: Brando Simeo Starkey | January 04, 2012 at 02:18 AM
"Johnson does a very nice job of reminding us of what should be obvious -- the state (the federal government, as well as southern states) had a lot to do with undermining Jim Crow." Since government had a lot to with establishing, institutionalizing, and maintaining Jim Crow, it makes sense that government initiative was required to undermine it.
Posted by: David Bernstein | January 04, 2012 at 08:53 PM
Thanks for commenting, David. The impetus for reform might have come (and did in many cases) from outside of the state. The actions of outsiders are often the focus of studies of Jim Crow. However, Johnson makes the point that often gradual reforms by the state led to more political power for African Americans and, thus, even more reform.
Posted by: Alfred Brophy | January 07, 2012 at 05:59 PM