American Nightmare
The History of Jim Crow
by Jerold M. PackardWhen the American Civil War ended, white southerners were in a quandry. They most emphatically did not want any sort of equality with former slaves. As the slaves no longer had individual masters to order them not to mingle with whites, southerners saw two courses left to them to hold down the black population: force and the law. Immediately after the war, the south tried to pass a series of Black Codes, but these were struck down by a congress and court dominated by northerners and including some blacks. Force was used to keep blacks from the polls, and then the south again began to pass laws to seperate and oppress its lower class. These laws were called Jim Crow laws. Slowly but surely they gained power. In scope, they covered all aspects of public life, and in area they spread to the northern states. During wartime, the army took Jim Crow with it. In the 1950s and 60s, Jim Crow was done in by peaceful protests and northern sympathies, and there this book abruptly ends.
Serious reading.
