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Ghosts of Segregation: American Racism, Hidden in Plain Sight
"Seven years ago, Richard Frishman embarked on a 25,000-mile journey in his car that took him from his home state of Washington to Maine, from Mississippi to Michigan. The photographs he took along the way--in major cities, backwater towns and in the countryside--capture structures and landscapes that speak to America's history of racial oppression.
Frishman's goal in documenting these places and sites was to heighten awareness, motivate action and spark an honest conversation about the legacy of racial injustice in America today. As he assembled his work, and wrote detailed captions that tell the fascinating and often horrifying stories behind the photographs, he recognized that combining forces with a writer who could imbue the book with a personal touch would add an even deeper dimension.
Hence, each section of the book opens with an essay by noted sociologist and Mississippi-native B. Brian Foster that eloquently speaks to the memories, the history and the ongoing struggles of Black people in the United States. Within this collection, readers will witness a history of white supremacist violence and institutional racism. A history of segregated bathrooms, beaches, churches, dining areas, doors, hospitals, hotels, waiting rooms, and water.
But there are histories of Black aliveness here too. Histories of Black migration, Black entrepreneurship, Black pleasure and play, Black protest and organizing, Black singing and dancing, and Black placemaking. This remarkable book brings home a powerful these ghosts of segregation haunt us because they are very much alive. The stories and photographs in this book seek to preserve the evidence of our nation's sins. When these telling traces are erased, the lessons they contain are easily denied and forgotten. Particularly by those who seek to deny and forget."
Frishman's goal in documenting these places and sites was to heighten awareness, motivate action and spark an honest conversation about the legacy of racial injustice in America today. As he assembled his work, and wrote detailed captions that tell the fascinating and often horrifying stories behind the photographs, he recognized that combining forces with a writer who could imbue the book with a personal touch would add an even deeper dimension.
Hence, each section of the book opens with an essay by noted sociologist and Mississippi-native B. Brian Foster that eloquently speaks to the memories, the history and the ongoing struggles of Black people in the United States. Within this collection, readers will witness a history of white supremacist violence and institutional racism. A history of segregated bathrooms, beaches, churches, dining areas, doors, hospitals, hotels, waiting rooms, and water.
But there are histories of Black aliveness here too. Histories of Black migration, Black entrepreneurship, Black pleasure and play, Black protest and organizing, Black singing and dancing, and Black placemaking. This remarkable book brings home a powerful these ghosts of segregation haunt us because they are very much alive. The stories and photographs in this book seek to preserve the evidence of our nation's sins. When these telling traces are erased, the lessons they contain are easily denied and forgotten. Particularly by those who seek to deny and forget."
288 pages, Hardcover
Published February 6, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 22, 2024
Superb. I would have given this five stars, except for some factual errors and some not-great editing. For example, the author writes about great civil rights leaders such as Bernard Rustin, which should have read BAYARD Rustin. The author also repeats certain passages several times, almost verbatim, and within a few pages of each other. (Ex: pages 69, 74, and 75.) Having said that, the book, along with its photos and essays, is powerful, moving, and plain necessary. I learned so much, and I am grateful for this volume. Strongly recommend.
June 7, 2024
Necessary reading. Really illuminated a chapter of history that is too easily glossed over, but continues to leave imprints on our country to this day.
February 19, 2024
Ghosts of Segregation is a work of love. It will inform you, move you, compel you. You'll be encouraged to recommit to a better set of human relations.
The images are intense and powerful, the prose is radically honest.
It pulls off the rose colored glasses with a call to change. It will stir you up with a "something to be done awareness. " It is an honest acknowledgment of our history that will compel you to a new and better path.
The images are intense and powerful, the prose is radically honest.
It pulls off the rose colored glasses with a call to change. It will stir you up with a "something to be done awareness. " It is an honest acknowledgment of our history that will compel you to a new and better path.
March 4, 2024
A must read!
November 1, 2024
This book is mandatory. It should be used to teach lessons in school. Harrowing that this is our past, and what some consider "great" and worth returning to.
September 2, 2024
Each jarring image or surprising context gently builds into larger questions. Among them: Is America’s segregation history best healed by removing its scars or confronting them? Of that history’s visual symbols: Should we keep them or cover them? Of a place’s painful past: Acknowledge it or downplay it?
This book is fantastic, both in the array as a whole and in each selection. At once historical, immediate, and emotional.
[Reviewed on NWTheatre: https://nwtheatre.org/2024/03/01/on-b...]
This book is fantastic, both in the array as a whole and in each selection. At once historical, immediate, and emotional.
[Reviewed on NWTheatre: https://nwtheatre.org/2024/03/01/on-b...]
August 20, 2024
This book was incredible; sociological, poetic, and powerful. Highly, highly recommend.
December 1, 2024
Note: I won this book in a GoodReads giveaway.
Stunning photography of places often overlooked with deep dark histories. The essays are thought provoking and pair perfectly with the photos.
Stunning photography of places often overlooked with deep dark histories. The essays are thought provoking and pair perfectly with the photos.
February 10, 2025
This is pretty grim and certainly feels like work to read through, but it’s certainly interesting. The photos and their captions document the facts of segregation: here is the bricked-up “colored” entrance of an old movie theater; there is the hamburger restaurant from which two young men were abducted before being murdered.
The essays, by a sociologist who trained at Ole Miss and now teaches at UVA, are more about how we remember and interpret those facts today. They’re certainly academic (again, this is work), and I found them a little bit repetitive. But they reveal a black perspective on how the past and present intersect, and provide a vocabulary for discussing phenomena that I always knew about intuitively, but had never delved into. An interesting chapter is the one about “black places,” with photos of resorts, schools, and communities founded by blacks after the Civil War.
The essays, by a sociologist who trained at Ole Miss and now teaches at UVA, are more about how we remember and interpret those facts today. They’re certainly academic (again, this is work), and I found them a little bit repetitive. But they reveal a black perspective on how the past and present intersect, and provide a vocabulary for discussing phenomena that I always knew about intuitively, but had never delved into. An interesting chapter is the one about “black places,” with photos of resorts, schools, and communities founded by blacks after the Civil War.
June 4, 2024
Haunting and necessary. Though mostly unpopulated, Frishman's photographs vibrate with energy -- and no wonder, given that each image is the product of days-long observation and multiple exposures. B. Brian Foster's essays, Imani Perry's foreword, and Frishman's photographer's note help to add context and meaning to this extensive collection, but the photos mostly speak for themselves. Whether it's a bricked-up "colored entrance" or a filled-in public swimming pool for blacks -- these images serve as reminders of a past too easily erased of shame.
February 6, 2025
Well, Damn.
The images in this book capture purvasity, the awfulness, the weight of the evil heaped upon
every aspect of Black Americans lives by Racist Whites in desperation of breaking their spirits.
As a deeply Liberal white man in the 21st Century it was deeply horrifying seeing the depths of
depravity that man can sink to.
The images in this book capture purvasity, the awfulness, the weight of the evil heaped upon
every aspect of Black Americans lives by Racist Whites in desperation of breaking their spirits.
As a deeply Liberal white man in the 21st Century it was deeply horrifying seeing the depths of
depravity that man can sink to.
May 17, 2024
This is extremely powerful.
It's a coffee-table book with hundreds of photos from around the country, each from a place where some key event occurred. The Edmund Pettis bridge, a swimming pool that a community filled in with gravel (when it was no longer allowed to be segregated), a colored entrance at a theater, Medgar Evers' house, a siren in a sundown town.
Each comes with a paragraph or two explaining why the spot is significant. It's a compelling collection, with the stories combining to paint a strong portrait of race in America. It's hard to put down.
It's a coffee-table book with hundreds of photos from around the country, each from a place where some key event occurred. The Edmund Pettis bridge, a swimming pool that a community filled in with gravel (when it was no longer allowed to be segregated), a colored entrance at a theater, Medgar Evers' house, a siren in a sundown town.
Each comes with a paragraph or two explaining why the spot is significant. It's a compelling collection, with the stories combining to paint a strong portrait of race in America. It's hard to put down.
August 17, 2024
Powerful photographs with compelling commentary. I continue to marvel at the depth of historical and systemic racism in the USA, a country I love, that has been hidden from sight and from memory, though its legacy lives on in so many sad ways.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews