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Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle: Part 1, 1876 - 1919: Reconstruction to the Red Summer
This collection of 80 dramatic firsthand writings by Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and others brings to life the struggle for racial justice from the Civil War to World War I
A vital resource for the teaching of the history of race in America that traces the ascendency of white supremacy after Reconstruction—and the outspoken resistance to it led by Black Americans and their allies
W.E.B. Du Bois famously identified "the problem of the color-line" as the defining issue in American life. The powerful writings gathered here reveal the many ways Americans, Black and white, fought against white supremacist efforts to police the color line, envisioning a better America in the face of disenfranchisement, segregation, and widespread lynching, mob violence, and police brutality.
Jim Voices from a Century of Struggle, Part One brings together speeches, pamphlets, newspaper and magazine articles, public testimony, judicial opinions, letters, and poems and song lyrics—more than eighty essential texts in all—from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the bloody “Red Summer” of 1919.
The volume includes writing by both famous and lesser known individuals,
The volume also presents revealing examples of white supremacist advocacy by Nathaniel Shaler and Benjamin Tillman; testimony about the “Exoduster” migration to Kansas in the 1870s; celebrations of pathbreaking Black musicians and stage performers; writing about the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, the founding of the NAACP, and Black soldiers in World War I; and contrasting editorials from the Black and white press on prizefighter Jack Johnson and the outlaw Robert Charles.
As the teaching of our nation’s history, especially the history of race in America, becomes increasingly contested, this book will serve as a vital resource, a crucial reminder of where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and how long the road ahead remains.
A vital resource for the teaching of the history of race in America that traces the ascendency of white supremacy after Reconstruction—and the outspoken resistance to it led by Black Americans and their allies
W.E.B. Du Bois famously identified "the problem of the color-line" as the defining issue in American life. The powerful writings gathered here reveal the many ways Americans, Black and white, fought against white supremacist efforts to police the color line, envisioning a better America in the face of disenfranchisement, segregation, and widespread lynching, mob violence, and police brutality.
Jim Voices from a Century of Struggle, Part One brings together speeches, pamphlets, newspaper and magazine articles, public testimony, judicial opinions, letters, and poems and song lyrics—more than eighty essential texts in all—from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the bloody “Red Summer” of 1919.
The volume includes writing by both famous and lesser known individuals,
The volume also presents revealing examples of white supremacist advocacy by Nathaniel Shaler and Benjamin Tillman; testimony about the “Exoduster” migration to Kansas in the 1870s; celebrations of pathbreaking Black musicians and stage performers; writing about the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, the founding of the NAACP, and Black soldiers in World War I; and contrasting editorials from the Black and white press on prizefighter Jack Johnson and the outlaw Robert Charles.
As the teaching of our nation’s history, especially the history of race in America, becomes increasingly contested, this book will serve as a vital resource, a crucial reminder of where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and how long the road ahead remains.
- GenresHistoryAmerican History
763 pages, Hardcover
Published April 2, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 8, 2025
Jim Crow In The Library Of America
The volumes published by the Library of America help to explore and preserve the United States -- its literature and history, aspirations and failings. The LOA has published many volumes of source documents on American history ranging from colonial to modern times. It has published a range of books of source material on black history, including a volume on the Reconstruction Era and a two-volume set "Reporting Civil Rights" covering the momentous era between 1941 --1973.
This recent LOA book, "Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle" (2024) is the first of two volumes of documentary history covering the years between Reconstruction and, with substantial overlap, the Civil Rights Era. This volume covers the years 1876, when Reconstruction formally ended with the disputed presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, and 1919, with the "Red Summer" following WW I. The second volume, to be released in 2025 takes the documentary history of Jim Crow through 1976. Tyina L. Steptoe, associate professor of history at the University of Arizona, edited the volume.
In its length and breadth, this book tells a daunting and disturbing story. It consists of over eighty documents, including pamphlets, speeches, testimony, court opinions, newspaper articles, and more showing Jim Crow in its many manifestations throughout the United States, not only in the South. The documents cover a range of perspectives from those who endured Jim Crow to those who perpetuated and defended it.
The volume offers much to read and digest, and placing the documents in context is necessary. The book opens with Steptoe's 15 page Introduction which offers an overview of Jim Crow, beginning before the Civil War, and discussing its many aspects as shown in the documents. The supporting materials also include a chronology for the years 1877-1919 which offer background and help the reader follow the documentary story. The chronology is followed by nearly 60 dense pages of notes which offer details on the writers of the documents and on people and events described in them which contemporary readers may find unfamiliar. These materials are all useful in understanding the history recounted in the over 600 pages of source documents forming the body of the volume.
The book consists of three sections. The first, covering the years 1876 -- 1896, opens with a speech by Frederick Douglass to the 1876 Republican National Convention urging the need for protecting the Black vote in the South. Among many other things, the book covers sharecropping, intimidation of Black people, the first wave of migrations north and west, the denial of voting rights, and segregation. The most striking documents are those written by Ida Wells and Frederick Douglass dealing with lynching. This section also includes the full Supreme Court opinion and dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) together with the brief filed by plaintiff's counsel, Albion Tourgee.
The second section covers the years 1897 -- 1909. Again, several documents discuss lynching, including an 1898 article by a white woman, Rebecca Felton, and a response by the editor of a Black newspaper. The documents continue to discuss disenfranchisement and the need for political action. A lengthy speech by segregationist Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman of South Carolina is one of several in the book defending a sharply segregationist perspective. An essay by W.E.B DuBois criticizing Booker T Washington, and two essays by Mary Church Terrell, one on peonage and chain gangs and the other on Black life in Washington D.C. are among the highlights of this part.
In the third part of the book, covering the years 1909- 1919, violence comes to the fore, especially in the years of WW I. The documents offer varying perspectives on riots in East St. Louis, Houston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and elsewhere. The documents include a testy exchange between President Woodrow Wilson and activist William Monroe Trotter on the segregation of the Federal work force. Documents show various reactions to the heavyweight championship victory of Jack Johnson, the film, "Birth of a Nation", and the increasing Black presence in the arts. The collection concludes with a speech in Harlem by Marcus Garvey and an increasingly restive Black population at the end of the Great War heralding the rise of the 'New Negro".
This is a wonderful book to have to document Jim Crow in the United States and to encourage thought. It will be of most interest to readers with a background in and passion for the subject. It can also be used as a collection of source material to accompany classes in American history. In an interview with the LOA, Steptoe offered the following thoughts on presenting the documentary history of Jim Crow to students and readers.
"It’s unfortunate that some people don’t know this happened in our nation’s history. People have a sense that things were bad back then, but they don’t always know how brutal it was, the public nature of the violence. That’s why I try to find figures we can latch on to, who will be our guides. We meet Ida B. Wells, a young schoolteacher biting the hand of a train conductor. That’s a cool story! She seems badass, right? Then later, her friends are killed and she starts writing about lynching. But we know her and her story by the time she starts to describe these horrible things.
As an editor and a writer, I’m always thinking about how to bring people into this world, a world that in some ways sounds like the one we know, and in others is nothing like it."
This book is an outstanding contribution to the Library of America and to its goal of helping readers understand our country and its history.
Robin Friedman
The volumes published by the Library of America help to explore and preserve the United States -- its literature and history, aspirations and failings. The LOA has published many volumes of source documents on American history ranging from colonial to modern times. It has published a range of books of source material on black history, including a volume on the Reconstruction Era and a two-volume set "Reporting Civil Rights" covering the momentous era between 1941 --1973.
This recent LOA book, "Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle" (2024) is the first of two volumes of documentary history covering the years between Reconstruction and, with substantial overlap, the Civil Rights Era. This volume covers the years 1876, when Reconstruction formally ended with the disputed presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, and 1919, with the "Red Summer" following WW I. The second volume, to be released in 2025 takes the documentary history of Jim Crow through 1976. Tyina L. Steptoe, associate professor of history at the University of Arizona, edited the volume.
In its length and breadth, this book tells a daunting and disturbing story. It consists of over eighty documents, including pamphlets, speeches, testimony, court opinions, newspaper articles, and more showing Jim Crow in its many manifestations throughout the United States, not only in the South. The documents cover a range of perspectives from those who endured Jim Crow to those who perpetuated and defended it.
The volume offers much to read and digest, and placing the documents in context is necessary. The book opens with Steptoe's 15 page Introduction which offers an overview of Jim Crow, beginning before the Civil War, and discussing its many aspects as shown in the documents. The supporting materials also include a chronology for the years 1877-1919 which offer background and help the reader follow the documentary story. The chronology is followed by nearly 60 dense pages of notes which offer details on the writers of the documents and on people and events described in them which contemporary readers may find unfamiliar. These materials are all useful in understanding the history recounted in the over 600 pages of source documents forming the body of the volume.
The book consists of three sections. The first, covering the years 1876 -- 1896, opens with a speech by Frederick Douglass to the 1876 Republican National Convention urging the need for protecting the Black vote in the South. Among many other things, the book covers sharecropping, intimidation of Black people, the first wave of migrations north and west, the denial of voting rights, and segregation. The most striking documents are those written by Ida Wells and Frederick Douglass dealing with lynching. This section also includes the full Supreme Court opinion and dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) together with the brief filed by plaintiff's counsel, Albion Tourgee.
The second section covers the years 1897 -- 1909. Again, several documents discuss lynching, including an 1898 article by a white woman, Rebecca Felton, and a response by the editor of a Black newspaper. The documents continue to discuss disenfranchisement and the need for political action. A lengthy speech by segregationist Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman of South Carolina is one of several in the book defending a sharply segregationist perspective. An essay by W.E.B DuBois criticizing Booker T Washington, and two essays by Mary Church Terrell, one on peonage and chain gangs and the other on Black life in Washington D.C. are among the highlights of this part.
In the third part of the book, covering the years 1909- 1919, violence comes to the fore, especially in the years of WW I. The documents offer varying perspectives on riots in East St. Louis, Houston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and elsewhere. The documents include a testy exchange between President Woodrow Wilson and activist William Monroe Trotter on the segregation of the Federal work force. Documents show various reactions to the heavyweight championship victory of Jack Johnson, the film, "Birth of a Nation", and the increasing Black presence in the arts. The collection concludes with a speech in Harlem by Marcus Garvey and an increasingly restive Black population at the end of the Great War heralding the rise of the 'New Negro".
This is a wonderful book to have to document Jim Crow in the United States and to encourage thought. It will be of most interest to readers with a background in and passion for the subject. It can also be used as a collection of source material to accompany classes in American history. In an interview with the LOA, Steptoe offered the following thoughts on presenting the documentary history of Jim Crow to students and readers.
"It’s unfortunate that some people don’t know this happened in our nation’s history. People have a sense that things were bad back then, but they don’t always know how brutal it was, the public nature of the violence. That’s why I try to find figures we can latch on to, who will be our guides. We meet Ida B. Wells, a young schoolteacher biting the hand of a train conductor. That’s a cool story! She seems badass, right? Then later, her friends are killed and she starts writing about lynching. But we know her and her story by the time she starts to describe these horrible things.
As an editor and a writer, I’m always thinking about how to bring people into this world, a world that in some ways sounds like the one we know, and in others is nothing like it."
This book is an outstanding contribution to the Library of America and to its goal of helping readers understand our country and its history.
Robin Friedman
May 27, 2025
Depressingly powerful. The US has always found ways to justify its hatred, violence, and double-dealing. What is currently happening in our country (2025) is nothing new.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews