The Jim Crow Routine: Everyday Performances of Race, Civil Rights, and Segregation in Mississippi

by Stephen A. Berrey

The South's system of Jim Crow racial oppression is usually understood in terms of legal segregation that mandated the separation of white and black Americans. Yet, as Stephen A. Berrey shows, it was also a high-stakes drama that played out in the routines of everyday life, where blacks and whites regularly interacted on sidewalks and buses and in businesses and homes. Every day, individuals made, unmade, and remade Jim Crow in how they played their racial roles--how they moved, talked, even gestured. The highly visible but often subtle nature of these interactions constituted the Jim Crow routine.

In this study of Mississippi race relations in the final decades of the Jim Crow era, Berrey argues that daily interactions between blacks and whites are central to understanding segregation and the racial system that followed it. Berrey shows how civil rights activism, African Americans' refusal to follow the Jim Crow script, and national perceptions of southern race relations led Mississippi segregationists to change tactics. No longer able to rely on the earlier routines, whites turned instead to less visible but equally insidious practices of violence, surveillance, and policing, rooted in a racially coded language of law and order. Reflecting broader national transformations, these practices laid the groundwork for a new era marked by black criminalization, mass incarceration, and a growing police presence in everyday life.

Genres: History

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2015

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

While numerous scholars have offered analysis of the southern Jim Crow regime, Stephen Berrey's intervention is examining the ways in which Jim Crow was performed between individuals in their day-to-day interactions from the 1930-1960s and how these performances transformed over time. Berrey makes use of traditional sources (newspapers, government reports, published speeches) but his application of anthropological readings to oral histories helps illuminate his points and distinguishes his study from other works on Jim Crow. Incorporating performance theory, Berrey argues that Jim Crow was constantly being remade and reinforced through performances of race between individuals. The Jim Crow Routine begins by revealing that the barriers we often associate with segregation were often visibly permeable and mobile. Berrey highlights the reoccurring themes in black and white accounts of racial violence and later explores how states offered their own narratives of race and segregation to counter national censure. In addition, Berrey spends ample time considering the impact of the Civil Rights movement on southern states and the ways it led to increased surveillance of the black population and the move towards incarceration and statistics to justify segregation. Berrey's most useful and compelling argument centers on the “geography of segregation” or "the stage" where Jim Crow performances took place.

[Elizabeth]

As heard on Teaching Hard History:
https://www.tolerance.org/podcasts/te...

[F. Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, late in life I am starting a new stage of learning. I am a WASP, born in Texas, right in the middle of the Civil rights movement. Sheltered, yes and the product of mildy racest parents. I could go on but I won't. I am making a further study into slavery and reconstruction till present day. We were not taught this in school. Most of the history I now know, I learned as a adult. You don't get this kind of learning in school.

[F. Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Painful but necessary read

As a white southerner, born in 1960 in Dallas my civil rights knowledge is lacking. This book spurred me to write a 30 page long hand journal of my life and my interactions with people who were not WASP. It also spurred me to go deeper in to the history of slavery and the war which caused the Jim Crow era.
I came to my love of history late. In doing study on WWII I realized that it you don't understand how Germany was so easily mislead then you only have a guy with a silly stash that hated the Jews.
So I am going to endeavor to learn all I can about the history and the root cause necessitating the Civil Rights Movement.