Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was

by Stetson Kennedy

"A tongue-in-cheek travel guide to the United States as Stetson Kennedy saw it in the 1950s when segregation was still firmly in place and when there were many barriers in housing, education, and job opportunities for blacks, Native Americans, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and almost anyone who was not a white Protestant. . . . The Guide was [first] published in Paris in 1956 by Jean-Paul Sartre because the author could find no American publisher who was willing to issue the book. In this new edition, Kennedy has added an afterword that provides his impressions of contemporary ‘desegregated racism’."— Florida Historical Quarterly Jim Crow Guide documents  the system of legally imposed American apartheid that prevailed during what Stetson Kennedy calls "the long century from Emancipation to the Overcoming." The mock guidebook covers every area of activity where the tentacles of Jim Crow reached. From the texts of state statutes, municipal ordinances, federal regulations, and judicial rulings, Kennedy exhumes the legalistic skeleton of Jim Crow in a work of permanent value for scholars and of exceptional appeal for general readers.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, American History

283 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1956

About the author

William Stetson Kennedy (October 5, 1916 – August 27, 2011) was an American author, folklorist, and human rights activist. He is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world.

Reviews

[Nifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was written in the late 50's originally as a "Guidebook" on just how racist who was where in the United States. I knew this going into it, and I found it very enlightening. It did not leave a single stone unturned. It is written after Brown v. Board of Education but before the days of civil unrest, Martin Luther King, Jr, Freedom Rider, Malcom X, and all those other famous icons of the Civil Rights movement. I thought it was great for anyone who wanted to know exactly what was legal where (and not much was legal anywhere), who could sit where, who could talk to whom where, who could marry where, who could work where (and even what types of job you could take based on your skin color). I understand why no publisher in the United States would take it because of it unashamed and brutal honesty. We all need to have our eyes opened like that.

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this in a pile of requested and rejected books at the library, started reading on the bus home (ok, actually at the desk) sucked in immediately to the strangeness of a tour guide to Jim Crow written in the late fifties. If history lives for you in the details --how to get a sleeping car without white skin--this is quite a trip.
How had I never heard of Stetson Kennedy? A snarky self mythologizing friend of woody, a southern gentleman fighting racism, complete with scandals of representation?