exploring the modern south: introduction to the course (law & policy of the jim crow era)
TRANSCRIPT
Exploring the Modern South
JOSHUA LABOVE
“You learn to forgive (the South) for its narrow mind and growing
pains because it has a huge heart. You forgive the stifling summers
because the spring is lush and pastel sprinkled, because winter is
merciful and brief, because corn bread and sweet tea and fried
chicken are every bit as vital to a Sunday as getting dressed up for
church, and because any southerner worth their salt says please and
thank you. It's soft air and summer vines, pine woods and fat
homegrown tomatoes. It's pulling the fruit right off a peach tree and
letting the juice run down your chin. It's a closeted and profound
appreciation for our neighbors in Alabama who bear the brunt of the
Bubba jokes. The South gets in your blood and nose and skin bone-
deep. I am less a part of the South than it is part of me. It's a
romantic notion, being overcome by geography. But we are all a little
starry-eyed down here. We're Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara and
Rosa Parks all at once.” - Amanda Kyle Williams
Understanding the modern American South
We will look at the South through a variety of lenses over the course. What does Southern identity mean
today? Is it political? Cultural? Geographic?
Democracy and
RightsJanuary 8
We begin by thinking about the state of the
South in 1964 and the laws that made for an
unequal and segregated region.
Geography and
InfrastructureJanuary 15
The South is a loosely conceptualized
geography, with great diversity—from
Appalachian mountains to Carolina
Lowcountry and the Florida Gulf Coast.
Foodways
January 29
Food—preparation, eating, and sharing—is
a staple of the South. To speak of Southern
foodways is to speak of the people and
history of the region.
Cities and
UrbanizationFebruary 5
From the shadows of lush antebellum
plantations, the South has rapidly
urbanized—new cities that reflect the
changing and globalizing role of the region
and the United States writ large.
Arts & Culture
February 12
The region has long been a breeding
ground for creative output—from the sounds
of BB King to the pages of William
Faulkner.
What do we mean when we say ‘The South’?Where, precisely, does the South begin or end? Is the South a political assemblage? Or does it represent something else?
v
We will spend much more time discussing geography and some of the micro-regions that
comprise the South, with particular attention to the way geography, topography, and agriculture
have informed culture and identity throughout the South, but for now, it is helpful to keep this rough
map in mind and remember that the region is at once expansive and eclectic.
s
c
FL
L
A
KY
South
Carolina
Florida
Kentucky
Louisiana
A Diverse Region
Law & Geography: a Primer
Law is inherently spatial—it works with/in a particular space. By making law, we are often engaging in
making political space. For whom? To what end?
How can law and policy
make and change our relationship to space?
Law and space are reflective of power relations between individuals, the state, material space,
and institutions.
Law makes space as space makes law through jurisdiction and scale. In the South, this means
making fractious, ad-hoc spaces of segregation and disenfranchisement.
Ad-hoc laws create a chaos dangerous for African-American, who find their mobility is limited
and challenged by evolving legal understandings of what, where, and how segregation can occur.
While some towns may have deployed poll taxes, others may have used law to limit access to
public space, employment, or social services.
The State of the South in 1964
What was the regional discourse? How did laws, culture, and discussions locally connect or conflict with
other geographic scales?
What role does the
South play in the US
in the 1960s? Today?
How do (discriminatory) local laws make space?
How does the creation and contestation of laws—both in their legislative creation
and their juridical challenges—serve to define particular spaces, limit access to
space, and challenge mobility? What kinds of power relationships are embedded
in the enactment of such laws?
Local Laws and an Unequal SouthHistory texts often talk about ‘the South’ monolithically and the laws as uniformly
exclusionary, but in reality exclusion and discrimination was crafted through a range of
laws and polices at every level of government and public life.
Jim Crow LawsA bit of a broad-’catch-all’ for exclusionary local policies
2
1
Limiting Access to Polls and VotingPoll taxes and exams sought to limit black voting
3
4
Exclusionary Amenities and Housing PracticesCities experiment with ways to keep African-Americans away
‘Dixiecrats’ and the Southern ManifestoPulling from Plessy, Southern Democrats try to maintain separate but equal.
Case Studies in Exclusion
How did a multiplicity of Jim Crow laws, exclusionary funding, and devolution from the federal government
produce exclusionary geographies for African-Americans?
By devolving education to the States, the
federal government accepted that some
states would maintain separate and distinct
facilities. But were they equal in any
measureable terms?
Education
State conventions throughout the South
developed so-called “Black Codes” in the
1860s to prevent African-Americans from
owning land, and thus, profiting from farming
and agriculture.
Farming & Agriculture Public Accommodations DemocracyHousing
Jim Crow laws prevented access to the
housing market, limitations on
rent/ownership, and challenges to accessing
financing.
‘Separate but equal’ began with a rail car and
would fall under the pressure of lunch
counters, rail cars, and motels.
Municipalities and states tried to make
workarounds to voting equality, through poll
taxes and tests.
Squaring the South with the NationHow can we speak of the approaches through which legal change and equality was realized? What do the
geographic differences between these approaches tell us about the South, the US, and federalism in the
Civil Rights era?
Fights for equality, access, mobility, and legal
personhood were being lodged emergently—sit-ins,
bus boycotts, and marches. Activists were fighting a
complex assemblage of laws cropping up throughout
the region, most very targeted and local.
Regional Discourses Post-JFK National Discourse
If the regional approaches were pragmatic and ad-hoc,
the national conversation was deeply spiritual and
philosophical. Legal conversations here surround
watershed Supreme Court cases (Brown v. Board of
Ed.) and pushing for big platform, omnibus legislation
as the Civil Rights Act would come to be.
Vectors of the Movement
Rather than speak of a wholesale change at the federal level (as is sometimes common in hindsight and
history texts), we can see the evolution toward equality through three scales of governance.
FEDERALThe emerging jurisprudence around
‘interstate commerce’ would allow the
federal government to enter
conversations previously reserved for
the States.
REGIONALApproaches such as the
“Southern Manifesto” and “Black
Codes” attempted to build a
regional coalition around
exclusion.
MUNICIPALTiny laws at the most local of scales were
some of the most pernicious—from vagrancy
laws, access to education, and home
ownership.
DiscussionWhy does the ad-hoc legal geography of exclusion matter in the way we think about the South? How does
this history give way to the South’s present? What can we take from the Civil Rights Era as instructive
toward defining Southern culture and values?