The Strange Career of Jim Crow

De: C. Vann Woodward

Narrado por: Sean Crisden

C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America's most eminent Southern historian, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Mary Chestnut's Civil War and a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. Now, to honor his long and truly distinguished career, Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward's most influential work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed, the book actually helped shape that history. Published in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ordered schools desegregated, Strange Career was cited so often to counter arguments for segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement." The book offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws, presenting evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1890s. Woodward convincingly shows that, even under slavery, the two races had not been divided as they were under the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s. In fact, during Reconstruction, there was considerable economic and political mixing of the races. The segregating of the races was a relative newcomer to the region. Hailed as one of the top 100 nonfiction works of the twentieth century, The Strange Career of Jim Crow has sold almost a million copies and remains, in the words of David Herbert Donald, "a landmark in the history of American race relations."

©2002 Oxford University Press Inc. Afterword © 2002 by William S. McFeely. (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Classic

Learn the messy truths of history. The most respectful thing we can do for the past is to learn it accurately.

Historiography

This book’s present value is its historiographical significance. The final chapter gives you insight into that after you’ve already read the work knowing it was written in real time of the Civil Rights movement.

Worthwhile history lesson

Well written book on the struggle to abolish segregation. Thoroughly enjoyed it and if your a history buff like myself you'll enjoy it also!

The races were not as separate as we think

This book is essential to understanding the fact that the races in the United States are not naturally opposed to one another, and indeed they once mixed freely. I heartily recommend this audio book.

the truth is Stranger Than Fiction

infuriating but is true its history what can you do . narration was kind of monotone in beginning kind of made it hard to pay attention but seemed to improve a little as the story continued on

Nuanced and essential

Required reading along with his other book “the burden of southern history”, another great listen.

Essential Reading

If you want to understand the history of injustice in the US and civil rights, then you need to read this book. It's a seminal pathbreaking work. I am not going to claim that it is perfect by any means. Vann Woodward does not make that claim either. As one example, his discussion of the "radical black" political movement in the 1960s and 1970s sounds completely at odds with everything that precedes it. It makes no sense to condemn black political frustration and aggression right after documenting a century of calculated racial aggression from white society. The point is, this isn't the final word on the topic. But it's an impressive first attempt that everyone should read.

The narrator is clear. His style is a little odd. But I had no trouble understanding everything he read. It's not easy to read non-fiction. So I appreciate the performance.

We all must look to the past for answers

We all can benefit from reading this great work of history. MLK was right in calling it the "the historical Bible of the Civil Rights movement".

Must read in all high schools!

It is an uncomfortable history Americans must face. A hard look at racism in our current world.

A Prescient Classic Still Holds Up

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., once called Woodward's "Strange Career," "The Bible of the Civil Rights movement." Despite a few dated references from this, the 1974 final edition of the book published first in 1955, it is still easy to see why. Woodward's central contention, that there was nothing unmoveable or unchangeable about Segregation in the South, which had only reached something like its final form in the early 1900s, proved both a starting point to a burgeoning history of race, race relations, and segregation (and efforts at desegregation), North and South, but an inspiration to those seeking to change society for the better. To have come from Woodward, a white southerner himself, in part addressing a white southern audience in order to convince them (at least in the early editions) that positive change in race relations should and must come, makes it all the more remarkable. Woodward's intelligent but never obtusely scholarly tone, skill at building arguments, and ability to provide an engaging narrative are instructive to anyone who wishes to learn to write firmly and convincingly--often a problem for a good historian. His later chapters and interweaving of a narrative of northern racism and defacto segregation (both past and present) and the ability of politicians like Richard Nixon (and many of his successors, especially in the Republican Party) raise this work above regional history and provide important touch points for political and racial tensions continuing to the present day. So too, his description of the then recent fracturing of the black Civil Rights Movement between integrationists and nationalists points both backward to divisions dating from the Reconstruction period and forward to current movements and divisions. Woodward's book is rightfully judged a classic that demonstrates the continued importance of history to understanding of the present. I would HIGHLY recommend it as a starting point for both lay people and historians to begin an exploration of complex times and issues still being sorted out today and well into the future.