THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 3

The Real Jim Crow

The Real Jim Crow

How Northern Jim Crow Laws Moved South

Guest post by Leonard M. "Mike" Scruggs

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Gene Kizer, Jr.

[Publisher's Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : I am delighted to publish this article by Mike Scruggs, historian, author, columnist for The Times Examiner out of Greenville, South Carolina. I have Mike's 359 page illustrated book, The Un-Civil War, Shattering the Historical Myths, which promises to be outstanding. I look forward to reviewing it in the next few weeks.

This article contains much historical detail and makes it clear why Southern states, after the horrors of Reconstruction, felt an imperative to copy the Jim Crow laws of the Northern states. Before Reconstruction, the South was integrated, by necessity, according to C. Vann Woodward in The Strange Career of Jim Crow, which produced an intimacy between blacks and whites not found anywhere else in the country. That's not to say that race relations were always great, but they were far better in the South than in the North and the West. Blacks and whites in the South did not recoil from each other as did the white Yankee women at the end of Gone with the Wind with the thought of Mammy touching their children. Scarlett O'Hara found that absurd. That is a good case of fiction perfectly illustrating reality.

The North and West were the opposite of the South. Blacks and whites were rigidly segregated, by custom, law, or both.

There are links to The Times Examiner website, Mike's columns, and to Mike's books, below, after his bio and article.

You will love Mike's other columns. They are outstanding just like this one. To give you a sampling, go to The Times Examiner website and check out: "Social Justice Gone Mad, The Poisoned Chalice of Critical Race Theory"; "States Rights and the Future of Liberty, Remembering John C. Calhoun"; "The Civil War and Just War Doctrine, Beneath the Virtue-signaling Propaganda of Total War"; and "The Legacies of Reconstruction, How "White Supremacy" Was Born and Repainted".]

Mike Scruggs is the author of two books - The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You - and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.

He holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.

The Real Jim Crow

By Mike Scruggs

(First published in The Times Examiner, 24 May 2021; bold emphasis, below, is from the author)

How Northern Jim Crow Laws Moved South

"Jim Crow" was the stage name of New York actor Thomas D. Rice (1808-1860), who made a career of minstrel performances in blackface and thus popularized that form of entertainment. The name "Jim Crow" came from a popular 1832 song, "Jump Jim Crow," written and sung by Rice and became a common term referring to African-Americans.  Later it became a nickname for legislation restricting the rights of African-Americans.

Blackface is not necessarily demeaning. Rice may have based his character on slave folk tales about a clever trickster.

Al Jolson (1886-1950), a Russian Jewish immigrant, and the most popular and beloved American entertainer beginning with the movie The Jazz Singer in 1927 and lasting for many decades, was said to be the "king of blackface."  Jolson's personal feelings and many of his songs were certainly sympathetic to African-Americans.