The Strange Career of Jim Crow (C. Van Woodward)

C. Van Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow essentially follows the chronology of racial segregation practices in the southern United States from the time of slavery through the 1950s. Throughout the discussion, Woodward relies on segregation practices in other regions, however, to demonstrate that the social mores and practices that permitted and drove segregation in the South often occurred in or were caused by similar mores and practices in other areas, such as the northern United States and even South Africa. But he is correct in stating that he put the question of "when" - the chronology - before the sociology and the demography. This choice does weaken his discussion to the extent that, as he follows the chronology of segregation practices in the South, he sometimes fails to preface his discussion of these practices with the events (sociological and demographic) in other areas that drove these practices in the South. On the other hand, the method Woodward used in the book does allow for a clear understanding of how racial segregation practices progressed in the South in the hundred year period leading up to the 1950s.

Woodward's discussion of the events that led to the enactment of Jim Crow laws in the southern states is instructive of the problem he identifies in his historiography of the subject. In the chapter titled "Of Old Regimes and Reconstructions," Woodward documents the presence of racial segregation practices in the no

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