Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life

by Paula C Austin

The fullest account to date of African American young people in a segregated city

Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC offers a complex narrative of the everyday lives of black young people in a racially, spatially, economically, and politically restricted Washington, DC, during the 1930s. In contrast to the ways in which young people have been portrayed by researchers, policy makers, law enforcement, and the media, Paula C. Austin draws on previously unstudied archival material to present black poor and working class young people as thinkers, theorists, critics, and commentators as they reckon with the boundaries imposed on them in a Jim Crow city that was also the American emblem of equality.

The narratives at the center of this book provide a different understanding of black urban life in the early twentieth century, showing that ordinary people were expert at navigating around the limitations imposed by the District of Columbia’s racially segregated politics. Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC is a fresh take on the New Negro movement, and a vital contribution to the history of race in America.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

208 pages, Hardcover

Published December 10, 2019

Reviews

[Paul Mashack]

3.5 * This (audio)book wasn't bad, the author did great research, and I generally enjoyed it (especially after completing an autobook autobiography on DC native and basketball coaching legend John Thompson).

[Joe Kessler]

Interesting but far too brief, with the whole first third of the text a dry academic overview of author Paula C. Austin's archival source material. In the rest of the book, she brings the late 1930s to life and presents not merely the racist structures governing young African-Americans in the nation's capital, but also how those youths understood and agentively constructed their own social realities. Drawing on sociological interviews of the time, Austin crafts an ethnography enlightened by the words of her (not-that-)long-ago subjects, and reminds us how a segregated underclass can still make active choices. I only wish there were more substance to the finished result.

[Content warning for discussion of rape.]

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[Rosa Angelone]

Short quick read with a lot of impact. The author takes a famous study done by Howard University and follows deeper into who the people were being interviewed for it. With brief discussions on how a person is interviewed might affect what is recorded and who gets to be a part of the History of Ideas.

The book has given me clues of ways to find out even more about 1930s-40s Washington DC..and the way the teens whose stories are told in the book might have shaped the DC of the 60s. If you are at all interested in American history or city life and ways that teens deal with the world around them I recommend this book for you.

[Emma Spyker]

This book is so powerful. Young voices are often lost to history unless they are particularly remarkable. Austin has done a masterful job of resurrecting the voices of ordinary, young black youth from the archives of a group of sociologists and psychologists. This shows a powerful juxtaposition between the "liberty and justice for all" and patriotic symbolism on display in D.C. while, in practice, this liberty and justice was only for white Americans. Austin also connects the lessons and importance of the interviews explained in this book to the lives of young black people lost to state and community violence in the last several years which have sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.

[Jeanne]

This was a fascinating use of archival material and a great example of how primary sources can be reinterpreted beyond what they were designed to collect. It was interesting to get a snapshot of this particular place at this particular time through the eyes of these poor Black youths and to place it within the larger narrative of Race in America. A short read but really engaging and thoughtful, and I appreciated how the end tied in with the present, emphasizing just how much is lost with every Black life taken.

[Mason Lawrence]

I think that Austin did a really nice job relaying information from Frazier's study of young African Americans of DC in the 1930s in a way that was easily understandable and digestible. I think the book could've benefited from having more sources to amplify the points being made, but the book was still enjoyable. Nice tie-in to today's climate with the BLM movement.

[Aj]

Important work based on interviews of real residents. The intro is very academic and casual readers might want to skip it.