Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race

by Jennifer Ritterhouse

In the segregated South of the early twentieth century, unwritten rules guided every aspect of individual behavior, from how blacks and whites stood, sat, ate, drank, walked, and talked to whether they made eye contact with one another. Jennifer Ritterhouse asks how children learned this racial etiquette, which was sustained by coercion and the threat of violence. More broadly, she asks how individuals developed racial self-consciousness.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American, Sociology, Race, Social Issues, American History

306 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2006

Reviews

[Libby]

White children and African American children were carefully taught the Jim Crow social structure, but differently. White writers who describe the point in their lives when segregation is enforced (for instance when they are scolded for sitting down to eat with the family's maid) write about this only if they find something wrong about it. Therefore only a handful of white southerners write about the Jim Crow system because most of them just accept it. Black children are taught the rules for their own protection and parents are often harsh in reinforcing the prohibitions.

[Mary Burkholder]

This well-documented and researched book answered my questions about race relations after the Civil War and what it might have been like to be a child of either race growing up in that era. Illustrated with an abundance of true accounts. Includes a few old photographs.

[Larry]

Academic book but written with great clarity. Will absolutely inform my teaching.

[Chris Zurzolo]

Had to read this for class. Interesting

[Krista LeBlanc]

It read more like a textbook. I was hoping for more personal accounts. Otherwise, informative.