Title / Miles to Go for Freedom: Segregation & Civil Rights in the Jim Crow Years
Author / Linda Barrett Osborne
Year / 2012
Length / 110 p.
Ebook available? / No
Audiobook available? / No
Executive Summary / Explores the time of legal segregation in the US from 1896 to 1954, including the source and purpose of such laws, the effects they had, and how African Americans resisted them.
Cautions/Warnings / Some instances of the n-word, though always presented as “n_____” and always coming from quoted material
Features / Timeline; primary sources; maps
Illustrations / Period black & white photos & illustrations on almost every page
Key Structures / Timeline (order of events), Cause & Effect (how did Jim Crow laws skirt national laws, what effects did they have, how did African Americans and others respond to these laws, how did resistance to these laws change them), compare & contrast (different regions of the US, official vs. unwritten rules about segregation)
Key Themes / Justice vs. Law – how laws can be used to achieve unjust ends; “separate is not equal”; codified vs. unwritten social rules;
Vocabulary / Jim Crow law; segregation; desegregation; integration; discrimination; prejudice; poll tax
Preface (3 pages vii-ix) / Summary:
·  Purpose of this book is to explore the time of legal segregation in America from the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896 up to the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling in 1954: how did what freedom they had prior disappear, what was the impact of segregation on day-to-day life, was segregation restricted only to the south, how did federal laws conflict with state laws on the issue, and how did African Americans resist and fight back? Notes the unfortunate necessity of using the word “race” when such concepts are inaccurate and arbitrary.
Vocabulary:
·  Segregation
·  Jim Crow
·  Public accommodations
·  Civil rights
·  Connote
·  Subjective
·  Arbitrary
Illustrations:
·  African American children from the early Jim Crow era
Questions:
·  Describe what is being contrasted in the first two paragraphs.
·  What important questions are posed in the third paragraph?
·  What era does this book cover (what event starts it and what event ends it, according to the author)?
·  According to the paragraph running from page viii to ix, what main topics will this book cover?
·  What attitudes or opinions can you gather about the author from the first full paragraph on page ix?
·  According to the author, what is the problem with using the word “race”?
Interesting Topics:
·  Author’s craft (what is the purpose of this introduction; how does she immediately contrast the past with the present; how does she inject emotion into the issue at the start; what attitudes and opinions are clearly guiding her efforts)
·  Sequence of Events (students may need to create a timeline of US history with major events like American Revolution, Civil War, WWI, Great Depression, WWII, etc. marked on it – they will need to know when legal slavery ended, they will need to know there was a period of relative freedom before 1896, and they will need to see that this book covers 1896 to 1954)
Further Research:
·  Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution
Introduction (pp. 1-13) / Summary:
·  Segregation was a system of laws that existed in the South from the 1890s into the 1960s and was designed to keep whites and blacks in separate facilities (public areas, businesses, etc.). These laws were passed at the state and/or city level. There was also more sporadic legalized segregation in other states, and there was discrimination of other kinds (in housing, education, and jobs) all across the country. Summarizes the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Right after slavery was abolished in the 1860s, the south started passing “black codes” that essentially enforced many of the same conditions as slavery did. In response, the federal government passed civil rights laws and constitutional amendments that guaranteed African American citizenship and voting rights to black men. For a couple of decades, rigid legal segregation did not exist. Blacks rode on integrated trains and were elected to political office and had voting power. Some whites who felt threatened by this situation joined violent terrorist gangs of white supremacists. Others tried to find legal ways to keep blacks from voting while still technically forbidding them to do so on the basis of race. Southern states began to implement poll taxes and literacy tests to keep frequently poor and illiterate black men from voting. And without their power to vote, they could not stand against segregation laws that started springing up in the south.
Vocabulary:
·  Segregation
·  Discrimination
·  Sharecrop
·  Poll tax
Illustrations:
·  African American boy drinks from fountain marked “Colored.”
·  Map of the US showing states where segregation was required by law, where it was prohibited by law, and where there were no laws
·  Diner with separate entrances for “White” and “Colored.”
·  African Americans swimming at a lake in a park set aside for blacks
·  Lithograph with illustrations celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment
·  Illustration of black men voting for the first time
·  An elegantly dressed African American woman near the end of the 1800s during a time when African Americans were beginning to lose many of the rights the Civil War had won them
·  Illustration depicts “Heroes of the Colored Race” including Frederick Douglass and African American senators Blanche Kelso Bruce and Hiram Rhoades Revels
Questions:
·  Like the preface, this introduction starts with a quote. How are these two quotes similar? How does this quote establish the main topic of the book and this introduction?
·  Give some examples of places you have been this week where segregation would have been required by law if you had been in the South during 1890-1960.
·  When this book refers to “The South”, what do those states have in common in terms of the topic of this book?
·  Why is it inaccurate to say that legal segregation only took place in the South?
·  Besides laws that required segregation, what other kinds of discrimination did African Americans face in the North, and in the South?
·  What are some of the differences between racial segregation and racial discrimination?
·  Why were conditions different in different states?
·  On page 4, how does the author make the transition from the topic of “examples of segregation” to the topic of “how segregation got its start”?
·  What was life like for black slaves before the Civil War?
·  What was the main conflict of the Civil War, and what was its outcome?
·  How did some southern states try to use the law to oppress African Americans right after the Civil War? What behaviors or actions were these laws designed to inhibit or discourage? How did the federal government respond?
·  How and when did the federal government start to once again lose some control over how the Southern states were treating African Americans?
·  What was life like for African Americans between 1870 and the 1890s? What kind of political power or influence did they have?
·  Why did some white Southerners want to keep African Americans from voting?
·  What legal methods did southern states use to suppress African American voting without technically doing it on the basis of race? Were African Americans the only ones affected by these tactics?
·  Why did the federal government not stop states from using poll taxes or literacy tests for voters?
·  What effect did this loss of voting power have on African Americans?
Interesting Topics:
·  Cause & Effect (how the struggle for states’ rights vs. federal control led to the Civil War; how abolishing slavery led to other attempts at subjugating African Americans; how a law like a poll tax or a literacy test leads to robbing citizens of their right to vote)
·  Compare & Contrast (North vs. South, state law vs. federal law, legal segregation vs. non-codified discrimination of various kinds)
Further Research:
·  Freedmen’s Bureau
·  Black Codes
·  Thirteenth Amendment
·  Fourteenth Amendment
·  Fifteenth Amendment
·  Poll taxes & literacy tests
·  Modern Voter ID laws – a kind of “poll tax”?
The South (pp. 15-49, one long chapter with no subheadings; heading names shown are my own creation and based on my judgment about where topics changed) / ·  Plessy v Ferguson (15-18) – “Separate but Equal”: 1892 Supreme Court ruling declares that laws requiring segregation on trains are not unconstitutional as long as facilities are “equal.”
o  What was the sequence of events that led Homer Plessy to be arrested in 1892?
o  What was the argument Plessy’s lawyer used at his trial? What laws did he think were in conflict?
o  How does this case show the relationship between the legislative branch of government and the judicial branch?
o  After losing the case at the local level and the state level, what did the Supreme Court decide in 1896? What was their main argument?
o  One justice disagreed with the decision. What was his concern?
o  Compare/contrast the ideal of “separate but equal” with the reality of it.
·  Segregation Laws Spring Up (18-20) - This opened the door for states to pass other segregation laws: trains, streetcars, schools, restaurants, hotels, theaters, libraries, hospitals and other facilities were required to be segregated in many areas of the South by 1915. In practice, segregated facilities were rarely anything close to “equal.” Other rules like curfews for blacks were also put into place.
o  What effects did the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson Supreme Court decision have on Southern states?
o  Besides passing laws requiring segregation on trains and streetcars, what other kinds of laws started passing?
·  “Jim Crow” (21) – the written and unwritten rules about segregation were named after a blackface caricature from minstrel shows. At first it referred in a disparaging way to African Americans in general, and later it referred to segregation both written and unwritten.
o  Use quotes from page 21 to provide several definitions of “Jim Crow” and then pick the one that most likely refers to the overall topic of this book.
·  Lynching & Other Violence (21-25) - Violations of unwritten rules could often result in violence or death, often by lynching, and were thus enforced by terror and fear. Blacks like Ida B. Wells and whites like Jessie Daniel Ames spoke out against lynching.
o  Jim Crow laws did not make it legal for whites to lynch blacks. How did so many get away with it?
o  How did this constant threat of violence keep Jim Crow society in place?
o  How did people like Ida B. Wells fight back against the practice of lynching?
·  Unwritten Rules (25-27) – there were social “norms” about many behaviors that were not actual laws – which entrances to use, which drinking fountains to use. Some signs about segregation were posted according to strict laws; others were just posted by whoever wanted to do so. Blacks were expected to address whites with titles like Mr. or Mrs. while blacks were almost never addressed that way and were given nicknames like “boy” or “auntie”.
o  Besides official laws passed by local or state governments, what sorts of behaviors were expected of blacks by custom in the south during the era of Jim Crow?
o  What effects did segregation laws and discriminatory treatment have on the relationship between black and white Americans in the south?
o  Use quotes to support the author’s assertion that “Jim Crow turned politeness and manners upside down.”
·  Fighting Back (28-29) – resisting the indignities and injustice of segregation took many forms: refusing to respond to anything other than the correct name, avoiding segregated facilities and events, and doing one’s best to get an education were some ways.
o  To reject Jim Crow was to invite death in the South at the time. Yet many African Americans were able to fight back or resist in small ways. Describe some ways in which African Americans refused to play along.
·  Segregation in School (29-34) – Segregated schools were in no way “equal” in terms of quality or spending. Black children often got less schooling because they had to work to help support their families. Teachers made the best of a bad situation and students learned about their heritage and about the rights that were briefly better in the late 1800s before Plessy. Some African Americans were able to go to colleges such as Tuskegee University.
o  Create a quick graph comparing the so-called “separate but equal” schools black and white children attended. What conclusions can you draw from the graph?
o  Besides money, in what other ways were educational opportunities different for black and white children?
o  How might the limited resources for schooling affect someone when they became an adult?
o  What were some unique features of the schooling African American children received?
o  What were some college-level educational opportunities for African Americans?
o  On p. 34, which sentence is the transition between the topic of “segregation in schooling” and “segregation in employment”?