Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A memoir and historical account of growing up Black in the Jim Crow South The last generation of Americans with a living memory of Jim Crow will soon disappear. They leave behind a collective memory of segregation shaped increasingly by the its horrors and heroic defeat rather than a nuanced understanding of everyday life in Jim Crow America. In The South, Adolph Reed -- New Orleans native, political scientist, and according to Cornel West, "the greatest democratic theorist of his generation" -- takes up the urgent task of recounting the granular realities of growing up Black in the Jim Crow South.
A unique blend of personal memoir, travelogue, and incisive historical analysis, The South takes readers on a journey through time in Jim Crow America. Recounting moments such his grandmother's attempt to secure young Reed a pony ride at a segregated zoo, being caught shoplifting by white storeowners in New Orleans, and a frightening overnight bus ride through segregationist strongholds in 1965, Reed masterfully connects the petty apartheid of segregation to the larger, unconstitutional system of discriminatory laws and regulations.
His rich coming of age story maps the ways the Jim Crow order buttressed ruling class power, the processes that led to its unravelling, and its enduring legacy.
Synopsis
A narrative account of Jim Crow as people experienced it The last generation of Americans with a living memory of Jim Crow will soon disappear. They leave behind a collective memory of segregation shaped increasingly by its horrors and heroic defeat but not a nuanced understanding of everyday life in Jim Crow America. In The South, Adolph L. Reed Jr. -- New Orleanian, political scientist, and according to Cornel West, "the greatest democratic theorist of his generation" -- takes up the urgent task of recounting the granular realities of life in the last decades of the Jim Crow South.
Reed illuminates the multifaceted structures of the segregationist order. Through his personal history and political acumen, we see America's apartheid system from the ground up, not just its legal framework or systems of power, but the way these systems structured the day-to-day interactions, lives, and ambitions of ordinary working people.
The South unravels the personal and political dimensions of the Jim Crow order, revealing the sources and objectives of this unstable regime, its contradictions and precarity, and the social order that would replace it.
The South is more than a memoir or a history. Filled with analysis and fascinating firsthand accounts of the operation of the system that codified and enshrined racial inequality, this book is required reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of America's second peculiar institution the future created in its wake.
With a foreword from Barbara Fields, co-author of the acclaimed Racecraft.