Synopses & Reviews
Praised as viscerally powerful” (
Publishers Weekly), this remarkable work of oral history captures the searing experience of the Jim Crow yearsenriched by memories of individual, family, and community triumphs and tragedies. In vivid, compelling accounts, men and women from all walks of life tell how their day-to-day lives were subjected to profound and unrelenting racial oppression. At the same time,
Remembering Jim Crow is a testament to how black Southerners fought back against the systemraising children, building churches and schools, running businesses, and struggling for respect in a society that denied them the most basic rights. The result is a powerful story of individual and community survival and an important part of the American past that is crucial for us to remember.
Based on interviews collected by the Behind the Veil Project at Duke Universitys Center for Documentary Studies, this landmark in African American oral history is now available in an affordable paperback edition and, for the first time, as an e-book with audio of the interviewees—in their own voices.
Review
"A landmark book."
—Publishers Weekly, "The Year in Books"
"A shivering dose of reality and inspiring stories of everyday resistance."
—Library Journal
"A multimedia triumph."
—Kansas City Star
Synopsis
This "viscerally powerful . . . compilation of firsthand accounts of the Jim Crow era" won the Lillian Smith Book Award and the Carey McWilliams Award (Publisher's Weekly, starred review).
Based on interviews collected by the Behind the Veil Oral History Project at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, this remarkable book presents for the first time the most extensive oral history ever compiled of African American life under segregation.
Men and women from all walks of life tell how their most ordinary activities were subjected to profound and unrelenting racial oppression. Yet Remembering Jim Crow is also a testament to how black southerners fought back against systemic racism--building churches and schools, raising children, running businesses, and struggling for respect in a society that denied them the most basic rights. The result is a powerful story of individual and community survival.