"The Legacy of Jim Crow in Rural Louisiana" by Catherine Ellis

Catherine Ellis

Deposited 2000

Abstract
This thesis compares the way whites and African Americans in southwest Louisiana recall the era of Jim Crow segregation and view its relevance today. Drawing on in-depth interviews with blacks and whites in “Orleanna Parish,” as well as ethnographic fieldwork, it shows that African Americans and whites recall the Jim Crow era in profoundly different ways. These competing narratives of the past undergird blacks' and whites' competing explanations for racial inequality today and their tendency to support or oppose race-related public policies like affirmative action.

Older whites in Orleanna Parish tend to recall Jim Crow as a benign social system. Many believe they treated African Americans in a kindly manner, and cared for those who lacked the wherewithal or motivation to care for themselves. Most white Orleannan elders believe that with desegregation and implementation of Civil Rights legislation, all barriers to black upward mobility were dismantled, and that there were no long-term consequences of de jure segregation. They therefore attribute contemporary racial inequality to the failings of blacks themselves, rather than to a legacy of opportunity denied.

Africans American elders in Orleanna Parish tend to recall the Jim Crow era as a time when they suffered humiliation, deprivation and violence at the hands of ordinary whites. They recall making ambitious attempts to get ahead in life despite this oppression, and that whites often tried to thwart them. Older black Orleannans believe that integration and Civil Rights legislation helped to lessen the brutality of white racism, and to open up educational and career opportunities. Nevertheless, they believe the legacy of Jim Crow is evident in contemporary racial segregation, in on-going economic inequality between whites and African Americans, and in the persistence of white racism.

Ultimately, the thesis argues, the legacy of Jim Crow resides not simply in different ways of remembering the past, but in different ways of conceiving an appropriate or even natural racial order, of evaluating who deserves access to power and economic resources and, importantly, of deciding what means are fair and legitimate to use in the pursuit of that access.