The Death Of Jim Crow

Ever since the first European waded ashore on this continent, leading a black African by a chain around his neck, race has been the central scar tissue of American culture. Slavery, once universal, became divisive when the commercial/industrial North found it as unproductive as the agrarian South found it necessary. The North, with its everyman view of human worth, was plunging into the future of the industrial revolution, and the South was clinging to a reactionary system where a landed gentry lorded over peasants and slaves; the new American way, versus the old European.

Though masters of compromise, our founding fathers were unable to find a middle ground about slavery and the conventions that produced the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States ignored the subject, deferring it to future generations. This rickety non compromise of independent states propped up over time by short term arrangements, finally collapsed into the tragedy of the Civil War and with the blood of more than 600,000 dead Americans, tempered us into a new nation.

Much has been written about the reconstructed South and how “Jim Crow” emerged as a racial caste system to keep the former slaves at the low end of our society. That “Jim Crow” worked was due entirely to race. In other slave dependant cultures, such as the Roman Empire, race was not a determining factor; anyone could be demoted to slavery and any slave could be promoted to freedom. But in America skin color became a “Mark of Cain” that set former slaves aside. A foreign peasant could immigrate to this country, work hard, acquire an education, change his name if need be, and he and his progeny could prosper and be assimilated into the American system. Not so for former slaves. No matter the effort, the education achieved, despite any homogenous name, according to “Jim Crow”, if you were black, or any part black, you were a lesser human.

The Twentieth Century brought African contributions to our letters and arts which along with the Civil Rights movement produced the voting rights acts of the 1960’s. When President Johnson signed those new laws he’s reported to have told the Speaker of the House and fellow Southern Democrat, Sam Rayburn, “Well Sam we just lost the South for two generations.” Johnson was overly optimistic; the proof that “Jim Crow” still lives is the South, previously a Democratic stronghold, has been almost solid Republican for the succeeding three generations.

With the end of segregation laws and the laws against miscegenation, we now find ourselves with black and part black icons in our culture. Whether it’s the music of Duke Ellington or Ray Charles, the writings of Langston Hughes or Toni Morrison, the films of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, the super star status of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, the leadership of Thurgood Marshall and Dr. King, and now the presidential campaign of Barrack Obama, it’s clear we at a watershed moment in our history.

The question is, are we to be held back by those who won’t vote for Obama, not because of his politics, but just because he’s black? Or are we to excel and usher in a new even more enlightened America by seizing the moment to plunge into a promising new future and, in doing so, finally put “Jim Crow” to death?