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Web Site and Film Resources for Teaching Jim CrowLeslie Brown and Anne ValkReprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
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Because the Jim Crow era retains a link to the present through living memory, and because documentary methods like oral history, photography, and film can capture those memories, the number of sources available to study the era continues to expand. Focusing on web sites and films, our list of educational resources is by no means comprehensive and offers only a starting point for exploring the range of multiformat teaching materials available. Whatever we have omitted, therefore, we have excluded unintentionally, with no reflection on quality or comprehensiveness and with great sensitivity to the space limitations of any given issue of the OAH Magazine of History. The number of web sites incorporating African American materials or solely dedicated to African American history continues to grow. Often interconnected, some of the longest standing projects exist at servers supported by public entities like the Library of Congress and universities. The Library of Congress web site, American Memory, offers students, teachers, and researchers access to the Library’s vast collection of texts, photographs, maps, sheet music, sound recordings, and films, searchable by topic and by keyword. A keyword search for the term “Jim Crow,” for example, elicits varied materials, including sheet music, photographs of segregated facilities, and segregation laws. African American Odyssey compiles the Library’s African American history-related materials, available through its digital collections at <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/aohome.html>. Among the digital classrooms on <http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/index.html>, the National Archives and Records Administration web site, one presents materials related to the case Dorothy E. Davis, et. al v. County School Board of Prince Edward County Virginia (1951) and traces the background of segregated education through the Supreme Court challenge brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). A National Park Service web site, <http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/jim_crow_laws.htm>, provides a sample of segregation laws from various states, ranging from statutes covering schools to bathroom facilities, the purchase of circus tickets, interracial marriages, and the playing of billiards. Part of the American Social History Project at the Center for Media Learning at New York University and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, History Matters, <http://historymatters. gmu.edu/> is an online resource of materials for college and high school teachers of the United States history survey. This site presents not only primary source texts, audio files, photographs, and links to hundreds of other web sites, but also offers ideas about syllabi and a digital blackboard of lesson plans. A quick search of keywords turns up primary sources relevant to the topics of African Americans, Jim Crow, and segregation. Users of these sites would do well to remember that keyword searches return documents in which the search word appears. For example, to find materials by and about African Americans during the Jim Crow era, it might be productive to conduct a keyword search using the contemporary term “Negro(es),” in addition to African American, Afro-American, and black. Documenting the American South, <http://docsouth.unc. edu>, an initiative of the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides an extensive full-text collection of first-person narratives and materials written by southern authors, mostly from the library’s collection. Among them, sources include an impressive array of documents relevant to African American life, institutions, and organizations of the Jim Crow era. The site dedicates an entire category to “The Church in the Southern Black Community.” The electronic text center at the University of Virginia, <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/>, similarly maintains and continues to expand a searchable collection of documents from its library. Since the release of recent media initiatives, the book and radio program, Remembering Jim Crow (2001), and the film, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002), a number of new, interesting, and creative sites have been made available on the topic. To accompany The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, PBS has mounted a related web site, <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/>, that contains a timeline, first-person accounts, and resources for teachers. Responding to growing audiences for black history and culture, WNET Thirteen New York, in association with NPR and with sponsorship by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has launched a new site, African American World, <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/>, offering a range of sources associated with public programming. Presenting documentary journalism on public radio and the internet, American RadioWorks, <http://www. americanradioworks.org>, is the national documentary unit of Minnesota Public Radio. Among the pages on the web site, two focus on issues relevant to the Jim Crow era. The first, Remembering Jim Crow, presents the radio program of the same name, excerpts from interviews conducted as a part of the project Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South, and slide shows of collected photographs from a variety of sources. A second page, Radio Fights Jim Crow, presents the radio program from an innovative radio series from the World War II era intended to address divisions among Americans on the homefront. American RadioWorks also recently launched a project to document the experiences of service men and women during the Korean War. The story of segregation and desegregation in the military is an important aspect of this project. In the same vein, Musarium, <http://www.musarium.com>, formerly journal E, is an online magazine featuring visually-based multimedia presentations, including essays, stories, photographs, and exhibits. Among its collections, the online exhibit Without Sanctuary displays a collection of photographs and postcards, souvenirs of lynchings in the United States. In addition to the images, also published as the book Without Sanctuary (2000), the web site includes a powerful flash movie narrated by James Allen, the collector. A particularly interesting site, the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, <http://www.ferris.edu/ news/jimcrow/>, is both a real place and a virtual site. Located at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, the museum collects, preserves, and presents material culture for the purpose of encouraging research and teaching about racist propaganda. The online exhibit offers digitized images and photographs from the museum’s collection. Finally, interest in the Jim Crow Era and in African American experiences have encouraged a number of local public libraries and historical societies to dedicate special projects or collections to these themes. The Durham County Library, <http://www.durhamcounty library.org/photoarch>, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library, <http://www.cmstory.org/aaa2>, for instance, have collected and put photographs donated by local families and individuals online. These photographs capture the richness of everyday life “Behind the Veil,” as well as document work, institutions, and organizational life of African Americans in the Jim Crow South. The Missouri Historical Society launched an oral history and education project, Through the Eyes of a Child, which collected first-person accounts from residents of several predominantly African American neighborhoods in the St. Louis region. The project represents an effort to study segregation outside of the South and to consider the legacy of segregation for contemporary communities and young people. A description of the project and the educational resources it generated is available at <http://www.mohistory.org/content/ libraryandresearch/eyesofchild.aspx>. Turning to films, presentations of the Jim Crow era can be found in both documentary and feature formats. Among the most recent, a four-part series entitled The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002) provides an overview of the period from the end of the Civil War through 1954. The series introduces important African American educators, businesspeople, and activists. As a part of conveying the history of the era, it elucidates the economic, political, legal, and social structure of segregation and highlights black community interests. A number of films examine black life in the Jim Crow South by considering the causes of the Great Migration. For example, Goin’ to Chicago (1994) tells the story of the post-World War II migration of African Americans from Mississippi to Chicago. Although it centers on those who left the South, the film’s narrators offer rich descriptions of southern communities and first person accounts of the disconcerting aspects of black life under Jim Crow. Similarly, the three-part series The Promised Land (1989) uses archival footage, oral history, and music to tell stories of northward migration. The first volume, however, describes how southern Jim Crow laws and customs sustained poverty. In a different vein, a lively story of women blues performers, Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues (1989) examines the links between blues music and the culture of the rural South and between African American migration and urbanization during World War I. Other films take a narrower approach by focusing on a particular aspect of the segregation era. Homecoming (1999) relates the history of rural southern African Americans and their struggles for land ownership from the Civil War to the present. Other documentary films present biographies of prominent African American figures or discussions of African American achievements in arts and letters. For My People: The Life and Writing of Margaret Walker Alexander (1998) speaks to the life and work of an important writer and scholar from the South, while The Language You Cry In (1998) documents continuities in the culture of the Gullah people from the Atlantic slave trade to the present. Strange Fruit (2002) explores the history and legacy of the Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit” about lynching in the South. Finally, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices (1995) examines the life of the scholar activist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. Feature films made by black directors and starring black actors during the Jim Crow era present the age of segregation from African Americans’ perspectives. Intended to counter stereotypes, these films defied the racist images of Birth of a Nation (1915) or Gone with the Wind (1939). At the same time, they provided African American actors an outlet for more dignified roles and black writers and directors with opportunities to address issues of concern to black communities. Among them, Within Our Gates (1919) is the earliest feature film by a black director, Oscar Micheaux. Otherwise notable for its depiction of racism, lynching, and the sexual exploitation of African American women, the film is considered a direct response to the racist characterizations seen in Birth of a Nation. Another Micheaux film, Body and Soul (1924), stars Paul Robeson in his screen debut. Facets Film Distribution Company makes available more than fifty films representing early black cinema. • Leslie Brown and Anne Valk are former research coordinators of the Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South project, based at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Brown is currently an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, with a joint appointment in history and African and African American studies. She has written several articles about African American women in Durham and is completing a book about the intersection of gender and class in black community development in Durham from 1865-1945. Valk is an associate professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where she teaches oral history and public history. Her research on women’s activism in Washington, D.C., has resulted in several articles on welfare rights and the women’s movement. She is currently writing a book about second-wave feminism. |
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