Summary Of The Jim Crow South

If states are the laboratories of democracy, then sports are the arena in which it is tested. This book serves as a review of racial integration and the changing dynamics in sports from 1890 - 1980. Charles Martin aims for the reader to understand why it was common place for white southerners to compete against “non-black” ethnic minorities (E.G. Native Americans, Chinese), but an issue when even a single African American was on an opposing team. Benching Jim Crow explains to the reader that the persistence of segregation lay with overarching cultural mentalities left over from the Civil War, but shifts in position came from external (financial), and internal (students and players). Though offering little insight into the legal and political impacts of Jim Crow itself, Martin paints a detailed, but redundant, narrative of the rise and fall of Jim Crow in athletics.

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2010.

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander develops a compelling analogy on how mass incarceration is similar to the Jim Crow era, and is a “race-making institution.” She begins her work with the question, “Where have all the black men gone?” (Alexander, 178) She demonstrates how the media and Obama have failed to give an honest answer to this question, that the large majority of them or in prison. She argues that in order to address this problem, we must be honest about the fact that this is happening, and the discrimination with the African American communities that is putting them there.

The book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward is an enormously influential book in history. Woodward was born in 1908 in a small town in Arkansas named Vanndale and he died at the age of 91 in December 1999. The most interesting thing about this book is not just the particular events in history, or the misconceptions and myths that Woodward discusses, but rather how badly the problem of race is in America. Since the United States introduced the slaves into their country there has always been a problems or struggles among whites and blacks trying to figure out how to comprehend each other and themselves, on how to share the same place without conflict. This history is very strange and to be able to have a better understanding of why race is still an issue today, because of this book it helps to know how racism, segregation, and civil rights changed over time.

Michelle Alexander begins her story of “The New Jim Crow”, as she provides her thoughts and arguments on Chapter one of “the rebirth of caste”. The Chapter explains the myths provided towards slavery after the civil war, as black people weren’t exactly free. Whites were furious and felt the issue of the law was unnecessary, which led to a continuous fight to revert the law to their only source of income. African Americans were finally given a break; however the actions of white southern began to cause further issues towards the development in the United States. Chapter two “The Lockdown” than proceeded as racism began to grow towards the law enforcement, and the development of Southern whites creating the Ku Klux Klan. Alexander argues about the crackdown of unreasonable searches occurred under law enforcement, and how African Americans are targeted.

Before there were players such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball was strictly white players only. The color line of Major League Baseball excluded black players until the late 40’s. This didn’t stop the colored men of America from playing the beloved American sport. The creation of the Negro Leagues in 1920 by Rube Foster gave colored men a chance to play in their own professional league, similar to the Major Leagues, but for African-American men. The creation of the Negro Leagues was a result of the Jim Crow Laws, state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period in the U.S., these laws continued in force until 1965. These laws created

Baldus study was based on more than two thousand murder cases in Georgia, and “the study found that defendants charged with killing white victims received the death penalty eleven times more often than defendants charged with killing black victims.” (Alexander p.110) Baldus Study was significant to this chapter because it shows patterns of discrimination and how the government and police enforcement use race to harass African Americans.

C. Vann Woodward wrote The Strange Career of Jim Crow for a purpose. His purpose was to enlighten people about the history of the Jim Crow laws in the South. Martin Luther King Jr. called Woodward’s book, “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” (221) Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote revealed the true importance of Woodward’s book. Woodard’s book significance was based on it revealing the strange, forgotten facets of the Jim Crow laws. Assumptions about the Jim Crow’s career have existed since its creation. Woodward tried to eliminate the false theories as he attempted to uncover the truths. Woodward argued the strangest aspects of Jim Crow’s career were, it was a recent innovation and not created in the South

Chapter eight of Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone is about the numbers and how they are involved in the criminal justice system. Chapter three of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about the racism that the War on Drugs has created. The main components of Policy Paradox include numbers being used as metaphors, numbers being used as norms and symbols, numbers being used in the polis, and the stories within numbers. The main components of The New Jim Crow is the McCleskey v. Kemp court case, the Purkett v. Elm court case, the Armstrong v. United States court case, discriminatory sentencing due to the war on drugs, and how race is a factor in policing. Chapter eight of Policy Paradox is about numbers and how they are involved in the criminal justice system.

The New Jim Crow was published January 5, 2010 and is 312 pages in length. The book’s author is Michelle Alexander; she is a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar. She graduated from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. In 2011 The New Jim Crow won the NAACP Image Award for best nonfiction.

This “war on drugs,” which all subsequent presidents have embraced, has created a behemoth of courts, jails, and prisons that have done little to decrease the use of drugs while doing much to create confusion and hardship in families of color and urban communities.1,2Since 1972, the number of people incarcerated has increased 5-fold without a comparable decrease in crime or drug use.1,3 In fact, the decreased costs of opiates and stimulants and the increased potency of cannabis might lead one to an opposing conclusion.4 Given the politics of the war on drugs, skyrocketing incarceration rates are deemed a sign of success, not failure. I don’t totally agree with the book (I think linking crime and black struggle is even older than she does, for instance) but I think The New Jim Crow pursues the right line of questioning. “The prison boom is not the main cause of inequality between blacks and whites in America, but it did foreclose upward mobility

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness goes into great detail on race related issues that were specific to black males, the mass incarceration, and how that lead to the development of institutionalized racism in the United States. She compares the Jim Crow with recent phenomenon of mass incarceration and points out that the mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that have been working together to warrant the subordinating status of black males. In this paper I will go into a brief examination of the range of issues that she mentions in her book that are surrounding the mass incarceration of black male populations.

I thought that the book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander was an extraordinary read. I was already familiar with idea of incarceration being a evolved form of slavery, but I was not ready for what I received from this book. This book gave me a deeper understanding of our current penal system, and left me with one specific question. What are we doing about it? There are many points that Michelle Alexander uses to prove her point, but there are some specific ones that I never really knew about.

Society has to know the real purpose of jail. Automatically we hear jail and we think of vicious criminals and then produce negative stigmas. We must keep in mind a jail’s main intention is to hold the rabble (disorderly crowd), not the other persons. The offenders are held there, tried for crimes they committed and then find out if they are found guilty or not. If they are found guilty, they will be faced with some sort of punishment.

A central theme in the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010) is The War