University of Georgia

The Jim Crow South: Racial Etiquette and its Implications in the Slave Narratives

By Sarah Kenworthy

Somewhere in our educations thus far, each of us has become familiar with the

Great Depression; it was a time of economic calamity, which affected Americans from all walks of life. Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs; wages, for those lucky enough to have jobs, barely enabled survival for many families. No community, no family went unaffected by the enduring economic depression. In libraries across the country, there are shelves and shelves of books on the topic of the Great Depression. Why then is there so little information on how the depression impinged upon our country’s African American population?[1]

President Roosevelt’s New Deal was a beacon of hope for many Americans. The New Deal established several federal agencies intended to create much-needed jobs. Under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), founded in 1935, public projects were produced including those of unemployed artist and writers. The WPA did not discriminate between “beginning and experienced writers so long as they were unemployed and poor enough to qualify”[2] in their hiring process. Despite this, many blacks may have been hired for the project because in the south, it was justifiable to pay Negro workers lower earnings, increasing a organization’s proceeds.[3] It was commonly known that the wages of federal writers were minimal; therefore, many of the ex-slaves being interviewed were empathetic towards their interviewers. This collection of interviews is known today as the WPA Slave Narratives and is housed in the Library of Congress.

Most of these narratives were obtained in the southern United States, and although slavery there had ended decades earlier, racial attitudes had changed very little. The Supreme Court supported segregation through the Plessy vs. Ferguson verdict of 1896, as well as through neglecting to enact anti-lynching laws to protect African American voters in the south. Theses are only a few of the many obstacles black southerners faced which further complicated the “rigidly imposed color line that dominated black-white relationships for 1876 to the 1960’s”.[4] The strict race relations that characterized the decades preceding the Civil War and particularly in the Jim Crow South of the 1930’s were enforced by unspoken rules of racial etiquette.

Despite the time that had passed since the emancipation of black slaves through President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, many white southerners, nevertheless, refused to acknowledge African Americans as a race of equivalent standing. Many black southerners felt they were forced to, “live behind the veil”[5] to endure the terrors of the Jim Crow era. At the basic level, this racial etiquette included not making eye contact with whites and avoiding contact with whites, but in particular, white women. Because blacks were considered to be of lower status, they were given second priority to whites in many aspects of social life.[6] But the implicit racial etiquette that structured race relationships in the Jim Crow south were much deeper and carried with them complex social implications which can still be seen in modern days. The South’s adaptation of intense racism was not due to passing on feelings, but rather to a relaxation of the opposition, southern society had become tolerant to racism.[7]

Many attempts were made in the early years of the twentiethcentury to interview former southern slaves beginning with A. P. Watson’s work at Fisk University in Tennessee in 1927. The largest collection of interviews came out of the Federal Writers Project completed between 1936 and 1938. The compilation of the Federal Writer’s Project encompasses over two thousand interviews taken from seventeen states. Over ten thousand pages of interviews are housed at the Library of Congress. The transcripts were not edited for the 1972 publication for Greenwood Publishing Company, so that original revisions and recommendations can be used as insight to the times and attitude in which they were printed.[8]

The Slave Narratives vary by interview despite efforts to homogenize them. Some are very long and in-depth, while others are as short as one to two pages. Many, historians feel that the writers employed by the Federal Writer’s did not take their jobs too seriously, speculating that many used their interviews as an excuse to demonstrate their literary and creative skills in turn, compromising the authenticity of these powerful narratives. To ensure writers stuck to the intended purposes of the Slave Narratives, project director Henry G. Alsberg sent out a memorandum of directives and detailed lists of suggestions on July 30^th, 1937. Also in the memorandum were instructions urging writers not to influence the responses of the interviewees and to use diction as close to the former slaves as possible. Interviewers were directed to adhere to topics such as living conditions including work, food, clothing, religion, resistance, care of the sick and master-slave relations. Post-Civil War topics, such as first experiences of freedom, were also listed as possible topics of conversation.[9]

The issue of race relations at the time the Slave Narratives were collected had long been under intense scrutiny by many historians. The 1930’s have become know as the Jim Crow Era in the South, a decade in which segregation caused lives for blacks to be almost as oppressive as life under slavery. For many, the Great Depression caused life to plunge from difficult to grueling and almost unbearable. For this reason, many made all efforts to be of assistance to agents of the federal government, which could “provide them with vital relief or an old age pension”.[10] Based on the existing codes of racial etiquette of the times, this has lead many to believe that interviewees hid the truth about the past to appease their interviewers. The segregation that prevailed in the 1930’s did not promote ex-slaves to tell local or unfamiliar whites anything that might agitate them.[11] This is particularly true in instances where an interviewer unintentionally indicated his or her racist attitudes. Historians have come to acknowledge story telling as a tactic to amuse whites in difficult moments or to avoid potentially dangerous questions. Despite potential implications, many former slaves came forward with their life stories. For many, the importance of informing future generations of true-life accounts of life in slavery was worth the risk. Research shows that blacks were much more candid when their interviewer was black, and numerous interviewers were. Most of the states that partook in the federal writers project employed at least one black writer; because over one fifth of the useable interviews were conducted by blacks, the value of these particular interviews is of much greater utility that those conducted across deeply entrenched racial lines.[12]

Black interviewers gathered more accounts of the somber realities of slavery rather that mere social accounts gathered by white interviewers. Black interviewers, especially those that lived in the same area as the former slave they were interviewing, were more likely to share common experiences with their interviewee causing the ex-slave to have a sense of rapport and communicate more honestly about their encounters with slavery. Research on colored interviewer Minnie B. Ross indicates just that. Information pertaining to Ms. Ross was scarce throughout the entirety of my research. Not a single one of her interviews made known her marital status.[13] She had probably been indoctrinated not to afford herself such a courtesy title acknowledging herself as Mrs. or Miss. Ross. This was common racial etiquette at the time of the Federal Writers Project. During the Jim Crow South, blacks were rarely bestowed with titles of respect from whites who considered them second class citizens, “instead they were referred to solely by first name, or by words such as ‘boy,’ ‘auntie,’ ‘uncle,’ and frequently, ‘nigger.’”[14] However, my research has also lead me to infer with sufficient confidence that Minnie was in her mid twenties at the time of the interview and died close to a decade after the narratives were collected. She never married giving her the title of Mrs. or Ms.[15] While some of her interviews depict masters in a loving and kind light such as Hannah Austin, in “A Town Slave’s Testimony”, many do not. Minnie B. Ross’ interview with Heard Griffin tells of harsh punishments that slaves suffered because their master had nothing else to do. It talks of pregnant women being beaten so severely that they miscarried their unborn babies. The Griffin interview was not limited in discussing the harshness of the master toward slaves, but included overseers as well. He also expressed freely his feelings on the slave patrol he referred to as “patter-rollers” and revealed several comments threats, risks, and plans for running away.[16] Although sufficient information was never found to differentiate between several persons by the name Minnie Ross in the 1930 US Census,[17] I believe that she was employed as a social worker at the time. Because most sources depict extreme unemployment during the depression, a colored woman such as Minnie B. Ross must have been very rare in the work force of the Jim Crow south. Most sources tell of blacks during the depression as holding manual labor jobs, working as domestic servants, working for railroads, and steel mines.[18] Minnie B. Ross’ salary must have been very minimal as a social worker, as a probable member of lower-middle class; her meager salary probably qualified her to be employed by the Works Progress Administration. Several times she referred to her interviewees and their peers as coloreds, a less demeaning term than slave, which her editor repeatedly substituted it for.[19]

These examples are only minor examples of the strict racial etiquette during the Jim Crow south. Racist attitudes and stereotypes upheld the rigid race lines in which African Americans of the 1930’s did not dare cross. African origins deemed them as inferior to many southerners although few of the slaves at the time of the Civil War, much less the Great Depression had ever stepped foot on African soil. To cope with the demoralizing attitudes that were forced upon blacks, many masked their true feelings and personalities when in the company of white people. This sentiment is illustrated in the concluding lines of Paul Laurence Dunbar’ turn of the century poem, “We Wear the Mask,”

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To Thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and the long mile;

But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask.[20]

This masking of character exuded many different forms from shuffling and feigning irresponsibility, turning a cheek to avoid confrontations with whites, but it continuously meant conforming to the patterns of racial etiquette on a daily basis. Blacks were expected to stare at the floor when addressing whites, to step off the sidewalk when passing a white person on the street, and were often not served or allowed to make purchases in white owned stores with white customers. African American children’s first experiences with the cruelty of race relations in the 1930’s was often humiliating despite parent’s best efforts to protect their children form this sort of degradation. Blacks were also portrayed as lazy, or as impersonators of whites in circuses, in minstrel shows, and on radio programs of the times.[21] Sadly, black parents were faced with the daunting task of explaining such questions as to why the African Americas were treated the way they were in the Jim Crow Era.

Few blacks confronted the color lines; the risks were simply too great. Threats included being lynched, loosing sharecropping land, being fired, and being beaten. Even blacks that had attained high ranking social status such as politicians, entrepreneurs, and landowners refused to challenge racial etiquette because it was backed by tradition, law, and brutality from 1876 through the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. Many blacks learned to accept the desolate lifestyles that whites forced upon them. Blacks were not permitted in many public places in the south after 1890 including, parks and entertainment centers either by law or by custom. Blacks were made to use separate entrances and sit in separate sections of unrestricted sites. Even many state fairs had colored days so that whites and blacks would not have to intermingle. Racial etiquette in transportation differed from location to location. In some areas of the south blacks were made to sit in the back seat of streetcars, while in other settings they were mandated to sit in the front where they could be kept under surveillance at all times. Atlanta laws required drivers to label their cars with either black or white oil paint to indicate the race that it served.[22] Throughout the south drivers and conductors were not allowed to assist black women with bags, and blacks were expected to give up their seats to whites in peak times.[23]

The compilation of the Jim Crow racial etiquette rules boiled down to one central rule: blacks must exhibit inadequacy to whites by actions, words, and manners.[24] Any time a particular tradition was socially challenged, laws were created to uphold the practice beginning in the reconstruction era and terminating in the 1960’s civil rights movement. If these actions were slow to be abide by or made modest change, some whites took it upon themselves to resort to violence and later justified their actions by explaining that the aggression was a self-protective action taken against a black that had crossed the color line. While Jim Crow laws were enforced by the legal consequences, the callousness Jim Crow etiquette was often overlooked by many southern societies because it was enforced by the good ole’ boys. The lists of racial injustices are innumerable throughout literature of the Jim Crow South.

In conclusion, it seems that almost every citizen of every town or city in the south was affected by the repercussions of the Jim Crow Era. It was not a mere attitude that some members of the southern population shared, but rather was way of life. This ideology crept into minister’s sermons, teacher’s lectures, politician’s speeches; it was inescapable. All major societal institutions reflected and endorsed the oppression of blacks. Any behavior by a person of color that in any way implied social equality with white people was disparaged and scorned.[25]

The lack of biographical information concerning Ms. Ross is by no means surprising to me. From my research I can infer that census collectors and those who compiled city directories moved hurriedly through black neighborhoods, and were not concerned if they gathered incomplete accounts of this section of the southern populace during the Great Depression, and more significantly, the Jim Crow South. Most primary sources containing information about African Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century are government data, these figures in no way illustrates or give understanding to the life styles of blacks at these times. While secondary sources involving the lives of whites Post-Civil War and during the Great Depression are abundant, few sources are dedicated to the topic of black life at this time.[26]

Albeit, I assumed the slave narratives to provide information exclusively pertaining to life under slavery, I also found them to disclose an immense insight to the age in which they were collected, the Jim Crow South of the 1930’s. Although many criticisms can be made regarding the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives, they hold enormous truths of reality and race relations under antebellum slavery and as they had evolved up to the point of the narratives. With greater use and examination of the Slave Narratives will come improved awareness of both the individual interviewees standpoints, as well as the manner in which the interviewers interacted with the interviewees. I further believe that it is through interviews conducted by black writers that we will discover the most truthful, generalizable, and bias free accounts of slavery and life under the depression.[27] Because of the rigid color line that marked race relations in the 1930’s I also believe it was nearly impossible to create and maintain empathy with both whites and blacks in the same community as many white interviewers tried to do.[28] From my research, I can infer with certainty that the narratives that are most revealing are those in which the interviewer and interviewee were the same race.

The WPA Ex-Slave narratives are the most extensive collection of slavery accounts we will ever have. To use this compilation as a source of historical information one must take into account the many biases that are contained within the interviews themselves. The majority of significant biases stem from the racial etiquette and relations of the 1930’s that became impossible to disentangle from the social order. We cannot simply rely on the Slave Narratives alone, to answer questions in relation to slavery and the lives of blacks in the Great Depression; we can, however, use this old material to answer new questions, and use the WPA Slave Narratives as a sound place to start.[29]