The Ethics of Living Jim Crow

Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-black racism.  But where did the name Jim Crow come from? The white entertainer Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-1860) performed a popular song-and-dance act supposedly modeled after a slave. He named the character Jim Crow. Rice darkened his face, acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English. It is uncertain how the name Jim Crow became the short hand for the segregation laws (Ferris State University).

This autobiographical sketch, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, is undoubtedly a coming of age story and a story of survival. At first, the protagonist, Richard, talks of his childhood and how he lived behind rail road tracks and enjoyed throwing cinder with his friends. It was innocent fighting to Richard until him and his friends were challenged by white boys. Him and his friends were black, but that appeared to not raise a danger. Richard and his friends were armed with cinder, while the white boys were armed with broken glass bottles. Suddenly, the game was no longer a game. A piece of glass cut behind Richard's ear and reality set in. The cinder could only leave bruises, there was no actual harm intended. But the glass, that was meant to hurt. This was Richard's first taste of the cruel world he had been so oblivious to.

As time passes and the protagonist grows older, the closer he grows to joining the labor force to support himself and his mother. The labor force is where the real dose of injustice happens. His first job was at an optical company out in Mississippi where he was promised to be taught the ropes of the job. The promises of education soon became transparent when two white men, Pease and Morrie, accused him of being "smart" with them. Things escalated for Richard when he did not address Pease by "Mr. Pease." At this point, Richard realized how he could never win in an argument with a white man when all of his options lead to the same result;

"If I had said: No, sir, Mr. Pease, I never called you Pease, I would have been automatically calling Morrie a liar. And if I had said: Yes, sir, Mr. Pease, I called you Pease, I would have been pleading guilty to having uttered the worst insult that a Negro can utter to a southern white man. I stood hesitating, trying to frame a neutral reply."

He soon left the factory job with an education not of his job, but of living according to Jim Crow.  At his next job as a doorman for a clothing store, he witnessed a black woman being dragged behind the store to be beaten. There was a policeman on the corner that remained completely oblivious to the event. When the men were done beating the woman and released her, the policeman arrested her for being "drunk". Richard told his fellow porter boys of what he saw, but none of them were phased in the slightest. In fact, they began saying that she was lucky they let her walk away. To be beaten was considered lucky, how utterly depressing.

Richard, again, left his job at the clothing store and was soon employed by a hotel. His new job was to attend to the prostitutes that occupied some of the rooms, not much of a step up in employment. Here he learned the art of putting on a fake smile when the reality of it all was complete terror.

"It would have been impossible for a stranger to detect anything . The maids, the hall-boys, and the bell-boys were all smiles. They had to be."

Richard worked at the hotel for a while until he returned to his former job at the Optical Company, but this time armed with Jim Crow knowledge. With this knowledge, he avoided harmful situations that he would of so easily fell for in the past and most importantly, survival. Jim Crow wasn't just a set of social rules to Richard, it was a guide line to living in a white man's world.

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