A Black Protest in the "Era of Accommodation:" Documents

Abstract

In his seminal essay on the development of legal segregation in the South, C. Vann Woodward listed several "restraining forces" which delayed the formalization of the strict caste system-"Northern liberal opinion ... the prestige and influence of Southern conservatives . . . [and] the idealism and zeal of the Southern radicals [i.e., Populists]." It was the "weakening and discrediting" of these groups which allowed Jim Crow to grow and prosper. Although the "Woodward thesis" has repeatedly been debated, historians have often overlooked a central fact: each of the restraining groups was white. In the controversy over the place of the Negro in southern society, in other words, black folk weren't directly involved. For, by the 1890s, according to Woodward, "The resistance of the Negro himself had long ceased to be an important deterrent to white aggression."

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