Jim Crow: The Yankee Variant

Craig Uffman -
“The fundamental and foundational segregation of the north is the segregation of neighborhoods. That’s what’s created in the north in the 1910s and 1920s. African Americans are told, in a whole bunch of ways, ‘You can live in this particular neighborhood, but you can’t live anywhere else.’ As that happens, other forms of segregation follows.” -Dr. Kevin Boyle

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The last episode helped us understand the beginnings of Jim Crow in the south. Today we pick up where we left off, tracing pivotal moments that led similar racial tensions in the north. Welcoming back Dr. Kevin Boyle for this episode of Race on the Rocks, we dive deeper into the genesis of the Jim Crow era. How did the racial tensions of the south follow Blacks to the north and how did segregation become a nationwide way of life?

Dr. Boyle is a professor at Northwestern University, specializing in the history of the 20th century United States. He has a particular focus on modern American social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Boyle has a long list of publications and honors including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew Carnegie Corporation. He is the highly acclaimed author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and received the National Book Award for Nonfiction and many others.

Our conversation today is immensely impactful as Dr. Boyle illustrates how northern cities became segregated and how the basis of hatred led to mob violence and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

  1. What were the most pernicious ways of systemizing hierarchy in the North?
  2. Describe the rebirth of the KKK. How did the second KKK use violence and intimidation to shape our laws and politics?
  3. What grounds of hope in spite in the realities of an entrenched Jim Crow system in the North?

Show Notes

  • [2:07] - When we paused the conversation, Dr. Boyle had just discussed the racial hierarchies in the South and his book Arc of Justice.
  • [2:59] - Dr. Boyle illustrates how as Blacks moved away from the south, parts of the Jim Crow system followed them. The legal segregation of schools, for example, followed them to other states they moved to.
  • [3:51] - Some states did not legally require schools to be segregated from the beginning, including Illinois and Michigan. But other forms of segregation followed Blacks there, such as employment segregation.
  • [5:03] - Dr. Boyle shares how jobs were segregated in all fields of employment, including in factories, and this was consistent in states like Illinois and Michigan that were prohibiting segregation in other areas.
  • [5:29] - The fundamental and foundational segregation of the north is the segregation of neighborhoods. As a result, schools, hospitals, and police departments become segregated.
  • [7:23] - Dr. Uffman discusses the economic pressure that came from segregation as well. Dr. Boyle uses Detroit as an example of employment competition and the stresses put on living spaces and communities.
  • [8:52] - Although communities were not legally segregated, Dr. Boyle explains how neighborhood segregation was enforced.
  • [10:12] - African American migration starts to come north and what Whites begin to say is, ‘I don’t want an African American living next door to me.’
  • [10:56] - Racism alone can’t segregate a city due to the simple fact that not all Whites were racist. Those who were could not impose their racism on another White to enforce segregated neighborhoods, so they sought help.
  • [11:31] - Real estate markets began to use this rising tide of racism to form segregated neighborhoods and Dr. Boyle shares how this worked in Detroit beginning in 1923.
  • [12:40] - This led other businesses to formally segregate as banks would not give mortgages to Blacks for homes in white neighborhoods and restrictive covenants were specifically written in the deeds of properties that they would never be sold to Blacks.
  • [13:21] - The distinction is that this wasn’t the state legally segregating neighborhoods. These were private agreements.
  • [14:28] - Once that system was in place it created immense pressure on white homeowners to make sure those restrictions were never broken. The fear was that, If Blacks moved into their neighborhood, property values would decline. Financial system policies helped make this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • [15:31] - For Whites who were not racist, they now had an immense economic incentive to keep that structure in place.
  • [16:17] - Dr. Boyle uses Dr. Sweet, who Dr. Boyle’s book Arc of Justice focuses on, as an example of this system. He managed to move into a home in a white neighborhood and a mob tried to drive him out.
  • [18:37] - In Dr. Sweet’s case, which is one reason it is unusual, he knew going in there would be trouble. He and his family armed themselves in their new home because they feared the mob. In defense, they opened fire and killed a member of the mob.
  • [19:20] - Dr. Sweet’s case is unusual, and Dr. Boyle explains that what normally would happen is that Blacks were in fact driven out of these neighborhoods through mob violence.
  • [20:56] - Dr. Boyle illustrates how segregated suburbs surrounding large cities ensured the segregation of schools through the restrictive covenants of the neighborhood development.
  • [22:12] - For most of Detroit’s existence, 8 Mile Road was a dividing line between Blacks and Whites.
  • [23:09] - There were a number of Ku Klux Klans across this time period, and Dr. Boyle describes the second. It launched in the early part of the 20th century.
  • [23:50] - After the film Birth of a Nation, many businessmen decided to form the Klan again. They form it as a money-making venture to sell membership.
  • [24:50] - What the second Klan did differently was that they made hatred the basis of their organization. They supported driving out those who were different: Blacks, Jews, and Catholics specifically.
  • [25:55] - The appeal of the Klan’s pitch for “All-Americanism,” described as male dominated Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, spread very quickly in the south.
  • [26:38] - The KKK grew to have many thousands of members in each large city and they had huge political power. At their height, they controlled the state government of Indiana, for example, and Dr. Boyle lists several of the places they were in power.
  • [27:42] - Dr. Boyle describes the difference between the mob violence of Dr. Sweet’s story and Klan violence. The members of the mob in Dr. Sweet’s case were not Klansmen.
  • [28:39] - Dr. Uffman compares the mindset of Whites participating and accepting mob violence to those who were not members of the Communist party but who tolerated Communist rhetoric in later years.
  • [29:20] - The rhetoric of the Klan was the vision of being “All-American.” This vision was threatened by those who were different, and the Klan pitched that Blacks and immigrants would destroy American values because they were not true Americans.
  • [30:26] - The Ku Klux Klan saw other groups of people as incapable in some way or another of being true Americans because there is something that prevented them from understanding and embracing the values that defined this country as the Klan understood them.
  • [31:37] - At this time there were competing visions of America and both of them claimed to be patriotic. America was built on a fundamental promise.
  • [32:53] - One version of patriotism is to embrace the fundamental promise that all were created equal.
  • [33:12] - The competing version of patriotism is the Klan vision of the 1920’s. They believed that we were not all created equal and those who are superior need to hold on to power even if it means embracing violence.
  • [34:27] - Dr. Uffman discusses the name of Dr. Boyle’s book and breaks apart the word “Arc” to demonstrate the progress being made and stories of hope.
  • [35:15] - In his experience, Dr. Boyle explains that nothing will get you in bigger trouble than to suggest to older African Americans that nothing has been accomplished in the racial front in the United States. Not to say things are perfect, but things certainly have changed.
  • [36:00] - Something that struck Dr. Boyle as he was writing his book was just how blatant and widespread racism was during the early 20th century.
  • [36:58] - Dr. Boyle describes the changes that have been made because of the courage of ordinary African Americans who risked it all to see change.
  • [37:58] - Using a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Boyle illustrates how Blacks have always demanded what was put on paper as a promise to all Americans.

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

More from Dr. Kevin Boyle: