Jim Crow Guide

"Jim Crow Guide" documents the system of legally imposed American apartheid that prevailed during what Kennedy calls "the long century from emancipation to the overcoming". The mock guidebook covers every area of activity where the tentacles of Jim Crow reached, dictating where and with whom one could live, study, work, travel, eat, sleep, play, assemble or marry. Drawing on primary and secondary written sources as well as unwritten custom and etiquette, Kennedy cites applicable strictures and typical individual experiences and includes accounts of punishment administered to violators. While Kennedy's focus is black-white relations, the guide also reports how Jim Crow relegated Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians and some religious minorities to second-class citizenship. From the texts of state statutes, municipal ordinances, federal regulations, and judicial rulings, Kennedy exhumes the legalistic skeleton of Jim Crow in a work for scholars and general readers.