Abstract
The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives
By Adolph L. Reed Jr.
Verso Books, February 2022
ISBN-10: 1839766263
As the last generation to experience Jim Crow fades, so does their collective memory of those horrors. In The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, political activist, journalist, and scholar Adolph L. Reed Jr. takes on the important task of recounting the nuanced realities of life under those laws. Through personal narratives and political analysis, he illustrates the day-to-day struggles of people who dealt with life’s practicalities under that system of oppression and explores the ways the segregationist order strengthened the power of the ruling class. As Reed moves between memoir and historical argument, he expertly examines the legal framework behind Jim Crow, how the segregationist order rose and ultimately fell, and what has and has not changed in its aftermath.