The Burning House : Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America / Anders Walker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walker, Anders, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Segregation--History--20th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century.

Southern States--Race relations--History--20th century.

Southern States.

United States--Race relations--History--20th century.

United States.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (305 pages)

Place of Publication:

2022.

New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A startling and gripping reexamination of the Jim Crow era, as seen through the eyes of some of the most important American writers In this dramatic reexamination of the Jim Crow South, Anders Walker demonstrates that racial segregation fostered not simply terror and violence, but also diversity, one of our most celebrated ideals. He investigates how prominent intellectuals like Robert Penn Warren, James Baldwin, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O'Connor, and Zora Neale Hurston found pluralism in Jim Crow, a legal system that created two worlds, each with its own institutions, traditions, even cultures. The intellectuals discussed in this book all agreed that black culture was resilient, creative, and profound, brutally honest in its assessment of American history. By contrast, James Baldwin likened white culture to a "burning house," a frightening place that endorsed racism and violence to maintain dominance. Why should black Americans exchange their experience for that? Southern whites, meanwhile, saw themselves preserving a rich cultural landscape against the onslaught of mass culture and federal power, a project carried to the highest levels of American law by Supreme Court justice and Virginia native Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Anders Walker shows how a generation of scholars and judges has misinterpreted Powell's definition of diversity in the landmark case Regents v. Bakke, forgetting its Southern origins and weakening it in the process. By resituating the decision in the context of Southern intellectual history, Walker places diversity on a new footing, independent of affirmative action but also free from the constraints currently placed on it by the Supreme Court. With great clarity and insight, he offers a new lens through which to understand the history of civil rights in the United States.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One. The Briar Patch

Chapter Two. The White Mare

Chapter Three. Inner Conflict

Chapter Four. Invisible Man

Chapter Five. The Color Curtain

Chapter Six. Intruder in the Dust

Chapter Seven. Fire Next Time

Chapter Eight. Everything That Rises Must Converge

Chapter Nine. Who Speaks for the Negro?

Chapter Ten. The Demonstrators

Chapter Eleven. Mockingbirds

Chapter Twelve. The Cantos

Chapter Thirteen. Regents v. Bakke

Chapter Fourteen. The Last Lynching

Chapter Fifteen. Beyond the Peacock

Chapter Sixteen. Missouri v. Jenkins

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780300235623

0300235623

OCLC:

1026492367