Who is Jim Crow, and what is he to You??
(excerpted from an earlier discussion log concerning racial/social relationships)
...This discussion has brought to mind something my pastor says fairly regularly: "Satan is always looking for that particular person, place or thing that will take you out of the will of God." For Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader), it was his pride and love for his wife that finally took him over to the dark side. What is it for you?
Well, it might just be that the shared-racial/social memory of the pain and horror of conditions in our part of the world under the peculiar institution of slavery [not to mention these long, dark years of "freedom"] and the fear, that barely lies under the surface for many of us, that it will return, stronger than ever is the "thing" for many of us.
As we chatted online or off, I could sense a greater welling up of emotion in my friends than in any other conversation I can recall having ... ever.
Except in 2001 when, standing in the vestibule of the Stevens Center in Winston-Salem, NC after a super-fantastic showing of Lonely Teardrops: the Jackie Wilson Story, I saw the face and heard the words of my mother as she explained why the show had been *no fun* at all for her.
You see, sixty-five years ago, the Stevens Center, a remarkably well-restored and maintained city landmark, had been called the "Carolina Theater"; in my mom's youth, it was *the* neighborhood movie theater. And like many other theaters and social institutions of that era, the Carolina observed the etiquette and upheld the codes of black and white society: Jim Crow ruled our world. So that meant that in order to see the film showing that week, mom and her sister would go to the ticket window to purchase their special tickets (child, "colored"); then instead of walking into the movie, they had to go back outside and around the back of the building to find the rickety iron fire-escape; then in fair weather or foul, up, up, up, up, up they climbed to the top-most floor to gain entry into the real peanut gallery: the "colored section". The disrespect, pain and humiliation that defined that era and informed her childhood had sprung to back to life, full-blown, in the moments she entered the theatre. She had vowed to herself to *never* return to this place--and in some way, by walking into that place again, she had betrayed herself and the memory of the people who had struggled all those many years to renounce Jim Crow all at the same time.
And I, her child, raised in the north in an enlightened, but still slightly bent, version of integration, had never really understood her militance, her experience, her pain. But in that one evening, she successfully communicated all of it to me.
I am humbled and chastened by the knowledge.
...This discussion has brought to mind something my pastor says fairly regularly: "Satan is always looking for that particular person, place or thing that will take you out of the will of God." For Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader), it was his pride and love for his wife that finally took him over to the dark side. What is it for you?
Well, it might just be that the shared-racial/social memory of the pain and horror of conditions in our part of the world under the peculiar institution of slavery [not to mention these long, dark years of "freedom"] and the fear, that barely lies under the surface for many of us, that it will return, stronger than ever is the "thing" for many of us.
As we chatted online or off, I could sense a greater welling up of emotion in my friends than in any other conversation I can recall having ... ever.
Except in 2001 when, standing in the vestibule of the Stevens Center in Winston-Salem, NC after a super-fantastic showing of Lonely Teardrops: the Jackie Wilson Story, I saw the face and heard the words of my mother as she explained why the show had been *no fun* at all for her.
You see, sixty-five years ago, the Stevens Center, a remarkably well-restored and maintained city landmark, had been called the "Carolina Theater"; in my mom's youth, it was *the* neighborhood movie theater. And like many other theaters and social institutions of that era, the Carolina observed the etiquette and upheld the codes of black and white society: Jim Crow ruled our world. So that meant that in order to see the film showing that week, mom and her sister would go to the ticket window to purchase their special tickets (child, "colored"); then instead of walking into the movie, they had to go back outside and around the back of the building to find the rickety iron fire-escape; then in fair weather or foul, up, up, up, up, up they climbed to the top-most floor to gain entry into the real peanut gallery: the "colored section". The disrespect, pain and humiliation that defined that era and informed her childhood had sprung to back to life, full-blown, in the moments she entered the theatre. She had vowed to herself to *never* return to this place--and in some way, by walking into that place again, she had betrayed herself and the memory of the people who had struggled all those many years to renounce Jim Crow all at the same time.
And I, her child, raised in the north in an enlightened, but still slightly bent, version of integration, had never really understood her militance, her experience, her pain. But in that one evening, she successfully communicated all of it to me.
I am humbled and chastened by the knowledge.
posted by Unknown at 11:01 AM
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