Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow [Paperback]

Neil R. McMillen (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

McMillen's sequel of sorts to Vernon Lane Wharton's classic The Negro in Mississippi , 1865-1890 (1947; Greenwood, 1984. reprint) describes the origins, development, and enforcement of the color-caste system in perhaps the most race-haunted state--Mississippi--where nearly one in ten black Americans lived in 1890. He lays bare the raw and ugly lynchings and the coarse legal inequities that formed the sinews of white supremacy between 1890 and 1940. He seeks also to show blacks' view of Jim Crow and to describe it in their words. He is best at capturing the structure of race relations and at presaging the milieu of civil rights change. His state study complements Herbert Shapiro's White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (LJ 2/1/88). For Afro-American, local, Southern, and race relations collections.
- Thomas J. Davis, African American Studies, SUNY at Buffalo
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Remarkable for its relentless truth-telling, and the depth and thoroughness of its investigation, for the freshness of its sources, and for the shock power of its findings." -- C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (September 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 025206156X
• ISBN-13: 978-0252061561
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #397,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The shameful past of Mississippi, March 24, 2002

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Scholar "18th century student" (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Paperback)

Neil McMillen gives us a look at the real effects of Jim Crow in Dark Journey, the story of white supremacy in Mississippi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. McMillen explores this society of racial apartheid from the vantage point of the oppressor and the oppressed, for as he states in his preface, "until historians adequately explored the exterior forces that operated on the black community there could be no truly adequate histories of the interior life of the people within that community." He includes many descriptions of Mississippi during this "race-haunted" time from blacks themselves, which adds significantly to the texture of McMillen's "bottom up" depiction of how truly repressive the white regime was. What quickly emerges from this straightforward study is a society dominated without question by whites, one in which whites sought to re-establish race relations as they existed prior to the Civil War. They largely succeeded.

What strikes the reader forcefully from the beginning of McMillen's book is how insidiously prevalent the system known as Jim Crow was in Mississippi, and how it affected every aspect of black life. Jim Crow did not mean that blacks were simply in effect denied the right to vote and had limited economic opportunities, though to be sure both of these hurdles existed. White supremacy, as McMillen deftly points out, meant far more than denied voting rights and low-rung jobs. It meant (either de facto or de jury) poor or no high schools, lynchings, outrageous jury verdicts and trials, harassment for succeeding in traditionally white professions, no libraries, etc. The sheer scope and overriding predominance of white supremacy in Mississippi is shocking, especially since whites really did not seek to hide it from prying Northerners. White supremacy transcended class lines for the most part, McMillen show us, and even acted as a greater force upon whites than economic self-interest. For example, every white owner of a store, restaurant, garage, theatre, etc., who refused to serve blacks was also losing the money blacks would have paid them.

McMillen concludes that from the 1890s to the middle of the 20th century very few blacks overcame the high political and economic barriers placed in their way by a Mississippi society bent on oppressing them. Blacks in that state, however, managed to create and maintain their own separate political, religious, educational and social institutions despite the odds against them. Those who could, moved away from Mississippi, much like the oppressed and degraded Irish left their native island to escape the shackles of British economic and sectarian control. Truly, Mississippi's society was born of hatred of blacks by whites, a situation not totally eradicated by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough yet an easy read, February 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Paperback)

Dr. McMillen provides a rare insight into the world of Black Missippians during the 1920s, '30s & 40's. His writing style is a lovely complement to his ingenious insights. He is truly one of our greatest scholars & non-fiction writers. This book is a must-read for anyone even mildy interested in African-American or general Southern history. Black or White this book will help you understand this period in our history. I can't wait for his sequel.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magisterial, November 12, 2009

By 

Maxtone Witherball - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Paperback)

Slavery by Another Name and Black Prisoners and Their World left me with the impression that Alabama was easily the worst state a black person could have lived in after the Civil War (not that any of them, and especially not any of the southern ones, were in the least bit hospitable).

Dark Journey dispelled that notion thoroughly. Neil McMillen does a magnificent job in showing how extremely repressive Mississippi was of black people (and helped me to understand why Mississippi, and not some other ex-Confederate state, gave rise to this documentary). His research is impeccable and his presentation broad in scope.

I do wonder why he ends his inquiry at 1940, however. He gives no reason--and certainly no good reason--for doing so. I mean, what he terms black Mississippians' "dark journey" certainly did not end in that year.

Another criticism: For some reason, McMillen posits three stages to the "dark journey," but his divisions seemed arbitrary and unhelpful to me--particularly considering, again, that he fails to discuss developments post-1940.

That said, Dark Journey is terrific history and I highly recommend it to all, and especially to anyone interested in the post-Reconstruction South.