Issue Date: December 2, 2001

When life was separate and unequal

MOST AMERICANS are familiar with the civil rights movement through history books, but the daily struggles of African Americans before laws demanded equal treatment rarely are recorded. Just out: Remembering Jim Crow (The New Press, $55), a book and CD set recorded by Duke University's Behind the Veil Project. Included: more than 1,200 interviews with people who lived in the South under "Jim Crow" laws (named for a black character in a pre-Civil War song) that forced them to use separate bathrooms and drinking fountains and denied them service in restaurants and, in some cases, the right to vote. We spoke with co-editor William Chafe:

What's the value of oral history?

Many of the people who are the best witnesses to it aren't the ones to record history. The only way to get their stories is oral history.

What are the most startling experiences?

We've been living with a simplistic stereotype of segregation for a long time. Most people think on one hand there was total oppression, on the other hand there was total victimization and subservience. What we've discovered is how creative, imaginative and multifaceted were the responses to oppression. ... You can achieve some level of dignity and respect.

But discrimination continues today ...

Absolutely. People look at the color of someone's skin and they presume certain attitudes. That's what racial profiling is all about. However, the fact that we have laws that insist people be treated as individuals and that people who discriminate can be punished is a major advance. But that doesn't eliminate ingrained cultural racism.

-- Michele Hatty