Comer Vann Woodward's The Strange Career Of Jim Crow

Comer Vann Woodward's most influential book was The Strange Career of Jim Crow, which explained that Jim Crow laws and segregation were relatively late developments and were not inevitable. Woodward’s book is proclaimed as having helped shape the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In his book, Woodward describes the idea of the “magical formula of white supremacy” that was used as a devise to regroup the white conservatives and white radicals through the disfranchisement of African Americans. Woodward explains the “magical formula of white supremacy” as being the idea of how African Americans could be used as a scapegoat in the reconciliation of divided white classes and the reunion of the Solid South. Its ultimate goal was to heal the wounds opened by the bitter campaigns between the white conservatives and the white radicals that could not be …show more content…
The idea was presented as a way to make sure that neither division of whites could use African Americans against one another, which would mean peace among all white factions. As a step in the disfranchisement plan, barriers for voting were put in place essentially to save African Americans from having their votes stolen. Barriers included property and literacy qualifications that held loopholes for whites to slip through to evade restriction of voting. Other barriers included poll taxes and the white primary. White supremacy propaganda also played a role in the application of the formula. These pieces of propaganda were used to stop poor and illiterate whites from being suspicious of also being disfranchised. Propaganda was also used to refurbish the legend of Reconstruction to put whites in fear of what could come. Another tactic to scare whites was the playing up of African American crimes by thee press. More pieces of the formula include major pushes to pass laws and create cultural conventions that would separate the