Strange Career Critics: Long May they Persevere

Abstract

Without the persistent attention of critics over the thirty-four years since its publication, The Strange Career ofJim Crow would have long since been forgotten. Lacking the demands for correction made by the flaws they discovered and the new findings they brought forth, I should have been hard put to justify the numerous revisions and new editions that have periodically helped revive interest in the subject. All along, of course, it has been the subject, rather than the book on the subject, that has explained the protracted attention and interest. I am nevertheless profoundly indebted to the critics for keeping the book alive along with the subject. I very much hope they will persevere. I promise to return to questions raised by some of the more recent critics.1 First, however, I should like to enter the fray myself. If the best defense is offense, perhaps the analogous strategy for criticism is self-criticism. At any rate, I have a good bit of self-criticism bottled up that might be offered here on that theory. Some of it may answer or duplicate, and some may forestall, the criticisms of others, but I hope none of it will discourage or slow the continued flow of criticism. Briefly stated, my main point is that work on this subject got started off on the wrong foot and that I bear heavy responsibility for the mischief. I am referring particularly to the question of racial segregation and its origins. What I did was to put the question when before the questions where and how, giving to time priority over circumstance and placing the chronology before the sociology and demography of the subject. I understand why I placed the issue of chronology foremost when I did. I believed then, and still do, that this ordering of priorities served a necessary and essential purpose. The fact remains that the approach did the historiography of the subject a disservice by giving it a wrong direction at the start. I should have been persuaded to make these admissions earlier by the nature of evidence presented in other contributions to the controversy, notably those of Leon F Litwack, Richard C. Wade, Ira Berlin, and Howard N. Rabinowitz. Each of them