1. Watch this 2-min video of Billie Holiday singing her iconic song “Strange Fruit”: https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs. It has inspired books, an opera, a documentary, and more. Why do you think this song resonates with so many people? What “strange fruit” did she sing about? What’s your reaction to this song? How do the lyrics illustrate ideas from the chapter? To find out more about protest music, including music about slavery, visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/protest.html.
2. Go to the Jim Crow Stories link http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories.html. Listen to at least three of the narratives. What do these oral histories teach you that you didn’t know before? How do they relate to the textbook?
3. Check out Jacob Lawrence’s famous Great Migration series at http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2015/onewayticket/. You may wish to read a review of the exhibit first, such as this article in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/20/telling-the-whole-story. Read the text for Panel 1, which includes information about key Northern cities, including Harlem in New York City. Read through “One-Way Ticket” and “Bound No’th Blues” (1926) by poet Langston Hughes. (If you click on his name, you’ll find a list of key figures to learn more about.) Listen to Maggie Jones singing “Northbound Blues,” an early song about the Great Migration (1925). What are the key themes in these poems and song? How do they illustrate ideas from the chapter? Click on two more panels of your choosing. You may wish to look at those relating to the book (e.g., panels 10–11 on poverty, panels 14–16 and 22 on violence). What relevant or new ideas do you learn there? How do they relate to what you’ve learned so far? For an article that links Lawrence’s work to modern racialized violence, see “Black Bodies in Motion and in Pain” at http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/black-bodies-in-motion-and-in-pain. What do you think of the connections the author makes?
4. Consider visiting the Virtual Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia created by sociologist David Pilgrim at https://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/index.htm. This video gives an overview of the museum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf7jAF2Tk40.

Group Discussion

With some classmates, discuss what you learned from this chapter and from the websites you visited for the Internet Activities. Before you start the discussion, write a brief reaction to the chapter and the online content. Consider the following questions in your essay and during the discussion:

1. Why did de jure segregation happen? What was at stake? Who gained and who lost? Be sure to discuss class and gender differences in connection with these issues.
2. How was the Jim Crow system sustained across time? What was the role of prejudice and racism? Subsistence technology? Law and custom? How was violence used to enforce the system? What organizations were involved in the creation and persistence of segregation?
3. What does it mean to call this system “rigid competitive?” How did it differ from the paternalistic system of slavery?
4. How did the Black community react to segregation? What means of resistance and escape were available? Were they effective? Why or why not?
5. Why did de jure segregation end? What macro-level changes in subsistence technology made segregation untenable? Why?