How Free Is Free? The Long Death of Jim Crow

In this stunning examination of African-American life after slavery. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Litwack recounts the physical brutality and crushing legal oppression of Jim Crow America. Drawing on African-American literature, poetry and blues music, as well as traditional archival and media records, the author details lynchings, segregation, denial of education and housing—and the dedication among African-Americans determined not to be treated as second-class citizens. The book pays special attention to the participation of black soldiers in America’s wars and concludes with a look at race relations at the dawn of the new century: the legacy of the civil rights movement largely dismantled, the segregation formerly mandated by law replaced by a segregation just as deep driven by economics and tradition, and the voice of black dissent expressed through rap instead of blues. “In the early twenty-first century,” the author writes, “it is a different America, and it is a familiar America”; Jim Crow is long gone from our law books, but the struggle for equality continues. (Feb.)