Jim Crow Alabama
Arlinda Willis was born in Choctaw County, Alabama, deep in the Black Belt, named for the richness of its soil, marked by poverty. She grew up in a three-bedroom house built shortly after the Civil War, without indoor plumbing, without electricity, and within a legal and social order designed to ensure that Black people remained voiceless and economically dependent.
The Alabama sections of For Once in My Life recover the texture of that world with specificity and care for the grandparents who raised her, the farm that sustained them, the church that anchored the community, and the Civil Rights Movement that intended to gain respect. Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus when Arlinda was three years old. The march from Selma to Montgomery happened closer than 100 miles from where she grew up.
In the minstrel shows, a White man would smear black grease paint on his face and dance, sing, and talk to the audience reinforcing the stereotypes of Black people. The character's name was Jim Crow.
The Jim Crow era was Americam apartheid. It was a rebirth of white supremacy. It developed into a system that ran on fear and othering.
Lynchings became the violence outcomes of the unjust laws. A Black man accused of looking too long at a white woman could be dragged from his home, his family forced to watch as he was beaten, hanged, burned. Often a public spectacle, a cameraman would photograph the act so spectators could purchase postcards as souvenirs of the event.
And yet, Black people found a way to live. They built their own schools, businesses, and churches. They gathered in juke joints and living rooms. They found ways to live with minimal contact with White people.
By the mid-20th century, the Freedom Riders rolled through the South, testing the inhumane laws. The Montgomery Bus Boycott challenged the foundations of segregation. And children in Little Rock walked through angry mobs for their right to equal education. The Civil Rights Movement brought the struggle into the homes of all Americans through a media campaign of newspaper stories and television clips.
Apartheid still exists today. After the Civil Rights Act was passed, prejudice switched from an overt practice to mainly covert. Access to jobs, salaries, and neighborhoods is often limited. What was once called lynching is now called police brutality. And the prison system flourishes on the backs of the predominantly BIPOC incarcerated.