James Baldwin and De facto Jim Crow
Seventh Avenue in Harlem NY, Circa 1934, Courtesy of the New York Public Library
James Baldwin was grew up in Harlem. With its amazing jazz clubs and restaurants, Harlem remained a great place to socialize in the 1940s and 1950s and, as result, Baldwin had few memorable Jim Crow-like experiences growing up. He writes, “I knew about Jim Crow but I had never experienced it.” That changed when he traveled less than two hours south of Harlem to Princeton, New Jersey. In the South, whites openly defended white privilege in white-owned and -operated restaurants using violence and the threat of violence. De facto Jim Crow in the North defined the places African Americans could and could not eat. In the towns and cities where they lived they knew where they were welcome. Out of town, one had to be careful about where they tried to eat. Some African Americans travelers consulted resources like the Negro Motorist Green-Book to help them find food in an eatery hospitable to black customers.