# In what ways, if any, was Jim Crow ignored/flouted by whites in the South? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 9, 2020, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192 "2020-01-09T22:42:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/21 "2020-01-10T20:22:16Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > Once she drank her fiancee’s blood, she had Negro blood in her and could swear to it. Sounds like an urban legend to me. There’s no need to drink blood, she could just state that she’s 1/64th and nobody would have any cause to challenge it. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/22 "2020-01-10T20:38:50Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Sounds like an urban legend to me. Probably not. This comes from a contemporary account from a specific person who was in the vicinity at the time. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/23 "2020-01-10T20:40:10Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Sounds like an urban legend to me. There’s no need to drink blood, she could just state that she’s 1/64th and nobody would have any cause to challenge it. In 1819? ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/24 "2020-01-10T20:46:45Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Probably not. This comes from a contemporary account from a specific person who was in the vicinity at the time. Which is a common feature of urban legends. If we read the source document you referred to, the blood-drinking story dates to a similar story from the Revolutionary war: > [@](#): > > It is possible that people had been drinking drops of blood for far > longer. In 1930, the Raleigh Observer reported a family legend of a “classic > case of Revolutionary romance,” in which a soldier from Cornwallis’s army, > wounded in 1781, fell in love with his nurse, a “free mulatto woman.” Told that > it was illegal to marry her, he was inspired to drink a few drops of her blood > after seeing a doctor bleed a patient and then swore that he had “colored > blood. The author concludes that this kind of blood-drinking may have been going on for a while. I think the better observation is that rules-lawyering stories have been a popular category of urban legend for quite a while. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/25 "2020-01-10T20:49:56Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > In 1819? In 1819, if you stated you had a fraction of Negro ancestry, who would challenge it? Why would they do that? I’ve studied a lot of ancestry, and I can tell you that in 1819, few people had any documentary evidence of their heritage at all. A few people could prove they were related to one specific person. Except for royalty, nobody had docs to prove that they were _not_ related to a certain real or imagined person. This story is an apocryphal myth. ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/26 "2020-01-11T01:50:04Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Sounds like an urban legend to me. There’s no need to drink blood, she could just state that she’s 1/64th and nobody would have any cause to challenge it. However had she done so she would have been saying the same thing was true of various relatives putting \*them \*in a shedload of trouble with the law. For example she would be saying that one of her parents had 1/32 of Negro blood invalidating their marriage and making her any any siblings illegitimate with ramifications in fact for many family marriages, inheritance, status etc. She really couldn’t have gone there. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/27 "2020-01-11T02:29:24Z")
> [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](#): > > However had she done so she would have been saying the same thing was true of various relatives putting \*them \*in a shedload of trouble with the law. For example she would be saying that one of her parents had 1/32 of Negro blood invalidating their marriage and making her any any siblings illegitimate with ramifications in fact for many family marriages, inheritance, status etc. She really couldn’t have gone there. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that if you’re a white woman determined to marry a black man in 1819, you’ve probably already thought out the social implications of that action and judged them unimportant or nonexistent. She clearly already doesn’t care what her parents or grandparents think about things. People don’t drink blood to downgrade their social status. There are plenty other sanitary ways to achieve the same thing. Laws in the old South are replete with ways you can lose your whiteness, there are no ways that you can achieve whiteness. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/28 "2020-01-11T03:10:17Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > The _Greenville Delta Democrat-Times_ (deep in the heart of backwoods Mississippi) crusaded for Civil Rights. In larger cities, _Knoxville News Sentinel_, _Nashville Tennessean_ and\* Atlanta Constitution\* were all Civil Rights progressives. Knoxville was a hot spot of anti-secession sentiment. That doesn’t always translate to anti-slavery (and later anti-Jim Crow) but those sentiments were likely stronger than elsewhere in the south. > [@fedman](#): > > are you aware that in early 20th century, Indy was HQ for KKK? As for non-racist white in that period, I’m sure they got a visit from sheriff or KKK. Another big Klan state was Maine of all places. Very white, so they focused on oppressing Catholics instead. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/29 "2020-01-11T03:46:33Z")
> [@fedman](#): > > are you aware that in early 20th century, Indy was HQ for KKK? As for non-racist white in that period, I’m sure they got a visit from sheriff or KKK. When Bishop Joseph Ritter ordered the integration of Catholic schools in Indiana in 1938, the Klan picketed the cathedral. In 1946 Ritter was promoted to the bigger, more prestigious Archdiocese of St. Louis, and ordered desegregation of its schools and hospitals. When local Catholics protested, he threatened to excommunicate them. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/30 "2020-01-11T05:01:04Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that if you’re a white woman determined to marry a black man in 1819, you’ve probably already thought out the social implications of that action and judged them unimportant or nonexistent. She clearly already doesn’t care what her parents or grandparents think about things. > > People don’t drink blood to downgrade their social status. There are plenty other sanitary ways to achieve the same thing. Laws in the old South are replete with ways you can lose your whiteness, there are no ways that you can achieve whiteness. I think the issue was not that she could have gotten away with it, but that she was taking an oath. She was swearing before God about something which was something that people took (and some still do) seriously and did not want to lie. The drinking blood trick allowed her to “truthfully” answer “yes” to the question of whether she had any Negro blood in her. I put truthfully in quotes because I seriously doubt that God would appreciate this sort of rules lawyering, but what do I know? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/31 "2020-01-11T10:47:17Z")
[Sputnik Monroe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_Monroe) managed to desegregate pro wrestling in Memphis by making himself so popular with black fans that the promoters had no choice but to sell them floor seats. > [@](#): > > During a period where legal segregation was the norm at public events, and during a general decline in the popularity of professional wrestling, Monroe recognized that the segregated wrestling shows (whites sat in floor seats while blacks were required to sit in the balcony) were not properly marketing to black fans. The witty, flamboyant Monroe began dressing up in a purple gown and carrying a diamond tipped cane and drinking in traditionally black bars in the black area of Memphis, where he would openly socialize with black patrons and hand out tickets to his wrestling shows. As a result of this, he was frequently arrested by police on a variety of vague, trumped up charges, such as mopery. In each case, he would then hire a black attorney and appear in court, pay a small fine, and immediately resume the behavior that resulted in his prior arrests. Due to this, and in spite of the fact that he was a heel at the time, his popularity soared among the black community. At his shows, although floor seats in arenas would be half empty with white patrons, the balcony would be packed to capacity with black patrons with many others unable to enter due to the balcony selling out. > > Monroe, having become the biggest wrestling draw in the territory, soon refused to perform unless patrons, regardless of their race, were allowed to sit in any seat at the Ellis Auditorium. As a result, the promoter was obliged to desegregate his wrestling shows, which then completely sold out with Monroe’s black fans, in some cases over 15,000 at a time, filling the auditorium. Soon, other southern sporting events, recognizing the enormous financial benefits, began to desegregate as well. ---
**Author:** ![fedman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@fedman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/32 "2020-01-11T23:33:25Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#): > > For my fellow nit pickers: > > Fiancé (male), not fiancée (female). > > 1819 was well before the era of Jim Crow laws. the laws about miscegenation were in effect at that time; Jim Crow came about after Reconstruction ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/33 "2020-01-11T23:47:49Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Motivations for exceptions could have been anything from wanting to make more money from more people This is where the [Sears Catalog](https://www.voanews.com/usa/all-about-america/how-sears-catalog-fought-white-supremacists) comes into the picture, allowing black customers to bypass the discriminatory and exploitative treatment they often got at the white-run local store. > [@](#): > > Enter Sears, the department store chain founded by Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck in 1893, which had a catalog that offered black sharecroppers an alternative. Sears let customers buy on credit, which gave African Americans the option to bypass the local country store, where black customers had to wait until the white customers were served. > > “They couldn’t buy the same clothes as white people. They couldn’t buy the same food as white people…This was part of the sort of everyday white supremacy of Jim Crow,” Hyman says. “And so, the Sears catalog allowed them a way to buy clothes that were nicer than were available in that country store, to buy food that the white people ate… It offered them a choice where they didn’t have to feel second-class in their shopping lives.” […] > > Sears, the department store founder, was not motivated by social justice. As a businessman, he was in it for the money. Once Sears realized that African Americans were using the catalog to avoid discrimination at the hands of white supremacists, he took steps to make sure they could continue to shop the catalog. > > Sears set up systems that gave black patrons the option to go directly to the postal carrier, completely bypassing the country store, which in some cases, was also the post office. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/34 "2020-01-12T00:43:52Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > This is where the [Sears Catalog](https://www.voanews.com/usa/all-about-america/how-sears-catalog-fought-white-supremacists) comes into the picture, allowing black customers to bypass the discriminatory and exploitative treatment they often got at the white-run local store. That article seems pretty biased, so I’ll check other sources before I believe it. For example: > [@the article](#): > > Hyman says it’s not a coincidence that the Sears catalog began to decline after the end of the Jim Crow era. Some on the Twitter thread suggested that Amazon shopping can play a similar role for African American customers today as the Sears catalog did more than a century ago. What? Sears declined because of civil rights laws? And again, Whhaaat? Blacks need Amazon because brick and mortar stores discriminate against them in 2020? If so, then why did Sears decline after civil rights laws if blacks still need Amazon in 2020? ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/35 "2020-01-12T00:50:10Z")
Missed the edit window. And this: > [@](#): > > Sears set up systems that gave black patrons the option to go directly to the postal carrier, completely bypassing the country store, which in some cases, was also the post office. What does that even mean? That blacks couldn’t get things delivered by mail because the racist postmaster who owned the country store refused to give them items that they bought through mail to protect the monopoly of his country store, even though he refused to sell to them at the country store? But, we could trust that the postmaster would give the package directly to the carrier instead? The article sounds like a big pile of shit. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/36 "2020-01-12T01:02:14Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > [Sputnik Monroe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_Monroe) managed to desegregate pro wrestling in Memphis by making himself so popular with black fans that the promoters had no choice but to sell them floor seats. This is a great example! Yes, racism results in less business for people. Simple greed can win in such cases. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/37 "2020-01-12T01:28:58Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Jim Crow was a horrible, racist system of law and social practices that hurt millions of people (and racism, of course, still exists, but as a white person I am almost never a target of it in the US and therefore cannot directly experience how bad it still is). I’m curious, however, to what degree Jim Crow was ignored, flouted, opposed, etc., by white people in the South. (I am excluding joining in protests or other explicit political opposition, though I would be curious to know if any Southern newspapers, etc., opposed racial discrimination.) There was the Southern Tenants Farmers Union (STFU, ha!) formed in 1934 was one of the few unions that admitted blacks into their ranks. In Little Rock, the few places that catered to the gay population didn’t mind serving both blacks and whites. However, most blacks and whites did not freely mix in those establishments. ---
**Author:** ![JohnM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@JohnM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnM)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/38 "2020-01-12T01:38:39Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > That article seems pretty biased, so I’ll check other sources before I believe it. Did you look at the source before expressing doubt? The story is from the Voice of America, which is about as unbiased a source as you can get. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/39 "2020-01-12T02:17:57Z")
> [@JohnM](#): > > Did you look at the source before expressing doubt? The story is from the Voice of America, which is about as unbiased a source as you can get. Maybe they didn’t do their research. Do you really think that blacks shop on Amazon in 2020 because of the “No Coloreds Allowed” sign at Barnes and Noble? How does that deal with the post office work? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192/40 "2020-01-12T03:21:54Z")
As commentators on the segregation-era South have frequently noted, individual whites could be what some critics call “paternalistically” kind to blacks even when the system as a whole oppressed them. I’d guess that a lot of whites didn’t consider it their sacred racial duty to make sure the “coloreds” were put down 24/7, and would bend or ignore the rules in private for blacks they were close to. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-ways-if-any-was-jim-crow-ignored-flouted-by-whites-in-the-south/846192.md?page=3)