Jim Crow-era artifacts analyzed by local historian Randy Jaye

Jaye’s 11th book is available on Amazon.

By Guest Author
| 5:30 a.m. May 3, 2022

Propaganda during the Jim Crow era used racist imagery, including "Mammy" caricatures, to degrade, demonize and demoralize Blacks, Jaye said. Courtesy photo

Photo by Alexis Miller

Randy Jaye. Photo by Alexis Miller

Randy Jaye's 11th book

A postcard from the South during the Jim Crow era

Ormond Beach Observer
Your Town

by: Alexis Miller

Contributing Writer

Today, salt and pepper shakers are sometimes made to look like characters from books or TV shows. In the Jim Crow era, some shakers were made to look like happy slaves, an example of racism explored by historian Randy Jaye at an Ormond Beach Historical Society event on April 24, at the Anderson-Price Memorial building.

Florida’s role in Civil Rights era

Florida was the least populated state in the Deep South until the mid-twentieth century, but led the nation in the number of racial terror lynchings per capita. During the 1950s and 1960s, societal discontent with racial segregation led to the modern Civil Rights Movement. A number of important boycotts, protests and sit-ins occurred in Florida including the Tallahassee Bus Boycott in 1956, and Jacksonville’s Ax Handle Saturday where a violent mob attacked peaceful lunch counter protesters in 1960. In 1964, during protests associated with the St. Augustine Movement the manager of the Monson Motor Lodge poured acid in the lodge’s pool because several blacks were in the water. This deplorable incident reached international headline news and had a direct effect on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

— Randy Jaye

Jaye displayed several items that in some ways appeared harmless: wooden signs, hand fans, framed pictures, old toys, and glass figurines. But he said, “The artifacts were used out there to suppress and oppress people, and they actually used some of this stuff to legitimize the violence.”

Jaye’s April 24 presentation covered the years 1877, which marked the end of Reconstruction, to 1968, in the Civil Rights movement.

“Jim Crow laws were a series of state and local statutes that effectively legalized racial segregation,” according to Jaye. “These laws relegated blacks (and other people of color) to second-class citizenship. These people were denied the right to vote and hold public offices and had very limited educational and employment opportunities.”

A member of the OBHS Board of Directors, Jaye has written 11 books, which are available on Amazon, including his most recent: “Jim Crow Era Propaganda, Artifacts, and Upheavals in Florida.”