My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did.

We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.

By the turn of the twentieth century, every state in the South had laws on the books that disenfranchised blacks and discriminated against them in virtually ever sphere of life, lending sanction to a racial ostracism that extended to schools, churches, housing, jobs, restrooms, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, orphanages, prisons, funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries. Politicians competed with each other by proposing and passing every more stringent, oppressive, and downright ridiculous legislation (such as laws specifically prohibiting blacks and whites from playing chess together.)

Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13.

I am prepared to oppose a Jim Crow army till I rot in jail.

One of the points in which I was especially interested was the Jim Crow regulations, that is, the system of separation of the races in street cars and railroad trains.