Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South

FAIN: RO-22364-92

Duke University (Durham, NC 27705-4677)
William H. Chafe (Project Director: December 1994 to December 1997)

Funding details:
Original grant (1992) $180,000.00
Supplement (1993) $10,000.00
Supplement (1994) $50,000.00
Supplement (1995) $100,000.00

To support the transcription and preservation of taped oral interviews, obtained over three years of work in a seven-state region, providing documentary evidence on the "Jim Crow" period in the American South.

Associated Products

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South (Web Resource)
Title: Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
Author: William Chafe
Abstract: The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the primary purpose of this documentary project was to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s. Over the span of three summers, teams of researchers conducted oral history interviews with more than one thousand elderly black southerners who remembered that period of legal segregation. The audio-cassette tapes and selected transcripts of the 1,260 interviews in this collection capture the vivid personalities, poignant personal stories, and behind-the-scenes decision-making that bring to life the African American experience in the South during the late-19th to mid-20th century. It is the largest single collection of Jim Crow oral histories in the world, housed in the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. 410 of the 1,260 interviews have been digitized and made available on this site totaling about 725 hours of recorded audio. 165 of the interviews include transcripts comprising more than 15,000 pages of text. 310 of the interviews in the digital collection were conducted with North Carolina residents. The Charlotte and Enfield regions of North Carolina are especially represented in the collection; there are also many recordings from the Durham, James City, New Bern and Wilmington regions. The North Carolina recordings were all digitized as part of the Triangle Research Libraries Network’s project “Content, Context and Capacity: A Collaborative Large-Scale Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina.” Other collections from that project are also accessible as Duke digital collections.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/behindtheveil/
Primary URL Description: Collection URL

Remembering Jim Crow (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Remembering Jim Crow
Writer: sasha Aslanian
Writer: Stephen Smith
Writer: Kate Ellis
Director: American Radio Works
Producer: American Public Media
Abstract: For much of the 20th Century, African Americans in the South were barred from the voting booth, sent to the back of the bus, and walled off from many of the rights they deserved as American citizens. Until well into the 1960s, segregation was legal. The system was called Jim Crow. In this documentary, Americans—black and white—remember life in the Jim Crow times.
Date: 11/01/2001
Primary URL: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/
Primary URL Description: American Radio Works URL for the program
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Web

Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (Book)
Title: Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South
Editor: Nicole Waligora-Davis
Editor: William H. Chafe, Senior Editor
Editor: Raymond Gavins, Senior Editor
Editor: Robert Korstad, Senior Editor
Editor: Paul Ortiz, Associate Editor
Editor: Robert Parrish, Associate Editor
Editor: Jennifer Ritterhouse, Associate Editor
Editor: Keisha Roberts, Associate Editor
Abstract: Praised as “viscerally powerful” (Publishers Weekly), this work of oral history, based on interviews collected by the Behind the Veil Project at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, captures the experience of the Jim Crow years—memories of individual, family, and community triumphs and tragedies. Men and women from all walks of life tell how their day-to-day lives were subjected to racial oppression. At the same time, Remembering Jim Crow is a testament to how black Southerners fought back against the system, raising children, building churches and schools, running businesses, and struggling for respect in a society that denied them the most basic rights. The result is a story of individual and community survival and an important part of the American past.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/remembering-jim-crow-african-americans-tell-about-life-in-the-segregated-south/oclc/191658886&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://thenewpress.com/books/remembering-jim-crow
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book with MP3 CD-ROM
Publisher: The New Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9781595583345

Prizes

Lillian Smith Book Award
Date: 12/31/2002
Organization: Southern Regional Council
Abstract: Writer Lillian Smith refused to separate the seemingly conflicting roles of artist and activist. Although she rarely identified herself with any organization, Smith was deeply respected and sought after by those who actively worked for justice in the South. She played a major role in supporting, advising, and criticizing the work of such national and regional organizations as the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Congress of Racial Equality, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Southern Regional Council. The Lillian Smith Book Awards honors those authors who, through their writing, carry on Smith's legacy of elucidating the condition of racial and social inequity and proposing a vision of justice and human understanding.

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