Basing their work on the lived experiences of African Americans, Thompson-Miller, Feagin, and Picca introduce readers to a compelling and emotional account of the realities and psychological outcomes for African Americans during the Jim Crow era. Positioned within the frame of systemic racism—'institutionalized structures of white-created racial oppression'—the authors address the important issues of voicing the experienced realities and coping strategies by African Americans during Jim Crow segregation; the long-term psychological, physical, and economic consequences for the survivors; and the intergenerational impact of these experiences. Using the concept of 'segregation stress syndrome' to explain the collective psychological and physical outcomes of Jim Crow segregation, the authors give voice to the complexities of everyday life, from discrimination in travel, stores, and various other public spaces to rapes and murders of loved ones. Emotionally charged and intellectually stimulating, this book is must reading for anyone interested in racial relations. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Choice Reviews

Drawing from the lived experience of African American elders refracted through the concept of the 'segregation stress syndrome,' the authors provide a rich, well-documented, and convincing examination of the 'extraordinary, deep-lying, painful, and horrific' cumulative and intergenerational consequences of the Jim Crow era notwithstanding African American resistance and resilience to racial oppression. Their investigation moves beyond a mere examination of macro-aggressions that have perpetuated racial inequality in terms of occupation, income, wealth, and other social indicators. They also lay bare mico- and meso-level ones that have had an equally deleterious impact on the physical and mental health of African Americans. This masterful book should put to rest any fanciful notions that the United States is a colorblind or post-racial society despite the considerable progress the nation has made in addressing and eliminating racial inequality since the end of legalized segregation.

G. Reginald Daniel, University of California, Santa Barbara

These hidden stories of survivors of White terror situate the past at the core of the present, where accumulated privileging and dehumanization has kept the segregation stress syndrome alive across generations. Jim Crow’s Legacy convinces that collective trauma requires healing of society as whole—an invaluable global lesson.

Philomena Essed, Antioch University