In the Land of Jim Crow

Sprigle, Ray; Halsey, Margaret [Foreword]

Published by Simon and Schuster, New York, 1949

About this Item

First edition. vii, 215, [1, note about author] pp. Original scarlet cloth with black lettering, black topstain. Near Fine with light shelf wear, tiny tear in inner hinge at front, in About Very Good dust jacket with chipping along edges, closed tear in top of back panel. Rare in jacket. Over a decade before John Howard Griffin dyed his skin to chronicle Southern racism in Black Like Me, Pulitzer-winning journalist Ray Sprigle disguised himself as an African-American and exposed the evils of segregation and racism in a 21-part nationally-syndicated series of stories "I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days," collected for the first time in this book. He did so with the backing of the NAACP. As a 2011 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette piece by Bill Steigerwald recalled Sprigle: "Though he was a lifelong friend of the underdog, Sprigle was no softhearted liberal. He was no moralist, no precocious civil rights crusader, no longtime champion of the cause of the Negro, North or South. He was a staunch conservative Republican who hated FDR and the New Deal. All he had wanted his Southern investigation to do, he said later, was to see 'that justice was done to a group that is grossly oppressed.'" Sprigle's story was also chronicled in the 2017 book by Steigerwald, 30 Days a Black Man. Seller Inventory # 140938753

Bibliographic Details

Title: In the Land of Jim Crow

Publisher: Simon and Schuster, New York

Publication Date: 1949

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: About Very Good

Edition: First Edition.