Echoing what Greg Kimball and Doug Deal have already said, the "face"  
that interviewees put on to the interviewers was a common response in  
the face of the blatant Jim Crow attitudes of the day. This was  
sometimes necessary literally for survival as has been documented.

As a college student working my way through, I worked on a gravel  
dredge in the summers of 1969-1970. The dredge captain and first mate  
were white, the deck captain and crew were African-American. The  
office was air-conditioned. Where the deck captain and crew hung out  
was a large storage room with opposed doors that were kept open for  
any breeze and large bags of rags were kept for clean-up purposes  
along with personal lockers, etc.

As the oiler on the crane, one of my jobs was to keep the crane  
supplied and I would routinely go to the storage room to get items.  
Normally the dredge was very noisy but on one day, it was "down" and  
the crew was in the back. As I walked along I could hear a political  
discourse about Nixon, comparisons of this "platform" versus another,  
etc. In short, your typical working guy jawbone session about  
politics. The second I walked into view, without losing a beat, the  
entire conversation jumpshifted to what white guys called "shuck and  
jive" talk about how many women were screwed the previous evening,  
how much booze was consumed, the size of various male members, etc.  
in short, the typical buffoonery that white folks accepted from black  
folks as normal. I got my supplies, walked out, and as I turned the  
corner, I stopped, turned around and told one of the guys that I  
agreed with his position on one of the political statements he'd made  
and to another that I didn't and this is why. Typical brash college  
kid. They all burst out laughing and after that whenever I walked  
into the storage area, conversation kept going, after an initial  
pause to see who it was. With any of the other white guys, it went to  
shuck and jive and when I was along, I always got a slight grin to  
show they understood.

It was later that I took courses that explicated the defense and  
survival mechanisms that black folks put up to shield themselves from  
the nastier aspects of Jim Crow. It was a very eye opening course, to  
say the least, and included the scenario in the storage room. The far  
more benign aspect of that is the proverbial ditzy blonde using the  
"poor silly me" to get out of the traffic ticket. Seems like we might  
all do variants of that in a range of degrees.

Lyle Browning


On Mar 2, 2007, at 9:34 AM, Basil Forest wrote:

> What's the basis for the belief that the WPA former slave  
> interviewees were
> dishonest in their views on slavery over fear of the "white man"?   
> Is this
> the PC way to dismiss the evidence to the contrary on the treatment  
> of some
> slaves by their owners and the apparent benevolent feelings of the  
> slaves toward
> their previous lifestyle post-war and freedom?
>
>
> <BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now  
> offers free
> email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at
> http://www.aol.com.
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the  
> instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html