The Rural Face of White Supremacy Beyond Jim Crow

The surprising realities of rural race relations during a time of segregation

Mark Schultz entered rural Hancock county expecting to confirm the standard expectations about race relations in the South, an area characterized by lynchings, segregation, and black poverty. What he found undermined and confounded his sweeping assumptions about the ostensibly "solid" South.

The Rural Face of White Supremacy is a detailed study of the daily experiences of ordinary people in rural Hancock County, Georgia. Drawing on his own interviews with over two hundred black and white residents, Schultz depicts the rhythms of work, social interaction, violence, power, and paternalism in a setting much different from the more widely studied postbellum urban South.

By acting on the basis of personal rather than institutional relationships, Schultz argues, Hancock County residents experienced more fluid interactions and more freedom than their urban counterparts had. This freedom created a space for interracial relationships that included mixed housing, midwifery, church services, meals, and even common-law marriages.

These relationships, both intimate and hierarchical, and marked by personal, sexual, and economic violence, were far more complex than the conveniently efficient and modern ideal of Jim Crow.