Who Is Jim Crow And Why Won't He Die

I just finished reading "A Calamity Of Souls" by David Baldacci, an author, whose work I enjoy. I have read a number of his novels but this one was different.

A description I found online stated: "A Calamity of Souls, by David Baldacci, is a historical legal thriller set in 1968 and in small town near Richmond Virginia. The story revolves around Jack Lee, a white lawyer, and Desiree DuBose, a Black lawyer, who team up to defend Jerome Washington, a Black man wrongfully accused of murdering a wealthy white couple. As they navigate a deeply biased legal system reflective of the Jim Crow laws, the novel explores themes of racial injustice, the importance of community support, and overcoming personal biases against the backdrop of the civil rights movement."

The book originally drew my attention not because of the author but because is set in 1968 in a small town near Richmond, Virginia. I lived in a small town near Richmond, Virginia in 1968. The town was Tappahannock. I was 19.

I grew up mostly in the South. My dad was in the Marine Corps so we lived all over, never more than 18 months or 2 years in any one spot. The majority of the time was in North Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Growing up I was not a stranger to the term Jim Crow. I heard it, but never really knew where it came from. I knew it was associated with racial segregation. 

The perception has always been that all the white people in the South are bigots and racists. The white face of hate is ugly. But hate is a learned behavior. You don't come by it naturally. Nobody in my family hated black people, so I never learned to hate black people. Both my parents are from Mississippi. Most people are going to say, if that's the case there is no way you aren't a bigot and a racist. I dated a young lady in college and when I told her both my parents were from Mississippi, she said, "Everybody's from somewhere." She wasn't quick to judge. I like that. Of course, I messed up that relationship because I was young and stupid. We stopped dating. Twenty years later I married her. Love will out.

My family was poor and we moved around a lot. I was always the newbie, the outsider. I was always trying to blend in. All the schools I attended, only had white students, even in California. I was young and didn't think this was unusual. I saw black people but we never lived in a mixed neighborhood. We never had much to do with them. I didn't know why. I didn't really think about it. I was a kid. I thought that was the way the world was supposed to be. The white bullies picked on me because I was the outsider not because of my skin color. I thought this was normal. 

In the early 1950's, we got a new invention called a television. The screen was black and white not in color. It was definitely not HD. Every night we watched Walter Cronkite on CBS. There were only three stations back then, not the thousands we have today. "Uncle Walter" opened up a whole new world for me. He reported the news of the day. He didn't tell you what you should think about it like they do today. He just told you what happened. I liked that because I like to think things out for myself. I trusted him. He had a trustworthy face and demeanor. 

Because of his program, I became aware of the plight of the black people in this country. I saw the Civil Rights Movement as it grew. I watched the battles. I saw the violence. I saw that segregation was never separate but equal, like the majority of the politicians of that day proclaimed. The blacks always got the short end of any stick.  

The violence always occurred on the screen of that television, never in the schools I attended or in the neighborhoods where I lived. So I was disassociated with it. All this violence was in the background of my life. To me this was a problem that the "Great Generation" would solve. They had endured the Great Depression and saved the world in World War Two. They built America into a Superpower.

As kids growing up, we had no fear, not even "The Bomb” scared us. This was back when bomb shelters were all the rage. We were taught to "duck and cover" while we hid under our desks and in the halls at our schools. They told us these actions would protect us from a nuclear blast. 

We experienced the wonders of an American childhood. We played sports, went to class, and learned to drive. We had our first kisses, had our hearts broken and broke a few ourselves. We learned about love, lust, and our bodies in the backseat of a car. We drank our first beers and threw up from drinking our first beers. You know, we had the normal white American upbringing.

I first heard the term Jim Crow on the nightly news, Uncle Walter's show. Who was Jim Crow? How did he relate to these segregation laws? After reading Baldacci's book, I researched it. (What did we do before there was Google... Oh yeah, we went to the library.) 

The term Jim Crow originally referred to a character created by Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice, a white actor and performer in the early 1830's. He was from New York City and his audiences were white. Rice performed in blackface, a practice where white performers painted their faces black to mock and caricature African Americans. His act, called "Jump Jim Crow", involved a song and dance routine that exaggerated and ridiculed African American speech, movement, and appearance. His character was lazy, simple-minded, buffoonish and subhuman.

The character of Jim Crow became widely popular as Rice took his show on the road across what was then the United States and into the coastal South. He was copied by other performers. Blackface by its very nature is offensive. I don't understand how denigrating and ridiculing an entire race is entertaining.  

The term Jim Crow evolved into a derogatory term for African Americans. By the end of the 19th century "Jim Crow" was used to describe laws and regulations that enforced racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern United States. These laws and regulations took away the rights granted to African Americans by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. They mandated separate public facilities, schools, and transportation for Black and White people. Literacy test, poll taxes and residency laws and regulations were used to deny suffrage to African Americans. 

All of this was a part of the "Jim Crow" mindset. Although the term "Jim Crow" was used for the laws in the South, the "Jim Crow" mindset was also in the North and West. In my research, I found that a number of Presidents of the United States encouraged and demanded segregation in the foundations of our government, especially Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt. 

Our founding fathers established a country where "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..." Well, all men except American Indian Men, Black Men and Women. These founding fathers were a small group of white, male, colony then state appointed landowners who also thought their type should be the only ones allowed to vote. Why didn't we have any founding mothers?

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." This is the preamble to our Constitution. The "People" described here did not include American Indians, Black People or Women.

Seventeen of the fifty-five signers of the Constitution were the owners of fourteen hundred slaves, even George Washington. The idea of Black People being inferior to White People is not a new concept. It is a concept that refuses to die. 

Politicians and people in power positions figured out a long time ago the way to get and keep power was to divide people. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Nixon did it. Even today, Trump does it. Pit groups against one another, tell lies long and often, until they become the truth, make your base fearful of the future and they will blindly follow you. This is why Jim Crow will never die. 

Too many people are willing to forget their past. They let injustice exist because it doesn't really affect them. They don't want to become involved. I'm not being judgmental, because I have been guilty of this myself. 

I went through life pursuing the American Dream. I worked hard, long hours. For the most part, I have gotten everything I wanted. I never thought how hard or limited I would have been if I had been black instead of white.

"Calamity Of Souls" and my research has made me think about this a lot. The divisive political climate in this country has made me think about it too. Our government and country was founded by men, men who were human. They were not perfect. They had faults just like all of us. But they had the idea that we could be better. They had the idea that we could have a "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..." I have the hope that we can get that back. I hope we can realize that we have more things that keep us together than things that keep us apart. If you give respect, you get respect. I hope that the people of this country will have more love in their hearts than hate. 

People say I'm a dreamer and they are right because I think in the end love will win. If it doesn't, that will be the real calamity. 

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black." - 

Robert F. Kennedy April 4, 1968   

"Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the others." - Winston Churchill

Great Balls Of Fire!

People have always been fascinated with the cooking of food. Ever since they figured out that fire, besides keeping them warm in that cave, by use of the Maillard reaction, could make that hunk of woolly mammoth taste delicious. Of course, at that time it was the sear and sizzle, Louis Maillard wasn't around yet to name it.  I think it's a sensory thing that builds anticipation. It also could be the hypnotism of the fire. In the restaurant world sizzle and fire sells, especially if it's done at your table. 

People have always like seeing their food prepared and served in front of them. Medieval banquets had presentations of food with servants carving joints of beef and game birds. There were lange portions of meat, sometimes whole animals roasting on rotisseries in the nearby fireplace. The French did things a little different. They had what was called Russian service where everything was brought out on large platters and served onto a plate right in front of you. 

In modern times, upscale restaurants use trollies to bring food to your table. They present and carve prime rib, ducks, chickens. lamb racks, beef wellington and other preparations right at the table. I remember this at Jean Banchet's "Le Francais" back in the 80's. After you were seated and served your wine or cocktail, the maitre d' would assemble all the silver clad trollies and say, "Now let the show begin." And what a show it was. 

Tableside preparation of dishes is not new, like a lot of things in the food world it goes in and out of fashion. There are some spots where it has never gone out. When you think about it, a lot of our food get prepared or served right in front of us. In some Mexican restaurants they make your guacamole in a large molcajete at your table. 

When you go to a Japanese steakhouse, they seat you at a teppanyaki table with the large griddle in the center and then prepare your dinner right in front of you. That is after all the fancy knife tricks and shrimp tail tossing and catching by your chef. In one such place in Hilton Head, South Carolina, our chef managed to catch his tossed knife in the toe of his shoe. He had to be replaced but it was quite a show. People like food as entertainment.

In sushi restaurants they slice your fish and make sushi rolls right in front of you. Dim Sum carts roll through dining rooms of Chinese restaurants to tempt you with their different selections. Some seafood restaurants will bone whole Dover Sole at your table. Steakhouses prepare steak tartare tableside. Just about everyone has had a Caesar Salad prepared tableside. 

And then there is the fire aspect. Baked Alaska or Kasseri Cheese in a saganaki pan is not the same if it doesn't come to your table on fire. We all remember in "A Christmas Carol" the flaming Figgy Pudding. 

When I started my restaurant career in the late 60's and early 70's, tableside service was in its heyday in upscale restaurants. I was taught the preparation and service of a lot of dishes. I worked at four restaurants that did tableside service, the Copper Kettle Restaurant at the Hilton Hotel and Orion's Roof at the New Cavalier Hotel both in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the Golden Pheasant Inn in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and the Inn at Sawmill Farm in West Dover, Vermont. 

We did a little tableside in my first restaurant, the Iron Gate House in Virginia Beach but when we moved to the Greenhouse in Captiva Island, Florida in the early 80's, we evolved into the open kitchen concept. A lot of fine dining had already made the switch. California sort of led the way with Spago, Stars and Chez Panisse. This was the start of the Chef as Superstar and the focus needed to be on them and their kitchens. But that is another story.  

The Golden Pheasant was the restaurant that the waitstaff did the most hands-on cooking tableside. We did Caesar Salad, Steak Diane, Cafe Diablo and Bananas Lady Duncan, start to finish tableside. We also flambeed a Duckling A L'Orange tableside but most of the preparation was done in the kitchen. Most of the tableside items you couldn't do on a busy night. There wasn't time and you need time to do these dishes properly. 

At the Sawmill Farm, we mostly finished things off tableside. We flambeed the Duck and the Steak Au Poivre. We carved the Rack of Lamb and frenched the vegetables onto plates using a spoon and fork. Frenching consists of placing the spoon and fork in one hand and using them like a pair of tongs. Mr. Rodney Williams, the owner, better known as "Bo", was an architect by trade but often worked the dining room at night. He was skilled at carving the Rack of Lamb and a bit of a magician too. One night he was carving a rack and one of the chops landed on the floor, he looked around and then a white napkin went down over it. The next minute, I looked and the chop had disappeared. Then miraculously it reappeared on the plate. Magic! You can't beat it.

All total I have done 14 things tableside. Most of the carts were simple affairs topped with a tablecloth. This way you could top that with a burner if you needed to flame or cook something or a salad bowl to do a Caesar or a carving board if you needed to slice a Rack of Lamb or Chateaubriand. 

            

Some carts specialize in one thing, cheese, pate, dim sum, drinks, desert, carving or appetizers. Some carts are elaborate affairs, with chrome or silver parts.   

   

The carts that seem to attract the most attention are the ones that burst into flames. People love fire. The art of Flambé is where alcohol is added to a hot pan to create a burst of flames. Flambé is the French word for flamed. Part of that art is to not set yourself or your customers on fire as you create that burst of flames in the pan.  

It's important to remember that you are holding a bomb in your hand. A bottle of 151 proof rum or 80 proof cognac is highly flammable and therefore very dangerous. It's sad to realize that people have been badly burned and even killed for the sake of flaming food. 

I was taught to always add the alcohol at the end of the cooking when the sauce is at its thickest. Always take the pan off the heat source, add the alcohol, gripping the bottle by the neck and using your thumb as a stopper over the bottle opening. Then replace the pan over the heat and slightly tilt the pan to the burner. The pan will burst into flame and the bottle of alcohol will be a good distance away from that.   

A lot of American restaurants employ Flambé as a sales tool in their dining rooms. Perhaps no one more than Ernie Byfield in the 30's and 40's at the world famous "Pump Room" at the Ambassador East in Chicago. At his "Booth One", he entertained stars and celebrities from all over with flaming swords of food and flaming tableside preparations. Concerning food and flame his comment was: "The people seem to like it and it doesn't harm the food much." 

Most people think the alcohol is all burned off when a dish is flambéed. This is not true, only about 25% is burned off, so you will still taste the liquor which is why it's added. People pay a lot of money to drink Grand Marnier, Cognac and Rum so they obviously like the taste. 

So what is the effect of the flame on the taste of the food. Most restaurant people agree that the flame doesn't change the flavor of the food. It's done for the dramatic visual effect it creates. It sells the sizzle. In my personal history, if you sell one flambéed duck, you end up selling 10. You can charge a lot more for a flambéed duck than for one prepared solely in the kitchen. People willingly pay for the show. And that it true for anything served tableside. Great Balls Of Fire!  Great Balls Of Cash!