Birmingham
29 July 2017
opening reception on Sunday,
23 April, 6-8 pm
Image:
AERIAL OVERVIEW, LOOKING WEST, WITH BEE HIVE COKE OVENS IN FORESTED OVERGROWTH (BOTTOM LEFT), COKE TAILINGS PILE (BOTTOM RIGHT THROUGH CENTER TOP LEFT), FORMER BIRMINGHAM SOUTHERN RAILWAY SHOPS BUILDING (TOP RIGHT). CONVICT CEMETERY IS JUST WEST OF THE TAILINGS PILE (TOP LEFT IN THIS PHOTOGRAPH). - Pratt Coal & Coke Company, Pratt Mines, Convict Cemetery, Bounded by First Street, Avenue G, Third Place & Birmingham Southern Railroad, Birmingham, Jefferson County, AL
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Historic American Engineering Record, 1993 (HAER ALA,37-BIRM,38C-1).
Jim Crow, 2017
Jim Crow rail bender
91.4 x 20 x 44 cm
Rental
Jim Crow is a racial slur, derived from the name of the minstrel character played by Thomas D. Rice in the 1830s. A Jim Crow is also a type of manual railroad rail bender. It has been referred to by this name in publications from 1870 to the present. The lease of ex-slave prisoners to private industry immediately following the Civil War is known as the convict lease system. Many of the first convict lease contracts were signed by railroad companies. Plessy v. Ferguson contested an 1890 Louisiana law segregating black railroad passengers. The Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional. This created a precedent for laws mandating racial segregation, later to be known as Jim Crow laws.