Black and White in the Southern States

Reprinted here for the first time since its publication in 1915, Black and White in the Southern States by Maurice S. Evans, a British immigrant to South Africa in 1875 and a founder of the Union of South Africa in 1910, is one of the earliest studies in comparative race relations and the first to connect the experience of the American South experience to that of South Africa. Evans, a perceptive observer and a surprising critic of American race relations, was an objective chronicler of the South during the segregation era. This work is a synthesis of the observations Evans made as he traveled the southern United States in 1914 to examine race relations. During this trip he investigated southern metropolitan life, industrial relations and the workplace, and social and cultural connections. Evans's study presents a revealing assessment of racial attitudes and ideologies in the Jim Crow era. In his introduction to this edition George M. Fredrickson, the preeminent scholar who defined the field of comparative racial ideologies, analyzes the underlying racist character of Evans's work. Fredrickson places Evans's work in its full intellectual social context.