Do You Really Want To Go Back To This?
We can fondly remember a simpler past for Black folks, but not all of it was easy living.

Somehow I keep coming across people, primarily younger than me, who insist that integration was the worst thing that ever happened to Black people. They say that prior to desegregation, the communities were more in sync, families were better off, and life was generally better.
Now, it’s perfectly natural for people to wax nostalgic about days of antiquity when people lived more quaint lives and there seemed to be less drama. But in this case, I hear conversations about the Black community being more organized, people being happier, better behaved children, and men and women walking around with more dignified attitudes.
It’s as if we were living in some pre-1960s Wakanda and the Black Panther was Nat King Cole.
People seem to be pretty passionate about this, and the most recent example I can think of is Florida Rep. Byron Donalds who appeared at an event in Philadelphia in which he said the Black family structure was harmed by policies implemented by Democrats. He noted that while Black people lived under Jim Crow, an oppressive social narrative adopted by all types of institutions, Black families were somehow better off.
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,” Donalds said.
Now, although I’m a proponent myself of the Huxtable-esque mom, dad, kids family structure, since I was raised in it, I also realize there are many different types of families that exist and have no choice but to do the best they can, whether it’s the nuclear family, single mom, single dad, sibling-led, grandparents-led, or foster. So I don’t see why Donalds would have discounted every other type of family as if they were lesser for existing.
But that’s just one of the pro-segregation arguments I’ve heard. Others say that Black businesses thrived because Black people would patronize them and not spend nearly as much money outside of the community.
Show Me The Numbers
People make these arguments, but what I don’t see are any metrics which show that during the segregation era (roughly 1910-1964) Black people were financially better off, had better health outcomes, had more educational opportunities, or owned and operated more businesses. I do see evidence that the marriage rate was higher, but it was higher during the same period for all demographics. I also see evidence that more Black children were being raised in two parent households, but again, that was a societal norm, not exclusive to the African American community.
Further, most of my relatives who have now passed on were born in the south during the Jim Crow era. Although many were nostalgic about their childhoods, I don’t remember a single one of them being happy about going to segregated schools, having to drink from “colored” water fountains, go to “colored” bathrooms, being required to leave certain areas by sundown, or being legally told where they could not live.
In fact, many of these relatives stood valiantly against these very things, not because they felt the “white man’s grass was greener,” but because they hated that Black people could be denied anything white people were able to take for granted.
So what was supposed to be so great about the days of “separate but equal?”
Well, I think the clue is in my older relatives remembering so fondly their southern childhoods in Georgia. How the air was so clean, how they slept during summer nights on porches, or with the doors to their homes unlocked. A sense of security existed in their communities that they did not enjoy when they went into the wider world, and though poor, they had everything they needed.
This is because segregation isolated Black people to the point where they had no choice but to be a more cohesive community. There were few resources outside of their communities they had access to. No safety nets, so they had to create their own. Retail businesses stayed solvent because their Black customers could not shop in stores that only allowed white shoppers, thus creating a Black dollar that circulated longer in the Black community.
When towns determined that Black people who were not domestics had to leave by a certain time, that left few places other than our own communities to be in, thus we were mainly around our families and friends. Recreational activities like swimming, gymnasiums, even parks, discriminated against Black presence, so we had to go only to those that would allow us. Coercion was the reason for the cohesiveness, not an arbitrarily better life set up for us by segregation.
The intention of segregation was not to benefit Black folks, but to subjugate us. To show us that we were less than human and undeserving of full citizenship in a nation that we had built and fought for. From Plessy v. Ferguson to the lunch counters in Greensboro, N.C., there has not been a single socioeconomic benefit to Black people. What benefited us was our reaction to it.
The best example of this was the oft-cited Greenwood District in Tulsa, Okla., which in 1921 suffered the worst incident of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. But prior to that it was a thriving community of progressive economics and wealth for its residents. What is rarely talked about is that after the massacre, the residents rebuilt the district better than before with no help from any government entity or bank.
What decimated it a second time was Urban Renewal, the postwar federal government program of putting highways through functioning Black communities to more efficiently shepard whites to the suburbs. But prior to that, “Black Wall Street,” as they call it, showed that we were willing to use whatever resources we had and roll up our sleeves in spite of segregation.
We made a way out of no way, something people in America of all stripes have been doing for a very long time.
We Have Choices
The argument that we were better off segregated in my experience tends to come from people who wouldn’t remember segregation and honestly, have lived within the privilege of 21st century lives. They might see a George Floyd murder on social media, or hear about violent crime among Black people on the news, but can easily turn off their phones or televisions. They only know about Jim Crow because of documentary footage shot decades before they were born.
Let’s face it, life was harder back then. Our ancestors had to be made of tough material to withstand the hardships and indignities they withstood. There were no cellphones, social media, or GPS. You had to have a keen understanding of the world around you when it came to race in order to avoid serious harm to yourself or your family. There’s a reason my grandmother used to say “I need to laugh to keep from crying.” I cannot understand why anyone would advocate living like that.
So how do we get Black people to show some unity if there’s no segregation?
It occurs to me that it is possible to spend money with Black businesses, seek education and better health outcomes, and organize and protect our communities without legalized discrimination against us. We don’t need to be told we’re less than human in order to create the kinds of communities we want, we just have to choose to do it – just like in Tulsa.
I mean, if you want to give your money to people in your own community, there’s nothing stopping you from going to the Black beauty supply or nail tech. If there’s a Black-owned grocery in your neighborhood, why not patronize it? Looking for Black clothing or shoe retailers? Google is free.
In fact because we do have cellphones, social media, and GPS these days, we should be patronizing Black businesses far, far more than they ever did during segregation because we have so much more access. Technology also makes better education accessible for children who are in areas where they are still segregated by geography.
My Eyes Are Still Open
Now, none of this is to entertain a naive belief that since the mid-1960s everything’s been great to Black folks. On the contrary. We have just as many challenges and problems as people did 70 years ago, but our challenges and problems are different.
There were people blatantly barring us from voting in the south, now politicians are trying to circumvent the law to disrupt our voting power. We were discriminated against when we tried to move to certain areas, now we face a crisis in affordable housing. We couldn’t go to certain schools because we were Black, now we are sending our kids to schools that don’t have the resources to educate them.
But we also shouldn’t walk around believing that we’re in the same place as we were in the 1920s either. Believe me, I’d rather be an educated Black man in 2024 New York than a Black man kept from schooling in 1924 Mississippi.
I’m a strong believer in learning from the past, planning for the future, but living in the present moment. Asking for what we had in the past means asking for the good and the bad as well. While we have good memories of things the way they were, I have no desire to also accept the bad. The scars are too deep and painful.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
-- James Weldon Johnson, 1900.
Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.