[safisher]

I love southern history, especially this period. Comments:

The 'Shiner needs Driving and mechanical skills for auto repair: see Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR.

In this period the Klan is very active. It is a shadow government in many parts of the South -- most judges, police chiefs, and even preachers and newspapermen are in the Klan or at least sympathetic to its "moral" arguments in regards to segregation. Not sure how City Stats handles that. The Klan was as likely to threaten "dangerous" whites as blacks, and that shouldn't be forgotten. Jews, Catholics, and "foreigners" (Italians, Greeks, etc., essentially all non-WASPs) are generally suspect. Add to this unmarried women and anyone with too little money, or too much. "Crime" in the south is largely still a product of male dominance violence and social pressure during this period was immense. Step lightly in the south, as its hand rests lightly on pistol, knife, and shotgun.

Manners matter, though. As one would suspect, with such stark social classes, manners are important. Flouting social convention was considered dangerous, provocative, and often started fist fights, at least. People were killed in the Prohibition south for the slightest social insults. Blacks were expected to never look a white in the face, to say "yes sir" and never be near a white woman, or even look at one. Black men crossed the street rather than pass a white woman on the sidewalk. I know of one lynching which occurred because a black teenage boy took his nickel -- which he had dropped -- from a white toddler who picked it up. She cried, and the people lynched him immediately. It sounds insane, but that system -- if not that level of anger -- was still in place in the 1930s.

That said, the south was (paradoxically) profoundly hospitable, if not genteel. As poor as the region was, most folks would help one another if they could, especially if the family name was respected. (And this went for whites helping blacks, too.) You could, in those days, hitchhike anywhere safely, and sleep in barns or on back porches without raising much suspicion -- if you were the right type (middle class white male, or an "appropriately socially submissive" black). Loans and business deals were sealed by handshakes, and even lower class white women had a "domestic" or two in the house a couple of days a week to help with washing, etc.

It's also worth pointing out that segregation meant some parts of town were black and some were white and BOTH races generally did not cross those lines. Whites who ventured into black neighborhoods were either on official business (police, ministers, doctors, etc.) or considered "up to no good" and the general population was nor surprised if a white man was killed in a black neighborhood. This reinforced social stereotypes of blacks, but also "evened the score" if a white Klansmen was caught on the wrong side of town. See "Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition" by Adam Gussow