“The Emblem of North American Fraternity”: Opossums and Jim Crow Politics

Abstract

Stephanie N. Bryan examines the cultural meanings behind opossum hunting and consumption in the US during Jim Crow apartheid—from freed people of African descent for whom these activities represented ecologically rooted foraging skills, economic independence, and household sufficiency; to whites in Georgia and other southern states who turned the opossum into a symbol of racial inferiority as they confronted the reality of Black people transitioning from human property to citizens; and to white male Democrats who cultivated the opossum supper as a theatre for regaining their political stronghold in the wake of Reconstruction and the rise of populism.

Keywords

• African American History
• Foodways
• Race Relations
• Politics and Government
• Long Read