“By custom rather than by law, wh!tes in the Jim Crow South forbade Black folks from eating vanilla ice cream in public — except on the Fourth of July. The terror and shame of living in the purgatory between the Civil W.ar and civil rights movement was often communicated in ways that reinforced to children what the rules of that life were, and what was in store for them if they broke them, Michael Twitty wrote for The Guardian. He says this denial revealed the deeper psychological consequences of legalized racism in American life. The racism of the time period was not just about dignity and self-esteem — it was embodied and mythologized in physical terms, a denial that was thrust in the face of every Black child.”
Further Reading
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/04/black-people-vanilla-ice-cream-jim-crow-independence-day
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