Jim Crow South
NYTが米国の詩人 マヤアンジェロの死去を伝えていました。I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)（『歌え、翔べない鳥たちよ』人文書院）は英語教師なら必読の自伝でしょう。
Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86
Maya Angelou, the memoirist and poet whose landmark book of 1969, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” — which describes in lyrical, unsparing prose the author’s girlhood in the Jim Crow South — was among the first autobiographies by a 20th-century black woman to reach a wide general readership, died on Wednesday in her home. She was 86 and lived in Winston-Salem, N.C.
As well known as she was for her memoirs, which eventually filled six volumes, Ms. Angelou (pronounced AHN-zhe-lo) very likely received her widest exposure on a chilly January day in 1993, when she delivered the inaugural poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” at the swearing-in of Bill Clinton, the nation’s 42nd president, who, like Ms. Angelou, had grown up poor in rural Arkansas.
Jim Crow Southはアメリカを学ぶ上でのキーサードのひとつ。これは白人が黒人に扮して歌うコメディ（Minstrel Show）で大ヒットしたJump Jim Crowに由来し，「黒人隔離」（seregration）を意味し，隔離が行われていた南部そのもの，またはその法律を意味します。
そんな時代に育った彼女のことばはアメリカで何が行われていたのかを独特の言い回しで表しています。（UG）
The Jim Crow South
The Jim Crow Laws, which took their name from an old minstrel song, were passed in the American south to oppress the black population. The laws varied from state to state, but in general they supported segregation of the races and created obstacles to keep blacks from voting. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the doctrine of "separate but equal" in the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
