Meself. If you think my comment was too sweeping, perhaps you can explain the mob lynchings, the segregated bars, schools, eating houses, water fountains, buses etc. Perhaps you can explain the fact that the most respectable Negro in town was universally exppected to step off the pavement for the biggest bum in town, provided that the bum in question was white.

Perhaps you can explain a statement by Blind Gary Davis, who said his biggest fear when he was out walking anywhere was that he would accidentally bump into a white woman and be lynched.

Again, there's a story in John Dollard, about how a Negro with a cast in one eye was nearly lynched by a white mob, because a white woman accused him of winking at her.

True, not all Southern White people indulged in violence towards Blacks, but you wouldn't have met many who didn't buy into the idea that Black people had to be kept firmly on the underside of the racial divide.

Michael Morris. "Most whites were not employers and were themselves small farmers, often tenant farmers or sharecroppers, or wage earners in some form or another."

Yes. And white wage earners and sharecroppers felt threatened for another reason. White employers often preferred Black labour because Black people would work for less, and were more easily controlled.

If you want to get a feeling of what life was like for Southern Black people, I can thoroughly recommend the first volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography; I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.