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Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow. By Elizabeth Abel. (Berkeley and other cities: University of California Press, c. 2010. Pp. xx, 391. Paper, $25.95, ISBN 978-0-520-26183-9; cloth, $60.00, ISBN 978-0-520-26117-4.)
Segregation signs typically remind us of a dark period in American history. Yet Elizabeth Abel's Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow significantly iUuminates their existence and social impact. Abel wanted to create a visual "archive" of segregation signs in their original sociocultural context to prevent the initial meaning of these artifacts from "disappearing from cultural memory" (p. xx). As a themed collection of historical photographs, Abel's work is outstanding and similar in nature to James Allen and his colleagues' Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, N.Mex., 2000), which documents another highly visible and shameful aspect of Jim Crow. However, Abel also wrote the book to convince readers of the connection between segregation signs...