The writer, scholar and activist, W.E.B. Du Bois described blacks as living "behind the veil" during Jim Crow. The metaphor described a vibrant social and political system developed by African Americans to bear the hardships of segregation and prejudice, behind which they remained largely invisible — and thereby unthreatening — to whites. Exclusion from white society forced blacks to build their own social institutions — churches, schools, social clubs — which were vital to fighting segregation, improving black economic conditions and generally "uplifting" the race.
Black Neighborhoods