In the first chapter of The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC, author Cleveland Sellers’ described his small hometown, Denmark, South Carolina, as he saw it growing up in the 1940s and 50s. He discussed the relationship between the black and white communities of Denmark, as well as his family and his parents’ roles in the black community. Sellers’ examination of Denmark was focused on the segregation of the town, which he described as “Pavlovian.” The term, “Pavlovian,” refers to Ivan Pavlov’s work in classical conditioning. Classical conditioning refers to automatic, involuntary responses to stimuli. In the case of Denmark, Sellers uses the term “Pavlovian,” to describe the town because everyone acted how they were taught to, without questioning the power imbalance and segregation that they were living through. Sellers’ writes, “The older people in the community, those who knew what segregation and Jim Crow were all about, taught us what we were supposed to think and how we were supposed to act. They did not teach us…show more content… Another common presumption is that the relationships between whites and blacks always very hostile and often violent in the South. We now know from Sellers’ account of Denmark that this wasn’t always necessarily true. As for Denmark, and most likely other southern towns, blacks and whites rarely came into contact with each other, and when they did, it was generally civil. While Sellers’ report of the environment and state of Denmark, South Carolina does partially coincide with our broader knowledge of Jim Crow South, in many cases, our perspectives on this situation were often
