Pimp: The Story of My Life

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes descriptions of racism, physical abuse, sexual content, and sexual violence.

After the abolition of enslavement in the United States in 1865, Black people remained a target of both systemic and social oppression, and 60 years later, Black people were still seen and treated as lesser. They experienced racist attacks and were often targeted by police and white citizens. Although the northern United States, unlike the southern states, did not have Jim Crow laws that required Black people to be segregated from white people, the dominant policies and social attitudes nonetheless remained very much in favor of white people. Black people were still segregated from white people in prisons and often became targets of abuse while incarcerated. 

The Ku Klux Klan also grew rapidly during the 1920s, signaling a rise of anti-Black racism and violence around the country. Black people also experienced greater economic devastation than their white counterparts during the Great Depression in the1930s, as they were often the first to be fired or laid off, and many charities refused outright to help Black people during this time period. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, much of the support for his campaign came from the Black community, as Black people needed and wanted a better standard of living. During World War II, approximately 1.5 million African Americans moved from the South to the North to find work and achieve a less oppressive life. The Roosevelt administration hired several Black leaders to build metaphorical bridges between the government and the Black community, setting the stage for the civil rights movement. Public housing was also made available for Black families, although this would soon become its own form of segregation. The civil rights movement itself fueled massive shifts in the rights of Black people, as well as the end of Jim Crow laws in the South. Because Slim worked as a pimp throughout these tumultuous times, the social realities created by racism, war, and the process of rebuilding the post-war world all contribute, directly or indirectly, to the challenges and injustices that Slim faced as a younger man.