Terms of use

01Agreeing to these terms

By using this site, and in particular by sending a question in the Reading Room, you agree to these terms and to the privacy notice. If you do not agree to them, please read the book instead and do not use the Reading Room.

These terms are between you and the publisher of this site (“we”, “us”), identified in section 15.

02What this site is

It is a companion to the book Just the Way It Was: White Southerners Remember Jim Crow by Walter P. (Andy) Anderson, Jr. It presents the book, its eight narrators and the method behind it, and it offers the Reading Room, where a visitor may put a question to one narrator’s chapter and receive an answer generated by artificial intelligence from that chapter.

Nothing is sold on this site. Where the site links to a retailer, your purchase is with that retailer on their terms, not with us.

03Who may use it

The site is intended for adults. Its subject is racial segregation and it reproduces the language of the period, including racial slurs. You must be 18 or older to use the Reading Room, and you must be at least 13 to use the site at all. We do not verify age, and we knowingly collect nothing from anyone under 13.

04How you may use it

Read it, quote it with attribution, link to it, and ask the Reading Room whatever you honestly want to ask. Please do not:

• use automated means to send questions, or attempt to defeat the proof of work, rate limits or spending ceiling that keep the room open to readers;
• attempt to extract the chapters wholesale, or use the room to reconstruct the book rather than to read it;
• attempt to make a narrator say something the chapter does not support, in order to publish it as though the narrator had said it;
• present an answer from the Reading Room as a statement of the real person, or as an endorsement by them, their family, the author or the book;
• use the site or its answers to harass, defame or misrepresent any person, living or dead;
• copy the site’s text, design or code for another site;
• interfere with the site’s operation, probe its security, or use it in any way that breaks the law.

05The Reading Room and its answers

How the answers are kept inside the book, what the citation gate guarantees, and where it can still be wrong, are all described in how the Reading Room works, which forms part of these terms. In short: an answer is drawn from one narrator’s chapter and nothing else; quoted passages are extracted from the printed text; an answer that cannot point to a passage is not shown. None of that makes an answer certainly correct, and you should not treat it as a primary historical source. Cite the book.

We may change, limit or withdraw the Reading Room, or any narrator in it, at any time, including at the request of a narrator or a narrator’s family.

06No advice, no professional relationship

Nothing on this site is legal, medical, psychological, financial, or other professional advice, and using it creates no professional relationship with anyone. The Reading Room is not a counselling, therapy or crisis service and is not supervised by a clinician. If you are in crisis, the resources are here, and in the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour.

07No warranty

The site and the Reading Room are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy or availability. We do not warrant that answers will be accurate, complete, current or free of error, that the site will be uninterrupted, or that any defect will be corrected. Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, in which case the exclusions above apply to the fullest extent the law allows.

08Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill or reputation, arising out of your use of this site or of anything the Reading Room says, whether the claim is in contract, tort, statute or otherwise, and whether or not we were advised that such damages were possible.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability for all claims relating to the site is limited to one hundred United States dollars (US$100). This site is offered without charge, and that figure reflects it. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, in which case this section applies to the fullest extent the law allows, and nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

09Indemnity

If your use of this site in breach of section 4 causes a claim to be made against us, you agree to indemnify us for the reasonable costs of dealing with it. This does not apply to a claim arising from our own material or our own conduct.

10Intellectual property

The book, the eight chapters and the text of this site are copyright © 2026 Walter P. Anderson, Jr., except where stated otherwise. The narrators wrote their chapters as co-authors of the book. Passages quoted by the Reading Room remain part of the book and are shown here for reading, not for reuse.

You may quote short passages with attribution to the book, in the ordinary way. You may not reproduce a chapter, or a substantial part of one, whether by copying this site or by assembling it out of Reading Room answers. Copyright, permissions, photographs and takedown requests are dealt with on the copyright and permissions page.

11Links to other places

Where the site links to a bookseller or any other site, we do not control that site and are not responsible for it. Its terms and its privacy practices are its own.

12Availability, and ending access

The Reading Room runs under a daily budget and a set of rate limits, and closes for the day when either is reached. It may be unavailable at any time, for any reason or none. We may restrict or end access for anyone who uses the site in breach of section 4.

13Disputes, governing law and venue

Talk to us first. Most problems are a mistake or a bug. Please write to the address in section 15 and give us 30 days to put it right before starting anything formal. Nearly everything we have been asked to fix, we have fixed.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any claim that is not resolved informally shall be brought in the state or federal courts located in Charlottesville or Albemarle County, Virginia, and you and we consent to the jurisdiction of those courts. Nothing here prevents either of us from bringing a claim in small claims court, or prevents you from exercising any right your own state’s consumer law gives you and does not allow to be waived.

14Changes and general terms

We may change these terms. The current version is always on this page with its date at the top, and a material change will be noted in the Reading Room before you next use it. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stands. Our not enforcing a provision on one occasion does not waive it. These terms, with the privacy notice and the Reading Room page, are the whole agreement between us about this site.

15Contact

TODO: operator legal name and postal address
peggyannanderson1@gmail.com