I was taught in elementary school that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery (the Southern states wanted to keep it, the Northern states wanted to do away with it), the Union was preserved after a bloody war, the slaves were freed, Lincoln was assassinated, and the Nation moved on to bind up its wounds.
End of story…we can all be friends now.
But, that’s not what happened; not at all.
African slaves were brought (against their will) to America to aid the first colonists at Jamestown in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. So, the fact is that white people and black people have occupied America for the same amount of time, one in a position of dominance, and the other in a position of subjugation.
(Of course, Native Americans were here first, but their homeland was basically absconded by the colonists, and their very existence was undermined by a government-supported genocide that lasted until the early 20th century. Native Americans were not considered citizens of the United States until 1924. By that time, all of their valuable hunting grounds and arable lands had been confiscated by White settlers with government permission and assistance.)
White supremacy was in fine fettle when our Nation was founded. Despite the lofty sounding, “All men are created equal” wordage that Thomas Jefferson put in the Declaration of Independence, the future President owned slaves, traded in slaves, and even had six children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings.
That black slaves were considered “not equal” is firmly established in the U.S. Constitution, as written in 1787, which equated negroes as “three-fifths of a person”. The so-called Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution required that runaway slaves be rightfully returned to their owners (i.e. slaves were property, not equal or “free” in any interpretation of the word). Hence, it is obvious that “all men are created equal” didn’t apply to black people, since they were property rather than normal, White, God-fearing citizens.
Slavery in the northern States of the U.S. lasted until around 1800 (i.e about 200 years!), and was extinguished in the southern States by the Civil War, which ended in 1865. Of course, ending the institution of slavery (buying and selling human beings for forced labor) did not make the now-freed black men and women “equal” in the eyes of the white majority of Americans; it just forbid the buying and selling of such people.
Particularly in the southern States, where the institution of slavery had become firmly woven into the economy and culture over 250 years, the sudden upheaval caused by the ending of hostilities was earth-shaking. Not only was the South in economic ruin, and had lost approximately 20 percent of its young men, it now had to contend with some heavy-handedness by the victorious North and deal with the 4 million ex-slaves who resided in the southern States.
The situation led to a lot of resentment, which led to anger, which resulted in the former Rebels digging in their heels and making life difficult for the Federal government and the newly-freed slaves.
The Southern attitude became, essentially, “You can beat us, but you can’t defeat us.”
The Union’s plan for “Reconstruction” (i.e. bringing the seceded States of the Nation back into the fold as loyal Americans, without the economic crutch of slavery) was unrealistic, as it turned out. “Radical” Republican leaders in Congress pushed for rapid and total Southern state compliance with Federal laws. Lincoln, before he died, counseled for a slower approach. But, the Radicals prevailed, and stern measures were applied. Although resigned to the abolition of slavery, many former Confederates were unwilling to accept both social changes and potential political domination by former slaves; the war had been fought over slavery, not about equality of the races. And they knew it.
During the process of Reconstruction, which lasted from 1865 to 1877, the Southern states began to flex their political muscle. The political leadership (then Democrats) quickly enacted restrictive “black codes”which indicated the plans of the Southern whites for the former slaves: limited second-class rights, no voting rights, no citizenship, no ability to own guns, they could not serve on juries, or even move about without employment. The Republican-led Federal government, though the Freedmen’s Bureau, nixed those plans.
Planters (the White aristocracy of the South) were now forced to bargain for the labor of the former slaves. Such bargaining eventually led to the establishment of the system of sharecropping (i.e. labor could share in the profits, if any), which might have been tenable had the agricultural economy prospered. But, it was too dependent upon cotton, and when prices fell, all of the participants in the agricultural economy, black and white, became poverty-stricken.
Someone had to be blamed for all of this. Most white members of the planter/business class and common farmer class of the South opposed black economic and political power. These planters and their business allies dominated the self-styled “conservative” coalition that finally took control in the South.
Religious leaders did not sit on the sidelines. White Baptists expressed the view that “God had chastised them and given them a special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction (would be) a clear sign of God’s favor.”
With the support of such folks, white supremacy organizations sprouted up throughout the South, doing what they could to thwart Reconstruction efforts, particularly as they impacted the rights of the newly-freed Negro population. The Ku Klux Klan was formed, along with other violent paramilitary groups, like the White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts in Mississippi, that assassinated and intimidated black citizens and Republican (Federal) officials at election time.
The Civil War “winners” (the Northern states’ citizens and their politicians), eventually became weary of the guerrilla warfare against blacks in the South, and the inability of the Federal government to do much about it. The passage of the 13th Amendment (abolition of slavery), the 14th Amendment (granting full citizenship to all persons born in the United States), and the 15th Amendment (full voting rights to all citizens regardless of race, color, or creed or previous condition of servitude) cemented the intended Federal legal legacy of the Reconstruction period.
Discrimination should be over, right?
Enforcement of those Constitutional rights proved to be a difficult task in the South, as the ex-Confederate politicians and their vigilante squads made life miserable for the Feds and the freed slaves. The Republicans gave it their best shot for tens years, even stationing troops in the South to make the new plan work. But, the Southern guerrilla warfare was unstoppable.
Throwing in the towel, in a “back room deal” to ensure the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President in 1877, Republican politicians agreed to no longer interfere in Southern politics, despite substantial election-associated violence against blacks.
The now-invigorated Southern politicians unveiled their own Reconstruction plan, which they called “Redemption”, but which historians now call the “Jim Crow Laws”. These were state and local laws, enacted in the late 19th century, that enforced racial segregation in the South. Although proponents alleged that black citizens would be afforded a “separate but equal” status as regards public education, use of public places, public transportation and restrooms, the reality was that the freed slaves were permitted a separate, miserable, second-class life.
Southern racists were feeling their oats at the turn of the century. The founding of the Ku Klux Klan was glorified in the D.W. Griffith movie, “The Birth of a Nation”, in 1915. Klan membership, which had flagged late in the 19th century, began an upswing.
The U.S. military was already segregated at that time. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner, initiated segregation of federal workplaces.
At about the same time, ten of the eleven former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised (removed voting rights from) most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses were utilized to allow some illiterate whites to vote, but gave no relief to most blacks. The effect of these laws was to make blacks, which were the majority of the population in some states, invisible in the political system.
One rationale for systematic exclusion of black Americans from southern public society was that it was for their own protection. An early 20th century apologist suggested that allowing blacks to attend white schools would mean “constantly subjecting them to adverse feeling and opinion”, which might lead to “a morbid race consciousness”. This perspective took anti-black sentiment for granted, because bigotry was widespread in the South after slavery became a racial caste system.
Simultaneous with the anti-black political shenanigans of the Jim Crow era, a concerted effort began to reeducate the South, indeed the entire nation, by recasting the Civil War as the “Lost Cause”. This task was taken on by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). Beginning in about 1895, it created children’s auxiliaries called Children of the Confederacy with the purpose of “telling the Truth to children” – in other words, making sure that children were presented with a version of the still-recent war that placed it within the context of southern romanticism. Children were provided with card games, using 52 “Confederate officers, political leaders, names of Confederate states, and of victorious battles”; they were provided opportunities to write and recite original poems and speeches that expressed pride in their Confederate heritage.
The UDC later engaged in a full-scale national onslaught against the textbook industry, complaining that existing texts relegated their region to a place of dishonor in the national narrative. In 1919, Mildred Rutherford, Historian General of the UDC, published “A Measuring Rod to Test Textbooks and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges, and Libraries”. This publication warned teachers and librarians to “reject any book that does not acknowledge the federal interference with state’s rights as the cause for succession and the war; any book that calls a Confederate soldier a traitor, a rebel and the war a rebellion; that says that the South fought to hold her slaves; that speaks of the slaveholder as cruel or unjust to his slaves; that glories Lincoln and vilifies Jefferson Davis”.
Of course, this measuring rod flew in the face of that fact that the Civil War was fought over slavery. On March 12, 1861, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America, one month prior to the outbreak of the war, stated that resolving “all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution (of) African slavery was the the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”
During the UDC propaganda campaign, Ku Klux Klan membership, which had flagged after Reconstruction, caught fire in America…north and south. By 1925, nationwide membership was estimated to be 3 to 6 million. This parade took place in Washington D.C.
By 1939, the UDC campaign had paid off; the Lost Cause narrative dominated textbooks nationwide. In that same year, “Gone With The Wind”, a romanticized tale of the Old South, opened in theaters throughout the Nation, and was a big hit.
Interestingly, Hattie McDaniel, the black actress who played “Mammy” in the movie, won the Best Supporting Actress award, the first by a black actor, at the Oscars.
However, at the awards ceremony in Hollywood’s Coconut Grove Hotel, Miss McDaniel was not allowed to sit at the table with her director David O. Selznick, actor Clark Gable, and actress Vivian Leigh. The California hotel had a strict “no blacks” policy. Through the intercession of Selznick, an exception was made, and McDaniel and her escort were seated at a small table in the far back of the dining room, away from the white guests.
This episode is but one reminder that racial discrimination was not confined to the South. One of the impacts of emancipation was that the freed slaves had no guaranteed jobs. When agriculture went bust in the South at the turn of the century, many blacks migrated north in search of employment. This occurred particularly after World War I, when millions of African Americans relocated to northern urban areas such as Boston, Chicago, and New York.
Within Chicago, for example, between 1910 and 1970, the percentage of African Americans lept from 2 percent to almost 33 percent. This rapid influx of blacks into the North disturbed the racial balance within cities, exacerbating hostilities between both white and black Northerners. Discrimination against the newcomers became a fact of life. Blacks could only find the lowest-status jobs, and within the housing market, they had to confront discriminatory practices including targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering.
Throughout this period, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and lynchings increased dramatically. Urban riots (whites attacking blacks) became a northern problem, and racial segregation was the norm.
African Americans lived a bleak life, with few heroes. Jesse Owens was an exception; he was the star of the 1936 Olympics in Munich, setting world records in every event he entered.
However, when national hero Owens returned to America, at the event to honor his Olympic success at New York’s Waldorf Astoria, he was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the hotel…he had to travel up to the event in a freight elevator.
The Republican Party had been the party of Lincoln, the guy who “freed the slaves”, and the political muscle behind Reconstruction. However, as the ramifications of emancipation sunk in on the white folks in both the South and the North, politics began to change.
The Democratic party, which was already strong in the former Confederate States, became the dominant party in the United States in the late 1870’s, controlling both houses of Congress. Jim Crow had won, and those evil Republican bastards (i.e. Yankees) who had wreaked havoc on the South were poison at the polls.
The Southern states continued to vote Democratic for the next 90 years. In fact, the Democrats bragged about the “Solid South”, because it was a given that those votes were in the Dems pocket.
But, the times they were a-changin’, and racial discrimination slowly became inappropriate, at least as far as the law was concerned. Several major Supreme Court decisions came down against the Jim Crow “separate but equal” standards, with probably the most significant being Brown v. The Board of Education in 1954.
The 1940’s and 1950’s saw the beginning of the modern Civil Rights movement, which culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. By all rights, racial discrimination should have ended at that point.
The new, improved Civil Right Act was, of course, was not received well in the South. Two immediate results were: the assassination of revered Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King; and, the shifting of Southern allegiance from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
The latter was accomplished by a very cynical, white nationalistic strategy first described by William Buckley, the editor of the National Review, in 1955. Regarding then-President Dwight Eisenhower’s enforcement of civil rights, Buckley argued that the South “must prevail” politically and culturally because “it is the advanced race”. Later, in another article, Buckley wrote, “In the Deep South the Negroes are, by comparison with the whites, retarded.” (Not surprisingly, back in the day, the Buckley family had a plantation in South Carolina, and his grandfather was a Confederate soldier at Shiloh.)
Buckley’s articles in the New York-based magazine were the initial salvo of white nationalistic efforts for the Republican Party to attract disaffected white Southerners. This so-called “Southern Strategy”, which stoked white resentment over African-American advances, and used code words and phrases, like “law and order”, “racial quotas”, “states rights”, was first employed by Republican Presidential candidates Barry Goldwater, then Richard Nixon, then Ronald Reagan, and, most recently, by Donald Trump.
This strategy, aimed at white working class conservatives, has flipped the political map in the South…so that it remains “solid”, but Republican, not Democrat. So, the Republicans have now come full-circle, having been the Party that “saved the Union” and “freed the slaves”, and now is the Party that is in favor of “states’ rights” and wants to slow-walk civil rights efforts. The Democrats, on the other hand, who fought Reconstruction tooth and nail, are now the opponents of the rising tide of populist, white nationalism sweeping the Nation. Go figure.
Some would say that the Civil Rights era is over, racial relations are fine, and discrimination is a thing of the past.
If anyone has any doubt that racial discrimination still exists, consider the statement of Donald Trump’s campaign director, during the 2016 election, when he bragged how the Republican “voter suppression” effort was going. Voter suppression is a tactic to discourage opponents’ supporters from voting, placing obstacles in the way for such voting, and suggesting that such votes will not count.
Some of the methods that the Republicans used in 2016 were: adopting restrictive voter ID requirements; cutting back on early voting; requiring voters to live in a ward for at least 28 days prior to an election; and, prohibiting e-mailing absentee ballots to voters. In one case, local election officials re-located the regular polling place in a heavily black, Democratic precinct to a police station. Black voters, who have good reason to fear policemen, avoided that polling place, thereby voiding their constitutional franchise, and reducing the Democratic turnout.
On the subject of the criminal justice system, consider this: Seventeen percent of the armed forces that protect our freedoms are African-Americans. When those patriots return to society, they are (1) Three times as likely to have their car searched than stopped white drivers; (2) Twice as likely to be arrested for drugs as whites, despite the fact that whites use and sell drugs at comparable or higher rates; (3) More likely than white citizens to be jailed while awaiting trial; (4) More likely to be offered a plea deal that includes prison time than whites; (5) More likely to be excluded from juries because of their race than whites; (6) More likely to serve longer sentences than white Americans for the same offense; (7) More likely (3 times) to be disenfranchised because of a felony conviction; and, (8) More likely to have their probation revoked than whites.
Black Americans also have very real reason to fear the police. According to a recent ProPublica study, young black males are at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts — 21 times greater! From 2010 to 2012, eighteen teens were shot dead fleeing arrest — and fourteen of those were African-American boys. Why did the police shoot these suspects? From 1980 to 1984, “officer under attack” was listed as the cause for 33 percent of the deadly shootings. In 1985, the Supreme Court said that officers could only use deadly force if the suspects posed a threat to officers or others. Twenty years later, looking at data from 2005 to 2009, “officer under attack” was cited in 62 percent of police killings. Gee, isn’t that coincidental?
When our country has a President who actually flaunts his white nationalistic feelings and proposed policies in racist tweets, it is not surprising that other Americans feel enabled to reveal their racism.
Several weeks ago, a female white freshman at the University of Hartford (Connecticut) was expelled for boasting on Instagram how she drove out her black roommate: “After 1-1/2 months of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons on her backpack, putting her toothbrush in places where the sun doesn’t shine, and so much more, I can finally say goodbye to Jamaican Barbie.” One wonders how many of this gal’s friends thought this hate crime was funny. (Probably a few…otherwise, why brag about it?)
“Make America Great Again” has always been a coded slogan for “Make America White Again”…a death cry for people who feel that their whiteness is being devalued as the country becomes more diverse. Trumpism has emboldened these folk, who act clueless about the impact that racism has on our country, who act as if flag-waving can whitewash this issue, and we White folks can all go on pretending that everything is A-OK in this Nation.
The recent spectacles of NFL (football) players kneeling during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner has outraged many white Americans. “How could they! How disrespectful! How unpatriotic!” President Trump himself tweeted that Americans should boycott the NFL.
I read a story recently about a white woman, a veteran, who says she can no longer watch NFL football games because the players’ kneeling is “too painful” for her. She went on that, “It’s just shameful and it hurts me…when we are supposed to be joyful about living in this country. After I saw (the kneeling during the anthem)…I tried to watch it and I just couldn’t because I just kept crying.”
She was crying because the players had exposed the dirty little secret that white people prefer to keep hidden away…the ugly underbelly of U.S. society that is racism, which manifests itself through police brutality. The players’ actions were “shameful”, not because they were unpatriotic, but because they publicly acknowledged that black Americans are not as “joyful” as white Americans. Proper folk aren’t supposed to mention such things. As one writer commented, “Her patriotism exists in a vacuum that centers her whiteness at the expense of ignoring the violence it inflicts against black (and brown) bodies.”
This lady is trying to hold onto a vision of America that was never real. From the beginning, black people were treated less than equal, at best. Never, at any time in our history, have they been able to enjoy, like white citizens, the freedoms and bounty that our country has to offer. This disparity continues to this day, because no matter what they do, our black neighbors will never be white. And, that seems to be the measuring stick of large portions of the American populous…although they would never publicly admit it.
Except…in a voting booth.