Nadir of American race relations
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The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-black racism, was more open and pronounced than it had ever been during any other period in the nation's history. During this period, African Americans lost access to many of the civil rights which they had gained during Reconstruction. Anti-black violence, lynchings, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. Asian Americans were also not spared from such sentiments.
Historian Rayford Logan coined the phrase in his 1954 book The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901. Logan tried to determine the period when "the Negro's status in American society" reached its lowest point. He argued for 1901 as its end, suggesting that race relations improved after that year; other historians, such as John Hope Franklin and Henry Arthur Callis, argued for dates as late as 1923.[1]
The term continues to be used; most notably, it is used in books by James W. Loewen as recently as 2006,[2] and it is also used in books by other scholars.[3][4][5] Loewen chooses later dates, arguing that the post-Reconstruction era was in fact one of widespread hope for racial equity due to idealistic Northern support for civil rights. In Loewen's view, the true nadir only began when Northern Republicans ceased supporting Southern blacks' rights around 1890, and it lasted until the United States entered World War II in 1941. This period followed the financial Panic of 1873 and a continuing decline in cotton prices. It overlapped with both the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and was characterized by the nationwide sundown town phenomenon.[2]
Logan's focus was exclusively on African Americans in the Southern United States, but the time period which he covered also represents the worst period of anti-Chinese discrimination and wider anti-Asian discrimination which was due to fear of the so-called Yellow Peril, which included harassment and violence on the West Coast of the United States, such as the destruction of Chinatown, Denver as well as anti-Asian discrimination in Canada,[6] particularly after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.[7]
Background
Reconstruction revisionism
In the early part of the 20th century, some white historians put forth the claim that Reconstruction was a tragic period, when Republicans who were motivated by revenge and profit used troops to force Southerners to accept corrupt governments that were run by unscrupulous Northerners and unqualified blacks. Such scholars generally dismissed the idea that blacks could ever be capable of governing societies.[8]
Notable proponents of this view were referred to as the Dunning School, named after William Archibald Dunning, an influential historian at Columbia University. Another Columbia professor, John Burgess, was notorious for writing that "black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself... created any civilization of any kind."[9][8]
The Dunning School's view of Reconstruction held sway for years. It was represented in D. W. Griffith's popular movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) and to some extent, it was also represented in Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind (1934). More recent historians of the period have rejected many of the Dunning School's conclusions, and in their place, they offer a different assessment.[10]
History of Reconstruction
Today's consensus regards Reconstruction as a time of idealism and hope, a time which was marked by some practical achievements. The
Furthermore, the Reconstruction governments established public education and social welfare institutions for the first time, improving education for both blacks and whites, and they also tried to improve social conditions for the many people who were left in poverty after the long war. No Reconstruction state government was dominated by blacks; in fact, blacks did not attain a level of representation that was equal to the size of their population in any state.[12]
Origins
Reconstruction era violence
For several years after the
Despite these failures, blacks continued to vote and attend school. Literacy soared, and many African Americans were elected to local and statewide offices, with several serving in Congress. Because of the black community's commitment to education, the majority of blacks were literate by 1900.
Continued violence in the South, especially heated around electoral campaigns, sapped Northern intentions. More significantly, after the long years and losses of the Civil War, Northerners had lost heart for the massive commitment of money and arms that would have been required to stifle the white insurgency. The
In 1874, in a continuation of the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872, thousands of White League militiamen fought against New Orleans police and Louisiana state militia and won. They turned out the Republican governor and installed the Democrat Samuel D. McEnery, took over the capitol, state house and armory for a few days, and then retreated in the face of Federal troops. This was known as the "Battle of Liberty Place".
End of Reconstruction
Northerners waffled and finally capitulated to the South, giving up on being able to control election violence. Abolitionist leaders like Horace Greeley began to ally themselves with Democrats in attacking Reconstruction governments. By 1875, there was a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. President Ulysses S. Grant, who as a general had led the Union to victory in the Civil War, initially refused to send troops to Mississippi in 1875 when the governor of the state asked him to. Violence surrounded the presidential election of 1876 in many areas, beginning a trend. After Grant, it would be many years before any President would do anything to extend the protection of the law to black people.[17][18]
Jim Crow laws and terrorism
White supremacy
"Believing that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people; believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of African origin, and believing that those men of the State of North Carolina, who joined in forming the Union, did not contemplate for their descendants a subjection to an inferior race,
"We, the undersigned citizens of the city of Wilmington and county of New Hanover, do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled, by men of African origin. . . . "
The Wilmington Weekly Star (North Carolina)[19]
November 11, 1898
As noted above, white paramilitary forces contributed to whites' taking over power in the late 1870s. A brief coalition of populists took over in some states, but Democrats had returned to power after the 1880s. From 1890 to 1908, they proceeded to pass legislation and constitutional amendments to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor whites, with Mississippi and Louisiana creating new state constitutions in 1890 and 1895 respectively, to disenfranchise African Americans. Democrats used a combination of restrictions on voter registration and voting methods, such as
Conservative white Democratic governments passed
Lynchings
Historian
Blacks who were economically successful faced reprisals or sanctions. When Richard Wright tried to train to become an optometrist and lens-grinder, the other men in the shop threatened him until he was forced to leave. In 1911 blacks were barred from participating in the Kentucky Derby because African Americans won more than half of the first twenty-eight races.[28][29] Through violence and legal restrictions, whites often prevented blacks from working as common laborers, much less as skilled artisans or in the professions. Under such conditions, even the most ambitious and talented black person found it extremely difficult to advance.
This situation called the views of Booker T. Washington, the most prominent black leader during the early part of the nadir into question. He had argued that black people could better themselves by doing hard work and being thrifty. He believed that they had to master basic work before they went on to pursue college careers and professional aspirations. Washington believed that his programs trained blacks for the lives which they were likely to lead as well as for the jobs which they could get in the South.
However, as W. E. B. Du Bois stated...
..."it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for working men and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage".[30]
Washington had always (though often clandestinely) supported the right of black suffrage, and had fought against disfranchisement laws in Georgia, Louisiana, and other Southern states.[31] This included secretive funding of litigation resulting in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903), which lost due to Supreme Court reluctance to interfere with states' rights.
Great Migration and national hostility
African American migration
Many blacks left the South in an attempt to find better living and working conditions. In 1879, Logan notes, "some 40,000
Black Americans who fled racial oppression either returned to retrieve the rest of their family or sent train tickets back home. In response, as white southerners observed train platforms packed with African Americans, several cities passed ordinances that made it illegal for trains to accept pre-paid tickets. There were ordinances put in place to also prevent group travel if Black families or clusters of African Americans tried to purchase group rates. [1]
Northern reactions
During the nadir, Northern areas struggled with upheaval and hostility. In the Midwest and West, many towns posted "sundown" warnings, threatening to kill African Americans who remained overnight. These "Sundown" towns also expelled African-Americans who had settled in those towns both before and during Reconstruction. Monuments to Confederate War dead were erected across the nation – in Montana, for example.[32]
Black housing was often segregated in the North. There was competition for jobs and housing as blacks entered cities which were also the destination of millions of immigrants from
While there were critics in the scientific community such as Franz Boas, eugenics and scientific racism were promoted in academia by scientists Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, who argued "scientific evidence" for the racial superiority of whites and thereby worked to justify racial segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks.
Ku Klux Klan
Numerous black people had voted for Democrat
The Birth of a Nation resulted in the rebirth of the Klan, which in the 1920s had more power and influence than the original Klan ever did. In 1924, the Klan had four million members.[35] It also controlled the governorship and a majority of the state legislature in Indiana, and exerted a powerful political influence in Arkansas, Oklahoma, California, Georgia, Oregon, and Texas.[36]
Mob violence and massacres
In the years during and after
In 1919, there were so many violent attacks in several major cities that the summer of that year became known as
Legacy
Culture
Black literacy levels, which rose during Reconstruction, continued to increase through this period. The NAACP was established in 1909, and by 1920 the group won a few important anti-discrimination lawsuits. African Americans, such as Du Bois and Wells-Barnett, continued the tradition of advocacy, organizing, and journalism which helped spur abolitionism, and also developed new tactics that helped to spur the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Harlem Renaissance and the popularity of jazz music during the early part of the 20th century made many Americans more aware of black culture and more accepting of black celebrities.
Instability
Overall, however, the nadir was a disaster, certainly for black people. Foner points out:
...by the early twentieth century [racism] had become more deeply embedded in the nation's culture and politics than at any time since the beginning of the antislavery crusade and perhaps in our nation's entire history.[39]
Similarly, Loewen argues that the family instability and crime which many sociologists have found in black communities can be traced, not to slavery, but to the nadir and its aftermath.[26]
Foner noted that "none of Reconstruction's black officials created a family political dynasty" and concluded that the nadir "aborted the development of the South's black political leadership."[40]
See also
- Black Codes (United States)
- Jim Crow laws
- Civil rights movement (1865–1896)
- Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
- Sundown town
- Woodrow Wilson and race
- Destination Freedom – written by Richard Durham – a 1948–1950 anthology radio drama series about important events and characters in American race-related history
References
- ^ Logan 1997, p. xxi
- ^ OCLC 71778272.
- ^ Brown & Webb 2007, pp. 180, 208, 340
- ^ Hornsby 2008, pp. 312, 381, 391
- ^ Martens 207, p. 113
- ^ Chinese American Society 2010, p. 52 sidebar "The Anti-Chinese Hysteria of 1885–86".
- ^ Weir 2013, p. 130
- ^ a b Katz & Sugrue 1998, p. 92
- ^ William 1905, p. 103
- ^ a b Current 1987, pp. 446–447
- ^ Foner 2012, p. 388
- ^ Current 2012, pp. 446–449
- ^ Current 2012, pp. 449–450
- ^ Loewen 1995, pp. 158–160
- ISBN 978-0374248550.[page needed]
- ISBN 0820307106.[page needed]
- ^ Foner 2002, p. 391
- ^ Current 2012, pp. 456–458
- ^ "Citizens Aroused / Emphatic Demand Made That the Editor of the Infamous Daily Record Leave the City and Remove His Plant – An Ultimatum Sent by Committee". The Wilmington Weekly Star. November 11, 1898. p. 2.
- ISBN 0300016964.
- ISBN 080782593X.[page needed]
- ^ Current 2012, pp. 457–458
- SSRN 963036.
- ^ Logan 1997, p. 91
- ISBN 978-0807829295.
- ^ a b Loewen 1995, p. 166
- ^ Loewen 1995, p. Chapter 5 and 6
- ^ Wright 1945, p. Chapter 9
- ^ Loewen 1995, pp. 163–164
- ^ (Chapter 3)
- ^ Robert J. Norrell (2009), Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, pp. 186–88.
- ^ Loewen 1999, pp. 102–103, 182–183
- ^ Logan 1997, pp. 97–98
- ^ Wilson – A. Scott Berg
- ^ Current 2012, p. 693
- ^ Loewen 1999, pp. 161–162
- ^ Current 2012, p. 670
- ^ Loewen 1995, p. 165
- ^ Foner 2002, p. 608
- ^ Foner 2002, p. 604
Sources
- Brown, David; Webb, Clive (2007). Race in the American South: From Slavery to Civil Rights. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0748613762.
- Chinese American Society (2010). Sen, Hu; Dong, Jielin (eds.). The rocky road to liberty: a documented history of Chinese immigration and exclusion. Javvin Press. OCLC 605882577.
- OCLC 14379410.
- OCLC 48074168.
- Hornsby, Alton Jr., ed. (2008). A Companion to African American History. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 312, 381, 391. ISBN 978-1405137355. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
- Katz, Michael B.; Sugrue, Thomas J., eds. (1988). "3". W.E.B. DuBois, race, and the city: "The Philadelphia Negro" and its legacy. University of Pennsylvania Press. OCLC 38125924.
- Loewen, James W. (1995). OCLC 29877812.
- Loewen, James W. (1999). ISBN 0684870673.
- Loewen, James W. (2006). OCLC 71778272.
- Logan, Rayford Whittingham (1997) [1965]. The betrayal of the Negro, from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (Reprint ed.). Da Capo Press. OCLC 35777358.
- Martens, Allison Marie (2007). A Movement of One's Own? American Social Movements and Constitutional Development in the Twentieth Century. Ann Arbor. ISBN 978-0549166900. Retrieved September 2, 2013.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - Weir, Robert E. (2013). Workers in America: a historical encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. OCLC 827334843.
Further reading
- Brown, Nikki L.M., and Barry M. Stentiford, eds. The Jim Crow Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 2008)
- Raffel, Jeffrey. Historical dictionary of school segregation and desegregation: The American experience (Bloomsbury, 1998) online
Primary sources
- James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
- W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
- Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, New York: Harper and Row, 1988.
- Rayford Logan,The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson,, New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. (This is an expanded edition of Logan's 1954 book The Negro in American Life and Thought, The Nadir, 1877–1901)
- Alan Lomax interview with Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sonny Boy Williamson on the album, Blues in the Mississippi Night, Rykodisc, 1990.
- Up From Slavery, 1901
- Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Red Record, 1895
- Richard Wright, Black Boy, Harper & Brothers, 1945
Additional resources
- Loewen, James W. "Sundown Towns". sundown.tougaloo.edu. Retrieved June 13, 2017.