The Deterioration of Black Civil Rights in the American South from 1877-1920
By MADELEINE SALLEO, San Francisco, California
The Gilded Age is widely viewed as the first of many eras that brought in economic and political progress. Most think of the Gilded Age (1877 to 1896) as spurring the Second Industrial Revolution, which then led into the Progressive Era (1896 to 1917); a period of strikes and suffrage movements, some more successful than others. However, while the North became seen as the pinnacle of technological advancement, the South remained exceedingly poor, and was made up of mainly export centers with little industry or skilled labor. The South was largely reliant on the North for resources, and were politically at a place reminiscent of the white supremacy that existed pre-Reconstruction period. Racial violence was at a high, and there was a resurgence of targeted political terrorism. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era disestablished much of the work done to advance Black equality in the American South, and damaged Black politics through legislation that limited Black voting. These restrictions, as well as the federal endorsement of segregation, made clear that the American South, at this time, didn’t care about racial reform and civil rights.From the beginning of the Gilded Age, and until the end of the Progressive Era, Southern politics were controlled by a coalition of merchants, planters, and businessmen (known as “the Redeemers”), who attempted to reverse as much of Reconstruction as possible. They were generally successful: the public schools that had been such a symbol of progress were shut down, and new laws, evocative of the Black Codes, authorized the arrest of practically any unemployed person, as well as drastically increasing the punishment for petty crimes. This increase in Black incarceration created a system of renting out convicts for labor purposes - a system that quickly turned very profitable. The Southern government also made no effort to stop the lynchings of Black people, mostly men, that had begun in earnest in 1885. In between then and 1905, over fifty people each year were lynched, an act that was shockingly similar to the violence of the Ku Klux Klan - something which white people swore Jim Crow laws would change. Ida B. Wells delivered a speech in 1983 in which she called out the government’s willing powerlessness to stop the “inhuman slaughter.” Wells compared the lynching to “that which prevailed under slavery”, claiming the regression of racial equality in the South since Reconstruction. She argued that “[General] Lee’s conquered veterans [...] were conquered in war, but not in spirit. They believed as firmly as ever that it was their right to rule Black men and dictate to the national government.”
The ghosts of the Confederate army continued to shape the lives of Southern African Americans, and despite the so-called progress of the North; violence towards Black people in the South was worsening.By not taking action, the general government was, in fact, endorsing the lynchings. America, “the flower of the nineteenth century civilization”, insisted that it was unable to stop the renewal in organized racial violence.
While Black voting and officeholding didn’t come to an immediate end after Reconstruction, laws were soon enacted in the late 1800s to early 1900s meant to eliminate the Black vote. Southern legislature drafted laws that seemed color blind, but were really designed to stop Black people from being able to vote. These laws, such as poll taxes, literary tests, and the “Grandfather Clause”, relied on educational and wealth disparities left over from slavery to thwart the rise of Black politics. Even though the Fourteenth Amendment dictated that any state that deprived male citizens of suffrage stood to lose part of its representation in Congress, these new “Black Codes” violated it constantly without any consequences. The 1890s saw the widespread imposition of segregation in the South following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlawed racial discrimination by public facilities, by endorsing segregation - the Court insisted that the Fourteenth amendment prohibited discrimination by state authorities, not private businesses. The landmark Plessy vs. Ferguson case made the Court’s stance clear by granting approval to state laws requiring separate facilities for Black and white people, claiming the ruling to be “equal, but separate”. In 1895, Booker T. Washington issued a statement asking Black Americans to accept segregation as he believed it was the only way for African Americans to become part of the South’s economy. He wanted Black people to give up on insistence for political power, civil rights, and higher education, and instead focus on industrial education, accumulation of wealth, and the mending of the South (in terms of the relationships between Black people and white people). In 1903, writer and activist W.E.B Du Bois wrote a criticism of that statement, asserting that the result of it was “the disenfranchisement of the Negro, the legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro, and the steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for higher training of the Negro.” It was with these aforementioned developments that many African Americans felt as though they had lost their freedom
- freedom fought for during the Civil War and Reconstruction, now swiftly lost. Time and time again, the Southern legal system claimed that progress was happening. They claimed that the new “Black Codes” and the institution of segregation were not retreats into old, racist systems without understanding that all this legislature was being created for the same reason slavery was created - to impose white supremacy over African Americans. The narrative of racial difference created to justify slavery was now being applied to justify separation, and the legalization of Jim Crow laws demonstrated that the federal government was eager to keep that narrative alive, however it could. These new laws were all part of the same institution, created not to ensure separation, but to make sure that Black people knew that whites had the power - they had the upper hand. Whether it was through limiting voting, or through lynchings, the Progressive Era in the South wasn’t about civil rights, as it is so often remembered in the North, but about the legacy of the Confederacy taking hold of South once again.